Can We Stop Zero-Sum Games?
Can We Build Resilience Through Cooperation, Or Do We Live In A Different World Now?
Contents
Introduction
Positive-Sum Cooperation During Power Transitions
Do We Have Any Solutions To This Zero-Sum Environment?
The Prevalence of Power
Europe’s Direction
Concluding Remarks
Bitesize Edition
Managing Zero-Sum Reality - Positive-sum outcomes require balance, but crises are defined by imbalance, making zero-sum dynamics unavoidable. The realistic objective is not elimination, but containment, preventing zero-sum competition from sliding into destructive negative-sum outcomes. Survival, adaptation, and eventual renewal become the core strategic goals.
Building Global Resilience - Superpowers seek resilience by reshoring industry and securing critical resources, often at the expense of others. Middle powers must respond by strengthening supply chains, defensive capacity, and cooperation with peers where positive-sum gains remain possible. Those who navigate this transition successfully may emerge stronger despite short-term losses.
Limiting Catastrophic Escalation - In domains where negative-sum outcomes would be catastrophic, selective cooperation remains rational. Hybrid warfare and economic coercion allow rivalry without open conflict, echoing Cold War crisis management. The key uncertainty is whether declining powers will restrain themselves when incentives to escalate increase.
Power, Cards, and Survival - Geopolitics ultimately rewards those with “cards” such as technology, capital, energy, or military strength. Nations without cards decline or are forced to pivot in search of new leverage, often at others’ expense. The defining question is whether any actors can still build positive-sum arrangements at scale in an increasingly zero-sum world.
Introduction
On Monday, I discussed Thucydides’ Trap and The Fourth Turning Framework. These pieces of work support the trend we’re currently seeing unfold as our geopolitical interactions become more zero-sum. In such interactions, the gains of one nation are equal to the losses of another.
Today, I’m going to explore if we can stop this trend. Can we stop zero-sum and negative-sum geopolitical interactions, and if we can, how can we do this? Let’s dive in.
