Inside the Great Power Game

Certain books on geopolitics (past and present) are insightful and revelatory enough to constitute an intellectual treat for the reader. ‘Great Power Games’ by erstwhile RAW chief Vikram Sood is exactly that. Published in 2025, this work begins by describing how power and money result in global control. Sood begins with the phrase: “It is difficult to define or measure power, but it is true that wealth is a source of power and the ability to project violent force adds to that power.”

In nineteenth-century America, ruthless businessmen such as Carnegie, Rockefeller, Carl Vanderbilt, Henry Ford and Jay Gould prospered and became millionaires thanks to the massive flow of money into the US due to the industrial revolution in Europe. The wealthy had very specific ideas about perpetuating control—in November 1910, six of America’s biggest bankers created a blueprint for the Federal Reserve system, which saw to it that the country’s biggest private banks had oversight of the nation’s currency supply and over smaller banks.

Power Play

The author describes how in the United States, three investment companies who hold the largest share of the market—BlackRock, Vanguard and State Street facilitate the flow of money to big corporations which also implies big investment in and outside American territory and big military. Some of the employees of these investment companies have held positions in multiple US presidential administrations and own part of CNN and Fox. This permits them to influence the bipartisan information flow.

Sood emphasizes how war was used for wealth creation. JPMorgan and BlackRock for instance have been helping the Ukrainian government set up a reconstruction bank to steer public seed capital into rebuilding projects that could attract hundreds of billions of dollars. Firms like BlackRock invest some of their assets in military-industrial complex firms.

The US sought to control a global empire post- World War II and for that it needed to be ubiquitous across the globe. Very often, its intervention, especially for regime change were for economic reasons rather than political, although the fabricated narrative was that of politics and security.

The book reveals how the National Endowment for Democracy or NED (founded in 1983) despite claiming to be a “non-profit, non-governmental, bipartisan, grant-making organization to help strengthen democratic institutions around the world,” includes in its activities the secret funding of individuals, political parties and NGOs favourable to US interests and the channelling of money to obliterate the activities of those considered anti-US.

Russia and China, both of which play pivotal roles in today’s geopolitical scenario, are discussed at length. Rand, a Pentagon think tank, in a 2019 report, listed six possibilities to undermine Russia—arming Ukraine with lethal weapons, increasing support for Syrian jihadists, promoting regime change in Belarus, exploiting tensions in the South Caucasus, reducing Russian influence in Central Asia and rivalling Russian presence in Transnistria (a small tract of unrecognized independent territory in Moldova). The author strongly feels that this report would have been read by the Russians.

Dragon’s Challenge

China is now well on its way to challenge the US as the global hegemon. It is a well-known fact that China’s phenomenal growth took place due to large-scale theft of foreign science and technology. China controls the headwaters of more than a dozen major rivers. About half the world’s population depends on the water supply from these rivers. Yet China does not have a single water-sharing treaty with any riparian country on its borders. Politically, the author feels that Chinese strategy would be to continue to push diplomatically against the Americans and try its military tactics against neighbours to establish superiority.

Sood’s concluding chapters focus on obstacles to India’s destiny (both internal and external) and the way in which India under Prime Minister Modi has benefited due to efficient political, social, economic, fiscal and financial reform. The author however strongly advocates an overhaul of India’s colonial era bureaucracy which he feels strangles business with red tape, chokes entrepreneurship and takes too long to make most decisions. He is critical of the Indian judiciary and the large backlog of cases, 50 million of which are still pending in courts as of end-2023. Yet, the author feels that despite uncertainties, India is poised for greatness.

This book is a repository of valuable information on past and mainly present-day geopolitics. The author’s style is engaging, witty, incisive and focuses on issues relevant globally and nationally. The reader will enjoy Sood’s racy, yet informative narrative.

(The writer is a Mumbai based educator.)