The Return of the Great Powers

A Financial Times Best Book of the Summer

“[Simms’] framework lets him make a bracing cut of the present…If you work in government, the framework is useful. If you sit on a supply-chain or risk committee, it is indispensable. And if you still hope that ‘the age of great powers’ has passed, Simms offers a curt reminder: even if you are not interested in them, they are interested in you.”

—Telegraph (UK)

“Timely…Simms’ book is a good primer on how we have reached our present situation and is thought-provoking about the dangers ahead.”—Financial Times (UK)

“A stinging indictment of the impulse to move beyond—or, more bluntly, to ignore—power politics….The Return of Great Powers is an erudite meditation of maritime and continental struggles over the centuries, and it offers a necessary corrective to the lazy contemporary habit of economic determinism…. A call for a restoration of the strategic mind.”

—Bulwark

“Bracing….If you work in government, the framework is useful. If you sit on a supply-chain or risk committee, it is indispensable. And if you still hope that ‘the age of great powers’ has passed, Simms offers a curt reminder: even if you are not interested in them, they are interested in you.”

—Cipher Brief

“Tracing the ins and outs of renewed great-power rivalry is a proper endeavor and a formidable challenge. Simms has pulled it off with intelligence and aplomb. The scope and depth of his knowledge of post–Cold War history and international politics is immense.”

—Commentary Magazine

“An exceedingly timely and very compelling book. Professor Brendan Simms provides a masterful chronicle of the evolution over the past two decades from a world of benign globalization, in which barriers to investment, capital flows, and trade were being reduced, to an era of renewed great power rivalries, in which all those barriers are being increased—from a world in which economics drove geopolitics to one in which geopolitics drives economics. The implications of this are enormous, and Simms describes all of it superbly.”—General David Petraeus, former director of the CIA

“Very, very occasionally a history book is written that shines powerful light on the state of contemporary geopolitics, and makes sense of a process that has been hiding in plain sight. Return of the Great Powers, with its profound perceptions about the present in the light of the past, is just such a work.”—Andrew Roberts, author of Churchill

“This wide-ranging and provocative analysis of our changing geopolitical environment underscores why Brendan Simms is one of the greatest contemporary scholars of international relations. Simm’s narrative is replete with sharp observation and fine detail on key events, as well as clear explanation of critical concepts. It is as accessible to general audiences as it is valuable to fellow historians, and a genuine pleasure to read.”—Fiona Hill, author of There is Nothing for You Here

“The Return of the Great Powers is a magisterial survey of the post-Cold War era, the rise and decline of the Liberal International Order, and the return of Great Power competition. This book will be of interest to practitioners, to students of diplomacy and conflict, and to general readers who are looking for informed insight into the current state of the world and where things might go next. Highly recommended—a ‘must read.’”—Laurie Bristow, former UK ambassador to Afghanistan and Russia