When Power Becomes the Rule (el. knyga) (skaityta knyga) | knygos.lt

Aprašymas

The international order is being reshaped. The rules that once offered predictability and protection are weakening, while economic, political, technological, and military power increasingly determines outcomes. For many countries-especially across Africa and the Global South-this creates a more complex, uncertain, and competitive world.

When Power Becomes the Rule: Navigating a World Where the Rules No Longer Protect examines how the international system arrived at this moment, what the changing relationship between rules and power means for global stability, and how states with limited power can preserve meaningful choice in an increasingly competitive international environment.

Drawing on history, contemporary geopolitical dynamics, and practical policy analysis, Cheick Boucadry Traore explores the institutions, capabilities, relationships, and strategic choices that shape national agency. The book examines the limits of formal sovereignty when it is not supported by economic resilience, institutional strength, technological capability, security, diplomatic effectiveness, negotiating power, and credible alternatives.

For Africa, the challenge is not simply to demand a more equitable international order. It is also to build the capabilities required to operate effectively within the world as it exists while continuing to work toward the world it seeks to create.

Traore makes the case for stronger institutions, greater resilience, deeper regional and continental cooperation, diversified partnerships, strategic autonomy, and a more coherent African and Global South approach to international affairs. Rather than arguing for the abandonment of international law or the imitation of raw power, he asks a more fundamental question: What must African states become capable of doing in order to preserve meaningful agency when rules alone cannot always guarantee protection?

At the center of the book is a proposition that connects sovereignty to practical capability:

Agency requires capability.

When Power Becomes the Rule is a wide-ranging examination of a world in transition and a call for strategic seriousness, institutional strength, and purposeful agency in navigating the international order now taking shape. WHEN POWER BECOMES THE RULE