It has been a great pleasure to offer my views on the current state of great power relations for Theresianische Militärakademie during previous annual Theresian Military Academy Forum.

As the Forum´s topic was focusing on the cognitive domain, we looked into the cognitive biases on the grand strategic level as these do not necessarily impact a single decision. Still, these can be rooted in strategic thinking on the whole-national(civilisational) level. Biased strategic thinking can lead to misguided strategies drawing on different international system configurations and thus pursuing unrealistic goals or underestimating security threats. A vivid example of such biased views of polarity and even the romanticisation of multipolarity can be observed in contemporary Russian and Chinese political discourses. By contrast, downplaying the redistribution of power as a natural phenomenon is symptomatic for the European Commission and some EU member states. Both approaches result in biased grand strategies leading to potential instabilities or even a decline in one´s international rank. Be it a bloody quagmire in Ukraine or a lack of preparedness for a highly competitive and entropic world.

The evidence gathered in my research suggests a threefold problem as
1.     The contemporary international system does not manifest sober cognitions as all major actors see the structure via different premises.
2.     Major actors are failing to assess their power capabilities correctly and put them to work, as they tend to underestimate their peer competitors(collective West considers Russia to be a declining power and vice-versa) or overestimate their own power capabilities (Russia´s aims to revise the global order, the US actively engages in multiple theatres).
3.     Grand strategies of Western actors take their survival for granted. Especially the EU´s strategic choices seemingly do not reflect the urgency of the recently unfolded structural shifts.

At the same time, we are witnessing four clear manifestations of the abovementioned cognitive biases:
1.     Russia´s invasion of Ukraine based on the premises of the West being in a deep decline
2.     The US overstretch based on the bias of salvaging the primacy.
3.     The EU´s decreasing global significance is based on the bias of overrating its own power.
4.     All major actors underestimate their peer competitors and, therefore apply strategies which can potentially lead to conflicts or overextension of power in the mid to long-term.