There's a danger of being seduced by the historical similarities into tunnel vision. We do have sub-superpowers, aka "Great Power" wannabes, dispatching gunboats hither and yon. And yon chessboard is amusingly congruent with the chessboard circa 1914. But there's a bit more to the situation today than that.

Differential technological advantage is one of the factors that determines success or failure of a nation playing in the Great Game, of course. But what about today's technologies that have gone global, and have allowed other technologies to then go global in a self-sustaining chain reaction? Once the Internet became ubiquitous, there became another kind of player in the game. A "distributed" player that is everywhere and often more capable of exploiting technological advantage than the old style state powers.

That would be us, the people, the Arab Spring, Chinese dissidents circumventing the Great Firewall, et al, of course; you could see that coming. An awful lot of people now have divided loyalties between the state in which they live, and all the people everywhere else with whom they've established relationships. States can't count on so much unquestioning loyalty in today's world, and that must alter the dynamics of the game. Even in authoritarian Russia the state would have to stop and consider all the myriad business ties of all its citizens before making a move in the game.

Perhaps the situation would mitigate against large scale overt action, which might unite people in opposition on a similar scale, in favor of lots of small covert actions. Much like JSOC as seen in "Top Secret America" below, that slip in individually under the radar.

Twain's Dictum that history may not repeat itself but it surely rhymes is a caution, to be sure.