On Wednesday, September 24, 22 faculty, staff, and graduate students attended the first Inklings gathering of the new semester. Dr. Ionuț Popescu, an associate professor in the Department of Political Science, gave a presentation expanding on his new book No Peer Rivals: U.S. Grand Strategy and Great Power Competition (University of Michigan Press).
Published in April 2025, No Peer Rivals examined the role of the United States on the global stage as a major power. Popescu argues we are living in an era of great power competition between the U.S. and China. In this context, he explored China’s quest to become a regional hegemon; the closer ties that have emerged between China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea; and cooperation between Chinese and Mexican cartels. In response, he contends that the best strategy would include securing homeland defense, defending the military balance of power in key regions of the world, and maintaining economic, technological, and energy dominance. Both geopolitics and geoeconomics play a role in this strategy, with one of the key goals being a “de-coupling” from China.
Dr. Popescu earned his PhD in Political Science and International Relations from Duke University in 2013, and he is a former winner of the Smith Richardson Foundation Strategy and Policy Fellows book-writing grant. He also won the Freedom and Opportunity Academic Prize from the Heritage Foundation. Dr. Popescu is the author of No Peer Rivals: American Grand Strategy in the Era of Great Power Competition (University of Michigan Press, 2025) and Emergent Strategy and Grand Strategy: How American Presidents Succeed in Foreign Policy (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2017). His articles and commentaries have appeared in a wide variety of publications including Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, The National Interest, Political Science Quarterly, Journal of Strategic Studies, Orbis, Parameters, and The Hill. Dr. Popescu also serves as a Navy Intelligence officer in the Navy Reserve, and he deployed with the US Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) in 2023-2024.
Joshua Honea, a graduate student in public administration who attended the gathering, said, “Our meeting over Dr. Popescu’s talk was an excellent opportunity to engage with contemporary IR literature within the scope of American grand strategy from an offensive-realist perspective. I found our meeting particularly beneficial in allowing me to reframe my understanding of the United States from a largely domestic-centric and inward focused perspective, to one that can better account for the interactions and potential policy avenues by which our nation may pursue competition with that of certain entities including that of Russia, Iran, and most saliently, China, in order to maintain an American hegemony.“
The original Inklings consisted of a small group of intellectuals (whose ranks included J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis) who met weekly at Oxford University to read aloud and discuss their works in a spirit of fellowship and civil conversation. In the spirit of these Inklings, the Department of Political Science at Texas State University has held similar gatherings for more than two decades. Meeting monthly, TXST Inklings participants discuss research, exchange ideas, and address a wide variety of issues reflecting diverse interests.
For more information on the series, please contact Dr. Arnold Leder at al04@txstate.edu.
