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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.

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.

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 co-founded the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA) in 2005 and served as U.S.

Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs from 2017 to 2019. In 2019, he co-founded The Marathon Initiative, a grand-strategy think tank created with Elbridge Colby.

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Coram Deo — before the face of God. This blog reflects on Scripture, world events, science, music, psychology, and the human mind — always through the lens of Christian faith. All of life is lived before the face of God.