In international politics, false ideas endure survive because they are convincing. They survive because they are useful.
Few narratives illustrate this better than the enduring claim that geopolitics periodically “returns” — as if strategic competition were an episodic disturbance rather than a permanent feature of international life. This framing does more than misdiagnose global dynamics; it provides psychological and institutional shelter for policymakers confronting uncertainty.
Strategic illusions persist not despite their flaws, but because of their functions.
They simplify complex realities, defer responsibility, and transform structural problems into temporary deviations. In doing so, they offer comfort — not clarity.
Illusions as Political Shelter
The appeal of strategic illusions lies in their ability to impose order on ambiguity. By portraying rivalry as an anomaly rather than a condition, policymakers are spared the burden of continuous adaptation. Strategic failure can be attributed to unforeseen shocks, revisionist actors, or lapses in compliance — not to foundational misjudgments about power itself.
This narrative structure is politically convenient. It preserves institutional legitimacy while postponing strategic reckoning. If competition is framed as a return, then it can also be framed as reversible. The implication is reassuring: normality will resume once disruptions are managed.
Yet this reassurance rests on a fragile assumption — that stability is the natural equilibrium of international politics, rather than a contingent alignment of interests.
Stability Narratives and Strategic Delay
Stability-centered narratives do not merely describe the international system; they shape how states respond to it. By equating stability with success, they reward inertia and penalize adaptation. Institutions designed to manage cooperation become mechanisms for delay, absorbing tension without resolving its sources.
In this context, restraint is often mistaken for resolution. The absence of immediate conflict is treated as evidence of convergence, even as underlying power asymmetries widen. Strategic competition is not addressed; it is deferred.
This dynamic explains why illusions tend to collapse late rather than early. They remain intact not because they are accurate, but because they are institutionally reinforced. Bureaucratic routines, normative commitments, and sunk costs all conspire to protect prevailing interpretations long after their explanatory power has eroded.
The Cost of Strategic Comfort
The price of strategic comfort is rarely paid upfront. It accumulates gradually, manifesting as surprise, disorientation, and reactive policymaking when illusions finally fracture.
When competition is acknowledged only after it becomes visible, strategic options narrow. Choices once available through gradual adjustment are replaced by abrupt recalibration. What appears as a sudden deterioration is often the delayed recognition of long-standing realities.
This is not merely an analytical failure; it is a structural one. Systems built on comforting assumptions struggle to adapt when those assumptions are exposed. The resulting instability is not caused by the collapse of illusion, but by the time spent sustaining it.
Why Illusions Endure — Until They Don’t
Strategic illusions endure because they align with institutional incentives. They allow cooperation to be celebrated without interrogating its distributional effects. They permit engagement without confronting relative gains. Above all, they enable the management of power to be mistaken for its disappearance.
But illusions are not eternal. They erode as contradictions accumulate, as mechanisms designed to suppress rivalry begin to reveal it. When this occurs, the narrative shifts abruptly — from confidence to crisis, from assurance to alarm.
The danger lies not in abandoning illusion, but in clinging to it until abandonment becomes unavoidable.
Beyond Comfort
The task facing contemporary strategy is not to restore comforting narratives, but to relinquish them. Strategic clarity is inherently unsettling. It offers no promise of final resolution, only the possibility of more deliberate choice.
Illusions reduce anxiety by denying permanence. Strategy demands the opposite: an acceptance of continuity, constraint, and competition as enduring conditions.
Comfort may be politically attractive. But in international politics, it is clarity — not reassurance — that ultimately expands strategic space.
