The Return of Great Powers: Russia, China, and the Next World War

The Return of Great Powers: Russia, China, and the Next World War by Jim Sciutto. Dutton, 2024, 368 pp.

In The Return of Great Powers, Jim Sciutto provides the insight and perspective one would expect from such a highly connected US journalist. He previously worked for the State Department in Beijing and is currently CNN’s chief national security correspondent. He is also the bestselling author of The Shadow War (Harper, 2019). His latest book provides gripping and firsthand insight into modern geopolitics and warfare.

Sciutto argues that great power competition has accelerated in the aftermath of Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine. He contends that the new world order includes three great powers: the United States, Russia, and China. Hardening division between these great powers has “upended the post-Cold War global order and replaced it with a new, less stable one” (xi).

The book covers various interrelated topics of benefit to those interested in great power competition and twenty-first century military affairs. First, Sciutto enables his reader to understand in more depth Russia’s war in Ukraine and the implications of the war for the great powers. Second, he describes the challenges of twenty-first-century warfare, the response of NATO and Europe, the potential for nuclear escalation, and China’s connections to Russia. Finally, he addresses the potential for Taiwan to become the next flashpoint in great power warfare.

Sciutto describes the Russian invasion as “a 1939 moment” with global ramifications for the United States and its Allies (xiii). In an absorbing firsthand account, he gives insights from senior Central Intelligence Agency, Pentagon, and NATO contacts. He shares with readers his conversations with Ukrainian civilians before and after the invasion—gathered while he was living in a hotel in Kyiv as Russian tanks rolled over the border—which provide superb insight and a perspective that may resonate with many in Taiwan today as they confront aggression from China.

Sciutto assesses how Russia’s invasion of Ukraine signified the beginning of the post-Cold War “new world disorder,” asserting that if Russia is allowed to succeed, it would likely incentivize aggression by other nefarious states (310). He illustrates this point with a quote from Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas: “You can’t walk away with more than you had before. Otherwise, it’s incitement to aggression” (310). Sciutto describes Russia’s war in Ukraine as a “real-world experiment in great power warfare” (28). The invasion has undoubtedly energized NATO and European countries. More importantly, this new energy will have made Beijing assess the implications of any plans to take Taiwan. As a result of Russia’s war with Ukraine, the United States is certainly keen to ensure it “reasserts deterrents” (76).

Sciutto also tackles the challenges of twenty-first century warfare. The discussion with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg and former NATO Supreme Allied Commander Admiral James Stavridis brings this issue to life. Both officials highlight the combination of today’s complex technology with trench warfare, tanks, and artillery. Their analysis illuminates Ukrainian successes as well as challenges, including the rapidly changing battlefield and Ukraine’s ability to adapt to such changes through technological innovation. The book also highlights important lessons on defense industrial capacity, noting that Western support for Ukraine has revealed serious global supply chain issues.

With much ground to make up following the peace dividend after the Cold War, Sciutto analyzes the response of NATO and European nations. While one European NATO admiral is optimistic about increased European defense spending, an Estonian defense official is less enthused, stating “Russia put Europe to sleep in the 1990s  and it is struggling to wake up” (123). Sciutto questions whether Russian President Vladimir Putin would attack NATO and receives equally contrasting responses. Again, this concern is real for the Baltic countries but not a significant one for US senior officials.

The author explains that the 2022 NATO conference in Madrid changed the dynamic between NATO and China. The NATO Strategic Concept articulates that “the deepening strategic partnership between the People’s Republic of China and the Russian Federation and their mutually reinforcing attempts to undercut the rules-based international order run counter to our values and interests” (61–2). Yet Sciutto’s conversations with the NATO secretary general do not explicitly link China to the ongoing situation in Ukraine, and only Sciutto—not Stoltenberg—refers to Russia as a great power.

In 2022, US intelligence reported that Russia was preparing for the potential use of a nuclear weapon on the battlefield in Ukraine. Sciutto provides a firsthand account of US officials as they actively planned for a US response. Sciutto claims that “the degree of US concern and the seriousness of contingency planning—has not been reported in such detail before” (197). The use of nuclear weapons would inevitably make it a great power conflict, and this potentially explains why he regards the war in Ukraine as “a 1939 moment.”

Sciutto then establishes the links between China, Russia, and the war in Ukraine. He argues that Western involvement has expanded the war into a proxy war among the great powers. The middle powers are also beginning to align, and there is concern about vertical and horizontal escalation—or the potential use of weapons of mass destruction and the introduction of NATO to the conflict, respectively.

Shortly before the Russian invasion on February 4, 2022, China and Russia “released a joint statement declaring that China and Russia’s bilateral partnership was greater than a traditional alliance and that their friendship would know ‘no limits.’ ”¹ Sciutto outlines the thinking of US officials concerned about the prospect of China assisting Russia in rearming militarily and boosting its capability on the Ukrainian battlefield. The United States believed that “China was considering the provision of ‘lethal support’ to Russian for its invasion, to complement the nonlethal aid it had already been sending” (76–7). This evolved into Chinese lethal support to Russia becoming a red line for the United States. It also led to US intelligence reports being made public to warn the global community that China was actively considering providing lethal support to Russia.

But if China has not provided Russia with lethal aid, why does Sciutto regard Ukraine as the first great power proxy war of the new unstable world order? He argues that “Chinese leaders hoped to prolong the war in Ukraine in order to distract and weaken the US and its allies so as to make it less capable to respond to a potential Chinese invasion of Taiwan” (80).

Sciutto thus shifts his focus to Taiwan, which has undoubtedly been observing this geopolitical exchange since the invasion of Ukraine. Sciutto visited the country to speak to senior serving and retired Taiwanese military officers and assess whether Taiwan would likely become the next flashpoint in great power warfare. Then- Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley said in an interview with Sciutto, “The historical record tells us that when the condition obtains, when a revisionist power and a status quo power meet and they have irreconcilable core vital national security interests, historically, most of the time it ended up in armed conflict” (50). This refers to the bipolar relationship between the United States and China rather than the ongoing situation in Ukraine. Still, Milley’s study of history has led him to conclude that ongoing geopolitics make “great power war more likely rather than less likely” (50). The author asserts that many lessons from Ukraine have benefited Taiwan, potentially more than China. His inference is that lessons must be acted upon to bolster deterrence and avoid Milley’s prediction coming to fruition.

Yet although Sciutto’s insight from senior officials, politicians, and generals on the front line of geopolitics provides a fascinating perspective, his assessment of Russia as a great power is open to challenge. Russia has significant nuclear capability, but it is an economic minnow in comparison with the United States and China. That said, there can be no doubt that Russia’s war in Ukraine provides a compelling example of why it is necessary to deter future aggression.

The Return of Great Powers is nevertheless a book that readers interested in modern geopolitics or military affairs would find interesting. In providing lessons for future conflicts and exploring the implications of a Chinese military invasion of Taiwan, Sciutto covers the complex range of intertwined geopolitical challenges now facing the Western world.

Group Captain Timothy Brookes, Royal Air Force