Saturday Core Brief — The New Balance of Power

Four powers, four choices, one world

What does global power look like when no single nation leads? For the first time in five centuries, we will find out.

The old pattern of empire, conquest, dominance, and coercion is coming to an end. No country today commands the economic, military, and political control once held by Spain and Portugal, then Britain and France, and lastly the United States and the Soviet Union. Instead, power is divided among four centers that balance one another through trade, regulation, production, and innovation.