Alliances: Failure of Deterrence Not Binding

In Episode 465 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with Yale historian and Cold War scholar Odd Arne Westad, author of The Coming Storm, about why the pre-WWI era of multipolarity, imperial decline, and great power rivalry offers a far more instructive — and alarming — historical parallel to today's world than the Cold War, and what must be done to prevent the catastrophic descent into total war.

The first hour explores what went wrong after the fall of the Soviet Union, how the end of the Bretton Woods system helped enable China's economic rise, and the striking structural parallels between the rise of Germany before 1914 and the rise of China today.

Westad and Kofinas also examine the roles that Russia, India, and the United States play in this historical analogy, and how the failure to integrate rising powers into meaningful international frameworks — then and now — has set the stage for catastrophic conflict.

The second hour takes a deeper look at the specific forces that could push the world from strategic rivalry to outright war, including the role of nuclear weapons in a multipolar order, the most dangerous flashpoints — from Taiwan to the Korean Peninsula to the South China Sea and China's border with India — and the underappreciated threat that terrorism could pose as a catalyst for great power conflict.

They also examine the internal political dynamics that boxed leaders into impossible positions before 1914, how frighteningly familiar those constraints look today, and what Professor Westad believes must be done to stabilize the international system before the world faces consequences it is not remotely prepared to confront.

Subscribe to our premium content—including our premium feed, episode transcripts, and Intelligence Reports—by visiting HiddenForces.io/subscribe.

If you'd like to join the conversation and become a member of the Hidden Forces Genius community—with benefits like Q&A calls with guests, exclusive research and analysis, in-person events, and dinners—you can also sign up on our subscriber page at HiddenForces.io/subscribe.

If you enjoyed today's episode of Hidden Forces, please support the show by:

• Subscribing on Apple Podcasts, YouTube, Spotify, Stitcher, SoundCloud, CastBox, or via our RSS Feed

• Writing us a review on Apple Podcasts & Spotify

• Join our mailing list at https://hiddenforces.io/newsletter/

Producer & Host: Demetri Kofinas Editor & Engineer: Stylianos Nicolaou

Subscribe and support the podcast at https://hiddenforces.io. Join the conversation on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at @hiddenforcespod Follow Demetri on Twitter at @Kofinas

Episode Recorded on 02/23/2026