Three Kings: Part II

Great Power Competition Requires Greatness. This seems to be missing.

Jul 06, 2025

Much has been, and is being, written about an emerging notion that the Trump-Putin-Xi, “Three Kings” approach to international relations may be heading towards what commentators assert is a “Great Power” competition or a system which may adopt the conventions of Europe’s 19th century “Concert of Europe”. These are historical arrangements aimed at establishing scaffolding around shared perceptions of power.

What these analyses appear to miss is the absence of participation by the populations of these nations. The failure of these rulers, lay in the core structure of their rule. The inheritance culture which supported this era’s rulers generated an inability to form alliances. They could only form arrangements. Arrangements which fed a common belief in the legitimacy of their rule. Well, common among these rulers. When denied a seat at the table, broad humanity ends up dying in war. These arrangements ensured this outcome.

It’s useful to point out that each participant in these purported arrangements had inherited their position of participation, and not earned it outright. France, Britain, Austria, Russia, all saw at the top of their decision making structure the hands of those who inherited their position, mostly as a function of wealth, rather than having “pulled themselves up” by their bootstraps (Bootstraps: think: Lincoln, not: Trump).

This compilation of the missing ingredient of statesmanship, effort, produced what laziness produces, a kind of hypnotic self-acknowledgement of incapacity, postured as “success". That the “Concert” lasted for forty years (depending on who you ask) or a noncontiguous hundred, is a function of the declining return on investment, to humanity, of an inheritance culture.

Based on a salad of notions like a European balance of power and “spheres of influence”, this Concert played to ever-smaller audiences. Those who had been in place when the concert began (England, France, Austria, etc.) had ebbed towards the fringes. A place where those who are strangers to effort reside. The “balance”, animated by receding powers fed increasing fragility into the central “concert”. This fragility exploded in mass death and destruction known as World War. Such “balances” are best avoided. They balance the interests of the princes of inherited wealth and inherited control, and set everyone else ever closer to the point of a bayonet.

A fundamental weakness to systems composed by inherited wealth’s, er, inheritors, is the participating nations are all propelled forward relatively - ahead of other nations - by their dynamic economic capacities and military restraint. Capacities which, as the world discovered post-WWII, thrive in societies unafraid of freedom and liberty. Within the weak inheritance system however, a relative stasis occurs. Capacity wanes. Fragility emerges to ensure stasis.

Even the much later, “Four Policemen” system envisioned by FDR (as WWII drew to a close) was infected with an overestimation of capacity among these powers. It is not possible to compose a peaceful future, if among those comprising the cooks include someone as steeped in perfidy as Stalin was. Well, partially. What Stalin lacked in perfidy he more than made up for in paranoia. The “four policemen” could only last as long as Stalin could be trusted. Not long.

These “Concerts” or periods where supposed “Great Powers” emerge and then agree to, in effect, “keep things as they are”, are not a means for establishing or preserving what people who ultimately fight the wars would consider “peace”. These arrangements instead are hyper-focused on sustaining the relative positions within each participant’s society of these same leading participants. And to extend the conditions of each participants’ nation, which support the conditions for their exercise of exogenous power relative to each other participant.

This is not progress. It is not peace. It’s merely a period waiting for a mounting fragility to shatter.

To boil it down, think of Marc Antony’s assertion: “I come here today not to bury Caesar, but to praise him.” Yes, one would-be king, praising the recently dead, and no longer a competitor. Antony helped kill the Roman republic, because he could. The effort to sustain position within relationships of power have animated humanity since Cain. (Sorry, I have no Cain quotes.)

Great Power Competition: Ingredients

What’s important to understand about today’s iterations of “Great Power” Competition is that there are very few “Great Powers” and many nations who insist on being treated as Great Powers. Russia falls into this latter category. Russia is not a Great Power. Russia is a gas station with nuclear weapons. Putin’s Russia helps us to better understand Autocracy because a main characteristic of Autocrats is a kind of greed animated by jealousy wrapped in self-delusion.

Putin

Putin’s tie to inheritance culture: The USSR’s main vehicle for composing their regime of control was the KGB (secret police), later the FSB. Control was wealth in the Soviet Union. Yeltsin and his colleagues sought to protect their positions and interests within the Russian state. Putin emerged from the KGB, became deputy mayor of St. Petersburg, and was appointed head of the FSB in 1998, by Yeltsin.

