Some of the Best Books on Global Geopolitics

by Pádraig Carmody
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5 books
It is commonplace now to say that the world is in a period of flux and that the post-World War II international order is under strain and challenge. This is evidenced by events such as the Russian invasion of Ukraine and processes such as the rise of populism around the world, which rejects internationalism in favour of more narrow ethno-nationalist perspectives. How do we make sense of these shifts from unipolarity after the collapse of the Soviet bloc in the 1990s to a world defined by multi-polarisation in terms of power politics, but also class, ethnicity and other vectors of identity? There are many reasons for this such as the rise of “emerging powers” and associated industrial offshoring, the growing reach and impact of (anti)social media, the global climate emergency, the increasing importance of financial logics in the economy and others. There isn’t scope to cover all of these topics in this book list, which focuses on the rise of emerging powers and great power competition.
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Clash of Empires

From 'Chimerica' to the 'New Cold War'
Ho-fung Hung, 2022
This is one of the most insightful and accessible books written on great power competition. While President Biden has cast current global competition as one between autocracies and democracies, Hung shows how this is primarily economic. He presents fascinating detail on different periods of Western-Chinese relations and dynamics involved and how they shifted through time as the geography of production and innovation shifted in response to economic factors and strategies. He unveils the way in which some Chinese companies reportedly aggressively acquired intellectual property through bugging of competitors, for example as in the case of Nortel in Canada, which went bankrupt in 2009. Hung compares the current competition between China and the US to that between Britain and Germany prior to World War I. This is a short book but packs a powerful analytical punch.

Underground Empire

How America Weaponized the World Economy
Henry Farrell, Abraham Newman, 2023
In the Western media, China is often presented as an aggressive power seeking to undermine and replace the existing world order with one more favourable to its power (projection). However, there is another way to look at Chinese behaviour, which is that it is, at least in part, defensive. While the United States may have declined in relative importance in terms of global manufacturing output, it retains formidable centrality and power advantages in the areas of finance and high-tech, which it has not been shy of using to punish rivals and pursue its own perceived interests. This book unpacks the nature, use and impact of this power, again in an accessible style.

Beijing Rules

China's Quest for Global Influence
BETHANY. ALLEN-EBRAHIMIAN, 2023
Perhaps luckily, great power politics can seem remote for many people around the around the world. However, in this revelatory book, Bethany Allen shows how this is often not the case, from Chinese dissidents having their Zoom accounts being deactivated to being spied on. She unearths the pervasive influence of the Chinese government globally and the lengths to which it will go to suppress alternative voices and narratives to those it wishes to promote. There have been a variety of flexible strategies used to achieve this, including Chinese operatives conducting relationships with multiple Western politicians, Christine Fang in the US being the most high-profile example of this, to LinkedIn accounts being blocked in China. There hasn’t been a Hollywood movie featuring a Chinese “bad guy” since 1997, as Western corporations have kowtowed to China to maintain market access, which is the key source of that state’s power, along with external operations. Globally, “embedded illiberalism” is a real possibility.

The Rise of State Capital

Transforming Markets and International Politics
Milan Babic, 2023
Since the 1980s, the free market approaches to economic management and governance (“neoliberalism”) promoted by Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher have been in the ascendant globally. However, in recent years, it has appeared that “state capitalism” has been gaining ground, particularly as a result of the importance of state-owned enterprises in China and sovereign wealth funds, amongst other vehicles, in other parts of the world. In contrast to prevailing narratives, Babić argues that there has been a rise of state capital, rather than state capitalism, and that this is a consequence of neoliberalism as it gave states the ability to enter global markets as investors. He argues the need to move away from a dichotomous characterization of states versus markets to examine how states may use markets, for example, to achieve geostrategic objectives. The extent of state involvement, as an investor, in the global economy is eye-opening.

Hidden Geopolitics

Governance in a Globalized World
John Agnew, 2022
We often think that geopolitics is the arena or area of action for states. However, the rise and increasing importance of transnational corporations and media conglomerates has meant that they also now project power across spaces in ways unanticipated by the founders of that academic discipline. Agnew argues that the power of corporations such as Google/Alphabet often exceeds those of the governments charged with regulating them. Such regulatory escape will likely increase further with the advent of and profusion of generative artificial intelligence. However, the emerging landscape is complexified by the legacy of previous orders, such as the continued existence of hundreds of US military bases around the world for example. He elaborates the idea of “hegemony without a hegemon”, which is exercised by international institutions and global markets. He myth busts inaccurate narratives about there only being one school of international relations thought in China, for example, and covers a host of other areas in innovative and interesting ways. This a thought-provoking book from a different perspective to that generally voiced (and listened to).