The Return of Great Powers: Russia, China, and the Next World War - Hardcover

Sciutto, Jim

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0593474139 ISBN 13: 9780593474136

Verlag: Dutton, 2024

Inhaltsangabe

Instant New York Times Bestseller

A Politico Top 10 Most Anticipated Book of 2024

A New York Times Notable Book

A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice

“An absorbing account of 21st-century brinkmanship . . . . one that should be read by every legislator or presidential nominee sufficiently deluded to think that returning America to its isolationist past or making chummy with Putin is a viable option in today’s world.” –New York Times Book Review

The essential new book by CNN anchor and chief national security analyst Jim Sciutto, identifying a new, more uncertain global order with reporting on the frontlines of power from existing wars to looming ones across the globe.

The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 dawned what Francis Fukuyama called “The End of History.” Three decades later, Jim Sciutto said on CNN’s air as the Ukraine war began, that we are living in a “1939 moment.” History never ended—it barely paused—and the global order as we long have known it is now gone. Powerful nations are determined to assert dominance on the world stage. And as their push for power escalates, a new order will affect everyone across the globe. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is a part of it, but in reality, this power struggle impacts every corner of our world—from Helsinki to Beijing, from Australia to the North Pole. This is a battle with many fronts: in the Arctic, in the oceans and across the skies, on man-made islands and redrawn maps, and in tech and cyberspace.

Through globe-spanning, exclusive interviews with dozens of political, military, and intelligence leaders, Sciutto defines our times as a return of great power conflict, “a definitive break between the post–Cold War era and an entirely new and uncertain one.” With savvy, thorough, in-person reporting, he follows-up his 2019 bestseller, The Shadow War: Inside Russia’s and China's Secret Operations to Defeat America, which focused on the covert tactics of a hidden conflict.

The Return of Great Powers analyzes a historic and visible shift in real time. It details the realities of this new post–post–Cold War era, the increasingly aligned Russian and Chinese governments, and the flashpoint of a new, global nuclear arms race. And it poses a question: As we consider uncertain, even terrifying, outcomes, will it be possible for the West and Russia and China to prevent a new World War?

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Jim Sciutto is CNN’s chief national security analyst and anchor of CNN Newsroom on Max, airing Monday through Friday. He reports and provides analysis across the network’s programs and platforms on all aspects of US national security, including foreign policy, the military, the intelligence community, and the State Department. He has reported from more than fifty countries across the globe, including dozens of assignments from inside Iraq, Afghanistan, and Iran. Among the honors Sciutto’s work has earned are Emmy Awards, the Edward R. Murrow Award, the George Polk Award, the Dupont-Columbia Award, and the White House Correspondent’s Association’s Merriman Smith Award for excellence in presidential coverage. Sciutto is the bestselling author of The Shadow War.

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CHAPTER ONE

GREAT POWER WARFARE

3:00 A.M. PHONE CALL

Close to 3:00 a.m., on Monday, February 21, 2022, a member of Congress I know well woke me up in Kyiv with a call from Washington and a question. "Has the State Department or White House warned you guys at all about what's coming in Kyiv?" he asked me. I knew that Russia had surrounded Ukraine with a massive force and was in the final stages of preparations for an invasion-and I knew that I was then lying in a bed in a hotel at the center of Russia's prime target. But I wondered if I was missing something. Was the attack going to be even larger than feared? So I pressed him: "Warned us about what specifically?"

"For the hell Putin is going to unleash on the capital," he said. "Are your people aware? Are you ready?"

By then, CNN and several other US and European networks had stationed our teams at the InterContinental Hotel in downtown Kyiv. It was an ideal though precarious location for witnessing the launch of a modern war. Situated on the eastern edge of the capital, where the city is perched on high ground over the Dnipro River, the hotel provides clear views of the eastern and northern approaches to Kyiv-the most likely paths of a Russian invasion. But the hotel was also right across the street from not one but two juicy targets for Russian air and missile strikes: the Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the headquarters of the national police. News agencies, including CNN, had made sure to communicate the location of their staffs to the Russian authorities. But as a very good friend of mine in the Pentagon had warned me a few days earlier, "The Russians don't have very good aim."

Now wide-awake, I thanked the congressman and called one of my bosses in the US to share the congressman's warning. "Had we had any communication with Biden administration officials about a particular threat to this location?" I asked him. By then, I had a pretty good idea of what the first wave of the invasion would look like. According to US intelligence assessments, Russia planned a "shock-and-awe" barrage of missile and air strikes on the Ukrainian capital, modeled to some degree on the shock-and-awe campaign that had prefaced the US invasion of Iraq, nearly nineteen years earlier. On March 20, 2003, as the US assault on the Iraqi capital began, I'd been sitting at a Romanian airfield, surrounded by a battalion of US Green Berets, ready to board a night flight into Iraq. The accounts we heard over the radio were awe-inspiring and frightening. Two decades later, as committed as I was to be on the ground in Ukraine to cover the coming war, I was not entirely prepared to be engulfed in the shock and awe myself this time around.

