Great Powers Shaping Geopolitical Landscape

Management of great power rivalries is a vital part of international relations. The general preferences are the use of effective deterrence, diplomacy, multilateralism, pacific settlement of disputes and stopping wars in support of a rules-based global order, governance of global commons and bringing the weak to justice while making the wrongdoers accountable for their actions. It is hard to say now whether the emerging multi-polar order is constructed on the Westphalian notion of sovereignty of states and balance of power, or Hugo Grotius’s idea of a society of socialized states where individuals are integrated in the sovereign states akin to the Confucian harmony of individual and society or Kantian version of the community of humanity, or even neo-idealist image of global justice to overcome the state of disorder.