What if the 20th century’s three great struggles—World War I, World War II, and the Cold War—were all really about the same thing?

That’s the argument in Hal Brands’ new book The Eurasian Century, which we dig into this week. Brands traces the warnings of early geopoliticians like Halford Mackinder and Alfred Thayer Mahan: never let a single power dominate Eurasia. History, he argues, proved them right. Germany tried twice. The Soviet Union tried once. Each time, the United States eventually intervened—and each time, the global balance of power was at stake.

Today, in this book, Brands warns of a “second Eurasian century”, with China rising, Russia aligned, and the U.S. at risk of pulling back just as the stakes are highest. He frames the coming decades as Cold War II, and argues that containment, primacy, and forward defense are the only viable American responses.

We push back on some of this. Was German hegemony ever really possible in World War I? Could the Soviets have rolled Western Europe? And is it really impossible for the U.S. to strike political accommodations with autocracies? History suggests otherwise.

Still, the book is a sharp reminder that geography, power, and politics don’t go away. Whether Washington chooses confrontation, accommodation, or hemispheric defense, the consequences will shape the 21st century—just as they did the last one.

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