The prospect of a punishing air assault on Kyiv was not a surprise. I had been warning CNN since the previous November that US intelligence agencies were forecasting a wave of air and missile strikes as the first salvos of the Russian invasion. We had staffed up in the capital with those threats in mind. But the call merited a discussion. Were we truly ready? My boss said he'd reach out to the White House and hung up the line.

PERSISTING DOUBTS

Still in bare feet and with my hair standing on end, I walked down the hall from my room to the suite turned CNN workspace to share the news with our staff and security team. Skepticism reigned. One colleague told me the congressman could be just looking to get in good with a TV reporter. Others wondered if I'd allowed myself to become a conduit for US disinformation. The doubters were not outliers. Despite repeated public warnings from US and NATO officials, many European and American commentators were not convinced. The word "imminent," as US officials had been describing the invasion for a handful of weeks now, had become a punch line. What does "imminent" mean? people asked. Tomorrow? Next week? Next year? The doubts didn't come from nowhere. US intelligence had missed Russia's 2014 invasion of Crimea-and memories of Iraq's nonexistent WMD endured. "Why should we believe them this time?" they asked me.

I understood the doubts from years covering the intelligence agencies and holding a top secret security clearance myself. Over decades, the US had built the most comprehensive and capable intelligence-gathering apparatus in history, but its products required reading with a critical eye. However, the assessments of Russia's invasion plans were different, because the invading force was visible, laid out right before the watchful eyes of US surveillance satellites and aircraft. And what they saw was alarming. Russia was readying for war.

"Iraq's weapons of mass destruction were phantoms," I told them. "The Russian invasion force is right along the border in 3D. They're not guessing this time."

US agencies had collected other revealing intelligence as well. In a triumph of signals collection, the intel community had penetrated Russian communications networks. They now had direct access to Russian battlefield communications. They were listening in real time as Russian commanders discussed in detail preparing and positioning their units for attack.

Yet the doubts extended far beyond our newsroom, with some NATO leaders downplaying or even dismissing the more ominous warnings of an impending Russian invasion. Tensions broke out into the public discussion even between US and Ukrainian officials. On January 28, Ukrainian president Zelensky told reporters in Kyiv, "There is a feeling abroad that there is war here. That's not the case." Ukrainian officials were fearful in part that the more dire warnings might cause panic among the Ukrainian population, with the economic costs of fleeing businesses and a panicked end to travel in and out of Ukraine. But more broadly, Ukrainian officials told CNN privately, they feared that Ukraine was becoming a pawn in a game of geopolitical chess between the US and Russia.

With detectable pique, Zelensky said, "I can't be like other politicians who are grateful to the United States just for being the United States."

Russian officials were of course eager to dismiss the fears of war as well. On February 10, two weeks before Russian forces stormed into Ukraine, Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov stood beside then UK foreign secretary Liz Truss and derided the West's warnings as purely emotional.

"The deployment of Russian troops on our own territory causes incomprehensible anxiety and very strong emotions among our British colleagues and other Western representatives," Lavrov said. "Unlike the hundreds and thousands of British troops stationed in the Baltics."

Beyond the public differences over just how real or imminent the Russian invasion threat was, there was disagreement within the alliance over the possibility of finding a so-called diplomatic off-ramp for Vladimir Putin. President Emmanuel Macron of France's dialogue with Putin continued into the week of the invasion.

Few begrudged Macron's attempts at peace. However, at the core of those efforts appeared to be a misreading of Russian intentions. Macron told Le Journal du Dimanche on February 6, eighteen days before the invasion, that Moscow's goal was "not Ukraine, but a clarification of the rules . . . with NATO and the EU." Here was the French leader saying that Putin had no territorial ambitions in Ukraine, only a desire to establish, among other things, that Ukraine would not be joining NATO anytime soon.

"We must protect our European brothers by proposing a new balance capable of preserving their sovereignty and peace," Macron said. "This must be done while respecting Russia and understanding the contemporary traumas of this great people and great nation."

The fiction that Russian ambitions were limited to preventing Ukraine from entering the NATO alliance would endure even after the invasion, on both sides of the...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Dutton
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2024
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0593474139
• ISBN 13: 9780593474136
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Anzahl der Seiten: 368
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: gpsr@libri.de; gpsr@libri.de; ; Friedensallee 273; Hamburg; 22763; Deutschland