THE STATES’ STRUGGLE FOR POWER IN THE NEW MILLENNIUM GEOPOLITICS

Against the background of the contemporary geopolitical and geostrategic conditions and the struggle for power between nations, the author analyses the evolution of the geopolitical concepts of power, power struggle and power balance, at the beginning of the 21st century. Power is one of the most circulated concepts of geopolitics, and the struggle for power is one of the mechanisms leading to the evolution of human civilisation. The general notion of a state’s power includes the potential power and the actual power. The potential power is limited to items such as: population, weapons, infrastructure and national wealth, while real power includes many more factors, many of which are not quantifiable.