Great Power Diplomacy

Great Power Diplomacy: The Skill of Statecraft from Attila the Hun to Kissinger.
Aaron Wess Mitchell.
Princeton University Press. 2025. ISBN: 9780691236872. 

​Great Power Diplomacy traces roughly fifteen centuries of diplomacy, beginning with the Byzantine Empire’s dealings with Attila the Hun and ending with Henry Kissinger’s Cold War diplomacy. Mitchell’s core claim is that diplomacy is a strategic instrument that allows weaker or overstretched states to outwit, outmanoeuvre, and outlast militarily stronger rivals by rearranging power in space and time.
 
Across its case studies, the book follows legendary empires at crisis points, highlighting both famous and obscure practitioners of statecraft.
The dramatis personae range from Richelieu, Metternich, Bismarck, and Kissinger to a more eccentric cast of eunuchs, drunkards, and fools whose diplomatic choices nonetheless shaped great‑power outcomes. Mitchell defines the essence of diplomacy in strategy as re-arranging power so that a state can pursue maximal political aims while avoiding tests of strength it cannot bear. Mitchell contends that, in the post–Cold War era, Western elites neglected these arts under the assumption that globalization and democratization would soften traditional power politics.
He presents the book as both a narrative history and a warning that, in a new age of great‑power rivalry among continent‑sized states, rediscovering skilful statecraft is essential for survival.
 
Wess Mitchell is an American strategist, historian, and former senior U.S. diplomat whose work focuses on great‑power competition, particularly in Europe and Eurasia. He was born on April 1, 1977, in Oklahoma,  earned a PhD in political science after earlier graduate study in Germany and the United States.
 
In 2005, Mitchell co‑founded the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA), a Washington‑based think tank devoted to Central and Eastern Europe, later serving as its Director of Research and then President and CEO. Mitchell served as U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs from 2017 to 2019 in the Trump administration.
In 2019, he co‑founded The Marathon Initiative, a grand‑strategy think tank created with Elbridge Colby, to study long‑term great‑power competition and the simultaneity problem of potential multi‑front conflicts. He was appointed by NATO Secretary‑General Jens Stoltenberg to co‑chair a commission on the Alliance’s political cohesion, whose 2020 report recommended reforms to refocus NATO on competition with Russia and China.