Jim Sciutto’s latest work, The Return of Great Powers: Russia, China and the Next World War, is a solid work of contemporary journalism featuring probing interviews with world leaders who describe how Russia and China have “upended the post-Cold War global order and replaced it with a new, less stable one.”

Sciutto is a highly experienced foreign correspondent who has reported from more than fifty countries in Asia, Europe, and the Middle East. As CNN’s chief national security analyst, he covers US foreign policy, the military, international terrorism, and the intelligence community. In this book, Sciutto presents sobering assessments that the world has entered a new Cold War era where the risks of great power conflict have been magnified by Russian aggression, Chinese revanchism, and the rising threats of non-conventional warfare and nuclear proliferation.   

World Disorder

With well-informed insights shaped by more than a dozen interviews with current and former world leaders and military professionals, Sciutto argues the current post-Cold War era is one in which “Russia intends to bring the international order down, and China to create an entirely new one.” Accordingly, new dividing lines are emerging that separate not only the United States and the West from Russia, but also the liberal Western democratic order from the illiberal autocracy that characterizes China, Iran, and other states.

But it was the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the author writes, that “marked the cleanest break between the post-Cold War order and the new world disorder,” defied international norms, and attempted to take by force of arms the sovereign territory of another nation. In Sciutto’s accounting, the risk here is not just to Ukraine’s sovereignty but to the survival of an international order that prevents unchecked aggression. “If Russia can take Ukraine by force, China can take Taiwan, and every authoritarian state can grab whatever piece of land it chooses.”

Throughout the book, the author draws deeply on first-person interviews with both US and foreign leaders to explore the far-reaching implications of renewed great power competition with Russia and China. Those leaders are of one mind in recognizing a world of degraded international conventions is also a far less stable geo-political environment. US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, for example, is quoted as assessing Russia not as ideologically driven, but as “a declining but extremely dangerous power that is breaking all the norms,” and one that “arguably wants and is creating disorder to its advantage.”

No Guardrails

Sciutto quotes Central Intelligence Agency Director Bill Burns as saying that nations around the world “are navigating this new and more uncertain world order without many of the guardrails that had been built up in the last Cold War” to reduce the risk of great power war. More tellingly, the author argues, the arena for hostilities has expanded beyond conventional and nuclear warfare. The author found there was “vehement disagreement” among those he interviewed about the efficacy of international treaties versus the demonstration of “raw power” as a deterrent to great power conflict. But several leaders, including NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, stressed the importance of new treaties and of arms control regimes that have largely been dismantled by increasingly polarized relations between Washington and Moscow.

The world enters a new period with fewer and fewer treaties or even the outline of treaties to govern the expanding conflict. There are no cyber arms control treaties. There is no comprehensive agreement governing the weaponization of space. And two of the most crucial nuclear arms control treaties between the US and Russia—the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty and the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM)—no longer hold.

According to Sciutto, the lack of arms control agreements and the decimation of Russia’s conventional military forces in the war with Ukraine—“the first hot war of this new great power conflict”—could well foster a greater determination by Moscow to use nonconventional weapons. The Russian Federation abandoned the Soviet Union’s no-first use of nuclear weapons policy in 1993. Absent a definitive statement from Russia, Sciutto contends the Kremlin may view the use of tactical nuclear weapons as viable in a regional conflict, as “Russian leaders repeatedly dangled the threat of nuclear escalation.”

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine marked the first time a nuclear power invaded a neighboring country and, the author asks, “In a world without rules, what answer do non-nuclear powers have to territorial aggression by a nuclear-armed neighbor?” The dissolution of limits on the use of nuclear weapons could lead, he argues, to nuclear weapons proliferation. This would especially be the case, he claims, if a middle-power country such as Iran acquires nuclear weapons and sparks a middle-power nuclear arms race in the region and beyond.

Paths to Peace

The Return of Great Powers paints a sobering picture of the threat of future conflict not only between the three competing great powers, but also between their proxies. Even so, Sciutto found among US and world leaders a persistent optimism that useful lessons can be learned from the history of the World Wars and that of the Cold War. Western leaders repeatedly pointed out “that international rules and agreements—though not perfect—are at least a fundamental part of keeping the peace among the great powers.” As such, the author argues for new arms limits treaties and treaties for space, cyberspace, and AI.

These same leaders were united in their conviction that Ukraine must be supported. Sciutto explains how a renewed “combination” of efforts is needed to forestall great power conflict in the future—international rules and norms plus the power of armed deterrence—not unlike the path the US and its allies have pursued since the end of World War II. Even so, this is a delicate balancing act “giving Ukraine enough to defend itself while avoiding escalating the war into a direct conflict between NATO and Russia.” There is more at stake here than thwarting Russian armed aggression, Sciutto argues, because there is broad agreement that Ukraine’s fate is tied to Taiwan’s. “How the world reacts to Russia’s aggression in Europe will help determine whether China takes similar action in Asia.”

Much of what Sciutto has described as a strategy for a new era of competition with Russia and the broader deterrence of aggression is rooted in Cold War orthodoxies. Russia, in Sciutto’s estimation, must be “contained;” regional partnerships—both military and non-military—should grow into broader alliances like the 32-member nation NATO alliance and the European Union; and the liberal democratic order should be prepared to use diplomacy, economics (sanctions), and information to check the revanchist and militaristic goals of great powers. US leaders should also push back against isolationism which “has growing appeal with both (US) political parties” and is a persistent thread in foreign policy debates. There is nothing new in this playbook and it underscores the recurring theme in the book that leaders can learn from history.

Less well-developed is a strategy for reining in Chinese aggression, both military and economic. Sciutto quotes Blinken as noting the flashpoint in Asia is Taiwan and what happens there and in Ukraine “will set a precedent for territorial aggression in this new age of great powers.” In his interviews, the author found agreement among US and other leaders to provide “an overwhelmingly clear deterrent” to influence Beijing’s calculus that taking Taiwan by force will not serve its interests.  According to Sciutto, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley sees that deterrence rooted in growing Taiwan’s defense capabilities.

Beyond the defense of Taiwan, it’s clear world leaders are only beginning to grapple with the failed policies of engagement with Beijing and deal with China as both a great economic and military power. For example, Sciutto quotes Matthew Pottinger, former Deputy National Security Advisor, as arguing not for containment of China, but for “constrainment.” However, the author does not develop this idea and, seemingly, does not discuss it with other leaders. Nor does he explain how constrainment might differ from “derisking,” a term he tosses off as “the new buzzword of US policymakers.” While Sciutto readily acknowledges the intertwined economies of China and much of the West—and especially the United States and Australia—he does not fully explore counters to the Chinese threats of economic coercion and weaponized trade that often backstop Beijing’s military adventurism.

That said, The Return of Great Powers is a timely and insightful book largely because Sciutto has skillfully used the candid thoughts of current world leaders to clearly communicate the dangers and the nuances of renewed great power competition. “We have to make decisions,” Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas is quoted as saying. “But we will (only) know if they are right or wrong in five years’ or ten years’ time. But you have to decide now.”

This is the great dilemma that confronts today’s leaders in an era of new and rising threats.