Great Power Games: Vikram Sood maps a world shifting from West to East

Former R&AW chief Vikram Sood's book offers prescient insights into America's decline, partly attributing it to its outdated 'Philosophy for Profit'

Great Power Games: from Western Decline to Eastern Ascent

by Vikram Sood

Published by Juggernaut

336 pages  ₹899

  In 1998, George H W Bush, former President of the United States, and his National Security Adviser, Brent Scowcroft, jointly published a book titled A World Transformed, discussing how the West under American leadership could terminate the Cold War, reunify Germany, and bring in a new world order after the break-up of the Soviet Union.

 

Bush concluded the book by emphasising that America should lead the world: “...if we retreat from our obligation to the world into indifference, we will, one day, pay the highest price once again for our neglect and shortsightedness”.

 

Six years earlier, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) claimed credit for this “transformed world”. On December 18, 1992, CIA chief Robert Gates installed a piece of the iconic Berlin Wall at the agency’s sprawling headquarters in Langley as a symbol of the CIA’s “long watch for freedom and democracy since 1947”.

 

However, the first caution against America’s supremacy in the 21st century came in 2012 from the National Intelligence Council (NIC), which visualised the decline of Western economies and the rise of Asian countries like China and India. In 2021, NIC repeated this for its forecast for 2040. 

 

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio presented an ingenious reason to explain this while speaking at the Munich Security Conference on February 14, 2026. Western diminishment, which he called “managed decline”, was caused by the West’s own “dogmatic vision” of free trade and migration, which benefited its “adversaries”.  

 

These historical markers need to be kept in mind while reading former R&AW chief Vikram Sood’s latest book Great Power Games: From Western Decline to Eastern Ascent. Mr Sood skilfully goes over the routes leading to the present complex situation in which Western Bloc leaders are seen jostling among themselves for global or regional control, by casting aside decades-long conventions and alliances. In that process, they are also facing competition from newly emerging contestants such as China and India and regional or functional groups like Brics.

 

Mr Sood’s present book is a continuation of his earlier conversation on similar themes explored in two earlier books:  The Unending Game and The Ultimate Goal .  The author offers masterly suggestions for the emerging new world order. He argues for the beginning of a new power corridor when a reawakened India would join Russia and China to “find some new roads to permanent peace”.

 

Although Mr Rubio’s grandstanding at Munich occurred after this book was released, signs of global chaos unleashed by President Donald Trump’s “Tariff Wars” were already clear. Mr Sood compares this trend with the US Smoot -Hawley Tariff Act, 1930. Originally meant to protect US farmers, it deepened the Great Depression. He feels that Mr Trump’s narrative has nothing to do with trade competition but is a “desperate attempt, through threats and bullying at reasserting control and supremacy”. 

 

Part of the reason for America’s decline is due to their outdated “Philosophy for Profit,” which he discusses in Chapter 3.  Philanthropy undoubtedly had played a “crucial part in the growth of American society” but is neither democratic nor transparent. “It is a form of private political power, a means to use wealth to dictate policy without regulation or accountability”.

 

Mr Sood is prescient about why America launches wars that others don’t want. He begins his book saying that the world is now witnessing a trend in which “peace does not seem to have a chance to take root, nor is it profitable for those who reap the benefits of war”. This is because those conducting wars are interested in continuing it for “multiple benefits for the attacker”.

 

This point was conclusively proved on February 28, 2026, when President Trump launched “Operation Epic Fury” on Iran jointly with Israel, although he was aware that three rounds of talks were already underway in Geneva between his team (Steve Witkoff /Jared Kushner) and Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi. Also, Oman’s mediator had revealed that both Iran and America were demonstrating “unprecedented openness to new and creative ideas and solution” during these talks. Why do we need wars? Mr Sood says that there are multiple benefits for the attacker: Hardware lying in stock would be used up, new war products could be brought into the supply chain, which would benefit the defence industry of the attacker: “Then a hapless destroyed country needs to be rebuilt”. 

 

The process of rebuilding Gaza is yet another example of the author’s foresight. America, which supported Israel’s Gaza war, is now busy with the “Board of Peace” plan for reconstruction. Chatham House had criticised this, saying it “could close off any prospect of Palestinian statehood and deliver a serious blow to Palestinian nationalism”.

 

Mr Sood traverses through this difficult landscape before reaching the finale, when he cautions on India’s role: “India will not get there just by dreaming of it; no one will help India become a major power. We will have to work for it all the time.” 

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The reviewer is an author and a former special secretary, Cabinet Secretariat. His latest book is  India and China at Odds in the Asian Century