Power Politics and the Return of Permanent Conflict

The return of power politics as the central ordering principle of international relations is one of the defining features of the present era. The notion that globalization and economic interdependence could render geopolitical competition obsolete has been steadily disproven by the events of the past two decades. States such as Russia and China have embraced a paradigm radically different from that of Western democracies: the pursuit of prestige, power, and wealth no longer passes through multilateral cooperation but through a structural competition conceived in near zero-sum terms. From this perspective, the strengthening of one state coincides with the weakening of another, and international stability is never seen as the result of shared progress but rather as a fragile and temporary balance among rivals. This framework fuels constant conflict, expressed in military, economic, and technological forms, where peace is not the ultimate goal but a tactical pause in the ongoing struggle.