This is a book about themes familiar to any thinking person in the contemporary world – domination and subjection, war and peace, world order, cycles of power – but from a new perspective. Usually attention is drawn to the issues that produce the most heat and light: the risks of major war, the competition of great powers, and the morality of domination. Here, attention is focused first on those unexciting international relationships in which the smaller side cannot threaten the larger, and yet the larger cannot force its preferences on the smaller at a cost acceptable to itself – asymmetric international relationships. But the logic of asymmetric relationships in world affairs is not merely a logic of the sidelines. Most international relationships are asymmetric, and the apex of contemporary asymmetry is the post-2008 global situation. Ultimately, the fate of even a superpower rests on its management of asymmetric relationships.

The perspective of each state is situated within horizons set by its capabilities and location. In an asymmetric relationship, the perspectives diverge. The stronger side has proportionally less at stake in the relationship, and this will affect its perceptions and behavior. The weaker side has more at stake and also has more concerns about how the relationship might change. The stronger side wants a relationship that stays “in its place,” and therefore it expects deference from the weaker. The weaker side is concerned about its vulnerability to the stronger's greater power, and therefore it requires assurances that its autonomy will be respected. Even in a normal, nonthreatening situation, the smaller will tend to game the system and the larger will try to systematize the game. This basic, microsystemic situation is the starting point of asymmetry theory.

Of course, asymmetry of capabilities is not the only factor affecting international relationships. If we contrast U.S. relations with Canada and with Cuba, differences in regime and ideology account for more than the differences in disparity. Sometimes a larger framing of the bilateral relationship – both parties in the same Cold War camp, for example – plays an important role. The changes in the relationship between Germany and Austria over the past hundred years cannot be understood without taking into account the larger European context. But asymmetry still matters.