Three-quarters of Great Power transitions since 1500 have culminated with, or involved, a highly destructive period of direct Great Power war.9 War between Great Powers during times of relative transition is not inevitable, but it is a persistent threat. Nuclear weapons may have reduced the risk of Great Power armed conflict, but they have not elim

then continued that competition over American colonies for another century and a half. Russia, Austria-Hungary, and the Ottoman Empire alternatively jousted and clashed from the 1600s to the late 1800s across Europe, Asia Minor, and North Africa. Russia, Great Britain, and the Ottoman Empire engaged in a more than century-long “Great Game” in A

Eras featuring three or more Great Power states—multipolar eras—are the most common since the dawn of the modern-state era in 1648. But their dynamics are unfamiliar to modern statesmen. Multistate GPC is conducted over decades and centuries, not years. Spain, France, England, the Netherlands, and the Ottoman Empire competed as Great Powers acr