The Return of Great Powers is an excellent book that dives into current global events and why they matter. Sciutto has done his research to include not only the history of the Russia-Ukraine and China-Taiwan conflicts, but also the present-day implications of wins for the agressors. Scuitto helps the reader understand why we as Americans cannot turn away from events unfolding in Ukraine and Taiwan. This book is written not just for history buffs and news junkies, but for everyone. His writing and resources lend great credibility to his argument.

Are we in a period of a new "Cold War"? Well it would seem that Russia is trying to reassert itself as a superpower again, but Ukraine is putting a damper on Puting restoring the power of the Soviet Union. On the other hand China wants to be the 'premier' nation in the world surpassing the USA, the EU and Russia. China wants to recover from the humiliation it suffered in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Putin expected that the invasion of Ukraine would take three weeks and destroy the cohesiveness of NATO. But the ineptitude of his military strategy, the weekness of his troops and weapons have put a destructive hold on his plans. Not only did he not weaken NATO, but strengthened it and help to expand it to all the Nordic countries. It also hurt him economically (Europe has found other ways to get oil and natural gas), but countries that relied on grain from Ukraine has suffered from famine.

China has the second largest economy in the world. They also hold trillions of dollars of US government treasury bonds. Quietly China is helping third world nations but is also putting them into debt they can never repay. China has set its' sights on controlling the South China Sea even though many other nations claim sovereignty. At the top of China's list is to reabsorb Taiwan into the PRC.

But both China and Russia suffer from the same demographic population problems. Young people aare putting off having families, because they fear losing their place in the middle class. The one child policy in China left them with a generation that was short of woman, to give birth to the next generation. Without a younger generation China will soon find itself not only short of workers but also those to serve in their Armed Forces.

So this is where we find ourselves today. They question is whether those in charge of China and Russia will decide to resort to the use of "tactical" nuclear weapons to gain what they want.

Constantly hearing the phrases “great power struggles” or “near peer conflicts” can leave the outside observer wondering what on Earth is happening nowadays? Are we back in a Cold War? Jim Sciutto expertly guides us all through the competitions existing between the major powers of the day. From tech spaces, to oceans, to the Arctic we see what the future between the major world powers could shape out to be.

This was an interesting book. Much of what the author discusses is a lot more plausible than most people believe.