War and International Politics
Journal: International Security
Year: 2025

Abstract With the end of unipolarity, security competition among the great powers—China, Russia, and the United States—is back with a vengeance. Given the possibility of war between rival great powers, the purpose of this article is to analyze great power war. My central claim is that war is the dominant feature of life in the international system, mainly because of the nature of politics. In particular, politics is a fundamentally conflictual enterprise with the ever-present possibility of viol