Dr Benjamin Zala1
1Monash University, Melbourne, Australia
Biography:
Benjamin Zala is Senior Lecturer in Politics and International Relations at Monash University. His work focuses on the politics of the great powers and the management of nuclear weapons and has appeared in over a dozen different peer-reviewed journals. He is author, co-author, or editor of three books: The Global Third Nuclear Age (Routledge, 2025), Power in International Society (forthcoming, Oxford University Press, 2025) and National Perspectives on a Multipolar Order (Manchester University Press, 2021). Ben has been a Stanton Nuclear Security Fellow at Harvard University and has previously held positions at the ANU, University of Leicester, and Chatham House.
Abstract:
Like the ‘War on Terror’ before it, and ‘Globalisation’ before that, the phrase ‘great power competition’ has become the favoured buzzword of the moment. Governments and media commentators alike, use it ad nauseam to try and capture the most important driver of system-wide politics at the international level. Yet, like other attempts to capture a global zeitgeist with a single term or phrase, the concept of great power competition usually obscures more than it illuminates. In particular, it subsumes the many different forms that the politics of great power relations can, and do, take, into only one of these modes: competition. In this paper, I outline a wider range of possible forms of great power politics, both cutely and irritatingly organised into the five Cs of great power politics: competition, coexistence, cooperation, collusion, and conflict. I make the case for the importance of carefully disaggregating these different modes of relations in order to avoid closing down avenues for pursuing both peace and justice amidst the return of great power politics today.