LONDON — International Affairs book reviews featured in a new Chatham House roundup stitch together a sobering guide to power politics—from Zbigniew Brzezinski’s Cold War worldview to Mossad’s Kilowatt intelligence channel and today’s race for “green superpowers,” Dec. 30, 2025.
Read together, the books suggest that influence is increasingly won through the unglamorous work of bureaucratic rivalry, back-channel coordination, supply-chain leverage and the fragile human networks that make war and peace possible.
International Affairs book reviews track five fault lines in today’s geopolitics
The selection, drawn from the journal International Affairs and highlighted in a Chatham House winter roundup, moves quickly across decades and disciplines—yet lands on a consistent message: the tools of state power keep evolving, but the incentives rarely do.
A Cold War strategist, reframed for a fractured present
In International Affairs book reviews, Edward Luce’s Zbig is presented as a brisk tour through how Washington’s foreign-policy machinery actually works—where egos, turf fights and timing can matter as much as doctrine. The reviewer calls it “beautifully written,” and the review points to its heavy use of Brzezinski’s diaries as a way to examine how leaders process uncertainty and sell risk at home. (See the review of Luce’s Brzezinski biography.)
That thread is not new. A 2004 International Affairs book-review listing included Brzezinski’s The Choice, and a 2018 review of Justin Vaïsse’s Brzezinski biography underscored how arguments about American primacy and restraint tend to recycle—often under new labels.
Kilowatt and the moral gray zone of intelligence sharing
If Luce’s Brzezinski is about public strategy, Aviva Guttmann’s Operation Wrath of God is about the hidden plumbing beneath it. International Affairs book reviews describe the Kilowatt channel as an encrypted system used by European domestic intelligence services to communicate—material Guttmann accessed to map how information moved and how responsibility blurred when covert action followed. In the review, the book is framed as an “enthralling account of daring,” while also warning about the human-rights risks that can travel inside shared files. (Read the International Affairs review of Guttmann’s book.)
Green superpowers and the next dependency cycle
Another entry asks whether decarbonization ends geopolitics or simply shifts it. In International Affairs book reviews, Andrea Prontera’s Green superpowers is positioned as a corrective to predictions that renewables automatically dilute great-power competition. The review argues the struggle over strategic supply will persist—only the chokepoints will change as countries compete across technology, materials and industrial capacity. (Read the International Affairs review of Prontera’s “Green superpowers”.)
Ceasefires as engineering, not theater
In a year when ceasefires are debated as headline events, International Affairs book reviews also highlight the quieter mechanics: when talks start, who guarantees what, and how temporary pauses reshape bargaining power. The review of Ceasefires: stopping the violence and negotiating peace calls the volume “timely and engaging,” emphasizing its paired scholar-practitioner case studies across multiple conflicts since 1992. (See the International Affairs review of “Ceasefires”.)
Journalists in exile, and what the world loses
The roundup closes with a reminder that information itself is contested territory. International Affairs book reviews note that Don’t Shoot the Journalists: migrating to stay alive draws on reporting and data about the dangers faced by journalists pushed abroad, and argues that exile creates new practical threats—income, safety, sourcing—while leaving audiences at home with less scrutiny of power.
The displacement is also part of a longer record. The Committee to Protect Journalists documented these dynamics more than a decade ago in its 2014 timeline of journalists forced to flee, describing how intimidation can travel across borders and how exile can hollow out local accountability.
Taken together, International Affairs book reviews read less like a bookshelf and more like a field manual: power is exercised through systems—archives and diaries, encrypted channels, energy supply chains, ceasefire clauses and the decision of a reporter to leave home or stay.
