Published March 20, 2026
Viewed across five decades, the structure of global power has changed less than commonly assumed. Maritime democracies continue to confront large, land-based authoritarian powers, while the United States retains a dominant share of global wealth, military capacity, innovation, and cultural influence. What has changed is scale: global interconnection, dual-use technology, and the diffusion of economic success have made power harder to control and easier to exploit. The result is not decline, but a world destabilized by the unintended consequences of victory.
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Recorded on August 14, 2025.
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The opinions expressed in this video are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the Hoover Institution or Stanford University.
© 2026 by the Board of Trustees of Leland Stanford Junior University.
Stephen Kotkin
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