We know that more is to be gained when great powers cooperate than when they collide.
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For centuries too the Montenegrins have been adept at manoeuvring between the great powers.
"Afghanistan has not been a successful venue for many great powers in the past, " Hoyer said.
It is clear that the Prime Minister has strategically placed her country next to two great powers.
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This is why the ASEAN states are keeping equally distant from the great powers in the region.
Nor should Westerners overdo the despair, for the emergence of new great powers will benefit them, too.
That's a burden that great countries, great powers, have, is to act responsibly in the community of nations.
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This one involves the world's great powers and will likely shape the international environment for the foreseeable future.
New great powers have emerged - India, or reemerged - Japan, while Iran seeks to dominate the Middle East.
The emperors now had to wheedle taxes and manpower from these great powers.
The Great Powers of 1945 are no longer the great powers of today.
Finally, what about the long peace that has held among the great powers for the better part of six decades?
In the service of the former objective, the Great Powers felt within their rights to take risks with Czech security.
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The great powers could now, as Wilson had hoped, form a "community of power" to manage and resolve these remaining conflicts.
Yet he never refers to the two great powers that now dominate the continent, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.
The problem, of course, is that the Security Council can act only when the great powers of the world are in general agreement.
But one answer can be glimpsed from a contemporary study, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, by Yale historian Paul Kennedy.
But this would have created a mere political tool of the great powers, not an independent court, and most countries would not accept it.
Small states have often shown the ability to humble great powers.
Then there are the great powers and foremost among them Russia, France and the US. Any UN action against Iran must be agreed upon by all three.
Within four years, however, this little-known brigadier had driven an invading Greek army back into the Aegean and persuaded the great powers to recognise the new republic.
But centuries ago, the great powers were almost always at war, and until quite recently, Western European countries tended to initiate two or three new wars every year.
But the overall strategic thrust has been to try to build productive and constructive relationships with the great powers as a way to most effectively pursue United States interests.
What are we to make of this idea that the Obama presidency is a new era, in which the great powers will no longer behave as they have for centuries?
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As the narrative sweeps between the great powers of Europe, the reader is left wondering what happened in, say, the Netherlands (then still an empire), in Sweden or in Italy.
To be sure, the great powers in question had every reason to want to ensure their ability freely to use the sea lanes of communication for commerce vital to their economic well-being.
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