Yeltsin appointed Putin as Prime Minister in 1999, then abdicated prior to 2000. Putin, now Prime Minister, used his new position to explain “control” to the collapsed Russian state. In each area of Russian life, Putin applied control as violence as explanation: against Chechnya, against free speech, against governors. As Putin pressed Russia into the prone position, he shoveled the rewards of bending the knee to friends and political allies, his oligarchy.

Putin wants, well, more - just like every other autocrat. Putin’s “inheritance” came on the heels of Russia’s bellyflop into Communism. Inheritance from this kind of system manifests in recognizing what narrated wealth in the Soviet Union: centralized control. Putin inherited control from a weak and feckless Yeltsin.

Rather than build a capacity to achieve more however, Putin instead assumes much and then lunges at what he wants. He assumed Russian military competence, rather than expending effort to build it, and then lunged at Ukraine. Discovery sometimes brings satisfaction. Putin’s discovery that he was a failed leader likely did not produce same.

Xi

Xi, for his part, has presided over his inherited nation with the acuity of dull-witted prince. Having inherited his place in the Communist Party hierarchy, and having conceited to himself that he rose on his own merits, Xi’s weak mind was willing to play his weak hand. Similar to Putin, Xi also consolidated control, closed down China’s emerging openness, and replaced it with bad comedy: Xi-ism. (When “supreme” (pause for laughter) leaders publish books on how and what to think, and what not to think, well, his readers are just choking on the ego.)

With great economic impact, Xi grabbed the central vein of China’s middle class wealth, real estate, and applied excessive government pressure, in the form of subsidies, to it. Result: Xi successfully reduced this source of Chinese, middle class wealth and security. Massive bankruptcies occurred, and continue to occur, in China’s real estate sector. Remarkably, actual Ghost cities of millions of homes, sit empty and decaying. (Think: Trump’s 2018 promise to bring back manufacturing to Racine, Wisconsin.)

Xi has done much the same in China’s emergent Electric Vehicles, and associated technologies, industries. When one has a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Xi applied excessive government subsidies to these industries and now has so much over-capacity that should other nations accept these manufactures, they would be simultaneously accepting a path to de-industrialization.

Domestically these highly competitive companies compete on ever-lowering prices. None are making any profits. All are dependent on Xi’s river of subsidies. Interestingly, like Trump and Putin, Xi also won’t give up on his failing model. The snake is eating its tail.

Are all autocrats buffoons? Yes.

Trump

Trump, the wanna be autocrat, provides particular evidence of his membership in this “inheritance class”. Take just one example: Trump, as a young man, inherited about $400 million (depending on when you start counting) from his father, plus, later, a viable real estate company. It’s interesting to note that if Trump had simply invested the money at, say 5% , today, it would be worth more than $4 billion. With Trump’s “stable genius” calling the shots, it was worth about $1.4 billion as he entered office in 2025. This seems a fine definition of the “Trump Effect”. Participants always seem to end up with less than expected.

Just ask Musk. (Ouch!)

Great Power Competition: The Actors and Their Idiocy

For today’s “Great Power” theories to “work” there needs to be central participants that agree to “keep things as they are” - to maintain territorial and political status quos. A-hem: Putin is trying to steal Ukraine, and fundamentally weaken Europe. Xi is actively trying to compel the world’s competitive economies to “de-industrialize”. Trump is trying to build a hotel in Moscow. (It’s unclear whether Trump is in on the “Great Game”, or just a Putin-Xi NPC.)

These are men who can only create “arrangements” not progress, and certainly not systems. Arrangements aimed at either increasing their grip on power or decreasing proximate competition for power. Xi-Putin’s goal is to change the world order. This seems the opposite of the balance implied by “Great Power Competition”. Theirs is more of a “Make Ottoman Empire Great Again” ploy - with all its attendant implosions.

Well, to be fair, Trump is trying to establish a dictatorship in the United States. His funding of nationwide “camps” to house “immigrants” ($45 billion is a number he can work with) is just another form of the Big Lie. Trump lacks the follow-through or patience necessary to find and arrest the vast majority of immigrants - (aka: what he said he would do).

His current process of stationing troops around the country has little to do with immigrants and much to do with control. Corruption plus cruelty, multiplied by cash, may well equal US citizens “disappearing”. We will see whether the US military understands its oaths.

