The major states whose decisions shape the international order — their interests, capabilities, and strategic choices.
18 articles
The Re-Emerging Superpower
The world's most populous nation and second-largest economy is reshaping the international order. Understanding China's geography, history, and strategic culture is essential for comprehending 21st-century geopolitics.
The Eternal Heartland Power
The world's largest country by territory, nuclear superpower, and heir to a thousand years of expansion and contraction. Russia's geography shapes a strategic culture of insecurity, defensiveness, and periodic aggression.
The Offshore Hegemon
The world's sole superpower, protected by two oceans and blessed with unmatched resources. American power has shaped the international order since 1945—but faces growing challenges from rising competitors.
The world's largest single market and a pioneer of regulatory governance, the European Union wields enormous economic influence but struggles to translate wealth into coherent geopolitical power. Its response to the Ukraine war may mark a turning point—or reveal enduring structural limitations.
Western Europe's only nuclear-armed state and UN Security Council permanent member pursues strategic autonomy with global ambitions. France balances European leadership with independent military capability and a distinct voice in world affairs.
Europe's largest economy and most populous nation occupies the continent's geographic center—a position that has brought both catastrophe and prosperity. Germany's choices shape the European Union and the transatlantic alliance.
The world's most populous nation and fifth-largest economy navigates great power competition through strategic autonomy, balancing partnerships with Washington and Moscow while managing an intensifying rivalry with Beijing. India's geographic position astride the Indian Ocean and its nuclear-armed military make it indispensable to any Asian order.
The world's largest archipelago, fourth most populous nation, and largest Muslim-majority country occupies a strategic position astride vital sea lanes. Indonesia's trajectory—toward regional leadership or internal fragmentation—will shape Southeast Asia's future.
The Islamic Republic of Iran combines ancient Persian civilization with revolutionary ideology, leveraging its geographic position, proxy networks, and nuclear ambitions to project power across the Middle East while enduring decades of international isolation and economic pressure.
A small nation with outsized strategic importance, Israel combines military prowess, technological innovation, and geographic vulnerability in one of the world's most contested regions. Its alliances and conflicts shape the entire Middle East.
An economic giant constrained by constitutional pacifism and historical memory, Japan navigates between alliance dependence and strategic autonomy. As China rises and regional tensions mount, Tokyo faces fundamental questions about its role in Asian security.
The world's most isolated state possesses nuclear weapons and the missiles to deliver them. North Korea's survival strategy—combining nuclear deterrence, provocations, and great power manipulation—has defied predictions of collapse for decades.
A nuclear-armed nation of 230 million facing perpetual crisis—economic fragility, political instability, terrorism, and existential rivalry with India. Pakistan's geographic position between South Asia, Central Asia, and the Middle East makes its fate consequential far beyond its borders.
A middle power that punches above its weight, South Korea occupies one of the world's most strategically consequential positions. Caught between China and Japan, facing an existential threat from the North, and bound to America by treaty, Seoul must navigate an increasingly treacherous geopolitical landscape.
Straddling Europe and Asia, controlling the straits between the Black Sea and the Mediterranean, Turkey occupies one of the world's most strategically consequential positions. Its choices—between East and West, NATO and Russia, secular nationalism and Islamic identity—shape the balance of power across multiple regions.
Europe's second-largest country by area occupies the geopolitical fault line between Russia and the West. Ukraine's struggle for sovereignty and territorial integrity has become the defining conflict of post-Cold War Europe.
Once the world's greatest empire, Britain retains significant military capabilities, nuclear weapons, and global diplomatic reach. Post-Brexit, the UK seeks a new strategic identity between Europe and the Anglosphere.