The risks of conflict among the great powers

Apr 24, 2026 News

---

By Dr. Bertrand Ramcharan

(Kaieteur News) – Professor Odd Arne Westad, a Norwegian academic, is a renowned specialist in international history who now teaches Grand Strategy at Yale University.

He has written prize-winning books on international history, including the history of the Cold War. He has just published a highly acclaimed book, The Coming Storm, in which he assesses as rather high the risks of conflict between the Great Powers, especially between China and the USA.

He recalls the circumstances that led to war among the Great Powers in 1914 and sees many parallels in our times. The risks of war in 1914 were like run-away trains that eventually crashed head-on, and Westad thinks that such a situation may be repeating itself in our times, especially between China and the USA. He analyses various situations that could lead to war, including over Taiwan, North Korea, the South China Sea, Southeast Asia, the Himalayas, where China and India are in a dangerous face-off after previous military clashes, and Kashmir, over which India and Pakistan have fought several wars, with India and Pakistan both possessing nuclear weapons.

Westad analyses the strategic aims of the leading Great Powers, notably the USA, China and Russia. The main challenge today for the USA, no longer the hegemon it once was, is to find an international role that both serves the interests of its people and contributes toward some form of stability. Westad thought that the US global interventionism of the Cold War and the post-Cold War era had come to an end in the 2020s. Neither the Right nor the Left of American politics, he writes, has any appetite for further interventions overseas. Westad did not count, in offering this assessment, the risks of an erratic President fixated on seeking glory.

The strategic aims of the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party are to establish a predominant position in most of Asia, from Siberia and the Russian Maritime provinces, through Southeast Asia and South Asia to the borders of Iran, and into the western Pacific. It is in quest of strategic dominance through a combination of military preponderance and economic supremacy.

Russia, for its part, though much reduced as a global power, has one of the largest stockpiles of nuclear weapons, along with the USA. Its economy is heavily dependent on resources from oil and gas, its population is dwindling, and it is locked in a now five-year war of conquest in Ukraine. President Putin’s strategic aim is to re-establish a Russian empire in the countries that had been constituent republics of the former USSR.

From early on in his tenure, President Putin started orienting Russia away from the West and toward China. His assessment was that, given his country’s weaknesses, Russia could only be dominated by the West and stood a better chance to protect what he saw as its interests in an association with China.

Westad discusses other major powers such as India, Turkey, Brazil, Japan, and the European Union, but from the point of view of raw power they are not in the first league, compared to China, the USA and Russia. Westad thinks that it is in Southeast Asia – the South China Sea – that the risks may be greatest of China and the USA facing off. As the twenty-first century develops, he points out, South-East Asia will become the most important region of the world. Its economic growth, its healthy demographic profile, its ever-increasing levels of education, and its growing and increasingly integrated markets all testify to its significance. Its population of 700 million, bigger than that of both North America and Europe, is increasingly aware of its notability. ‘But they are also aware that Southeast Asia may be caught in increasingly intense geopolitical rivalries between the United States, China, and India.’

Running through most South-East Asian countries is an enduring fear of Chinese domination.China is concerned with any military cooperation between Southeast Asia and the United States and is trying to counter any prospect of it by militarizing Chinese possessions in the South China Sea.

Westad offers some suggestions. In strategic affairs, he writes, if we want to avoid war, we have to prepare for how to avoid it. Such preparation will have to come in many forms. One is at least temporary compromises on dangerous issues of sovereignty or territory, such as between China and Taiwan, or between India and China, or in the South China Sea. Another is ending ongoing wars, such as in Ukraine, Palestine and Iran. A third is not to stifle global trade through tariffs and embargoes. A fourth is to limit arms races in sensitive technologies. A fifth is to cooperate where cooperation is possible, such as on climate issues, pandemics, and space exploration. One should also realize that behaviour and rhetoric are essential elements of peace.

Westad points out that while the world faces the dangers of devastating war, hotlines between the Great Powers are not fully functional, and the UN has been castrated by the Trump Administration. As the Trump Administration wages war on the UN and has established a jaundiced possible substitute, President Trump’s Board of Peace, China and Russia both profess to stand for a ‘democratic’ global order, meaning one in which other Great Powers have as much a say as has the United States.

The United States is trying to weaken China through putting pressure on Russia, hoping that the friendship between the two will break. China therefore has no choice but to double down on its friendship with Moscow, in spite of concerns about Russia’s methods and its weak military performance in Ukraine. ‘In spite of Russia’s ongoing terror bombing of Ukrainian cities, Xi Jinping decided to take the level of cooperation with Putin to new levels.’ This is the risk-laden world in which Guyana’s foreign policy must operate.

---

• conflict, Dr. Bertrand Ramcharan, great powers, Odd Arne Westad

---