It is not difficult to see the “stable genius” of autocrats in this mix. What is happening is not so much a “Great Power” competition, but an exposure of idiocy. Idiocy is how power spells autocrats. Autocrats, specifically these Three Kings, are showing the world, daily, how incompetent they are. Exposure is happening in real time because in the United States free speech still exists, and thrives. (This despite another inheritor, Shari Redstone’s, apparent efforts to sell the First Amendment.)

Putin could have presided over an emerging Russia in the areas of technology as well as energy. Instead he chased away Russia’s technology capacity, and embraced its energy area. Like Trump and his “drill, baby, drill”-inspired gaze at the past, Putin assumed he could literally dig up “Russian Greatness” in oil and gas fields. Putin is now Xi’s gas station attendant. Assumptions are his most important product. Assuming Russian Greatness, and ignoring Russian Reality, fed his stumbling into Ukraine - his most critical failure.

Xi keeps trying to hit the “cruise control” button on his buffoonery, but the EVs and related manufactures keep building up on the docks of Shanghai. Profits for these companies do not exist. (The same process is flowing through China’s AI companies.) The real estate market continues to throw off waves of bankruptcies.

Chinese “consumers” refuse to oblige Xi’s hope for a broader, yet controlled (pause for laughter), consumer marketplace. Markets emerge and thrive when the free exchange of ideas is present. “Control” nullifies marketplaces. Though subsidies can cause markets to rise, they are not sustainable. Tariffs, like Biden’s 100% tariff on China’s EVs, further indicate the external limits of Xi’s ideology-driven hopes and dreams for an export-led economic revival. (On the other hand, Trump’s tariffs epitomize his recklessness. His use of tariffs represent his fecklessness.)

Xi’s China is likely the easier problem for the West to deal with, due to Xi’s capacity to forge dependency out of advantage. Xi’s fear of the openness that would cause China to truly thrive (free speech, independent judiciary, free elections) continue to hollow out this manufacturing leviathan. China’s dependency upon its prey, The West, wraps Xi in amber. While immediate existential risk to Xi’s regime relentlessly builds, China may limp on for decades.

Building Progress or Wielding Power is a Choice

Each of these “leaders” could have driven their nations to success, if not for their primal devotion to something illusive, known as “power”, and which manifests in their minds as a craving for “more". Each seems to believe they can capture and wield power. Which is silly. Power can only be used. When used effectively, it is used to build progress, an ongoing dynamic which requires an economic and political openness which autocrats are deathly allergic to.

Today’s world, such as it is, emerged because power was used to build progress. The Post WWII era defines this marriage between power and progress. This era happened because the US was not beholden to the ethics of inheritance of the kind which inspired the Concert of Europe and its twin, the Concert of Vienna. These latter two regimes (or same regime) emerged at the hands of kings and princes: Not the go-to place for openness and dynamism.

Eras where power was used to build progress are rare, but they stick in the human soul. Think Lincoln, who emerged from a lifetime of effort to emerge as President. He used power to build progress, saving the United States and generated the beginning of the end to slavery. Think The Marshall Plan - rebuilding a world after it was murdered by dictators. Think Kennedy, who wired the United States’ technical capacity to the competitive market capacity of the US economy, which opened the world to space.

All expanded the horizons of humanity while relying on an openness, inherent in democracy, that builds progress.

No one will attribute such achievements to Trump. This is why Trump is constantly asserting that he’s “better than Lincoln”. Desperation rings that note. Trump manifests the adage that “children should be seen and not heard”. His assertions only find purchase in the minds of the Weak. These same Weak who would assist Trump in his machinations of dictatorship.

Great Power competition requires at least some of the participants to be great. Putin, Xi, Trump all hoe the fields of mediocrity. Not greatness. Each owes their position to the mediocrity of competition for inheritance that they faced prior to acquiring their current positions. Again, not greatness. Each drives their country’s institutions towards acquiring “more” with little notion of national interests, outside of what can be bent to feed their desires. Not greatness.

The “power competition” we’re witnessing is produced by exactly what autocrats can achieve when they put their minds to it: a soulless, cruel, race to the bottom. It’s not “Great Power”. Though power is present in each nation. It’s more like, “Over-indulged Children” engaged in acquiring an unearned, more - the buffet line of inheritance.