This paper aims at analyzing the influence of military developments and their influence on international law and politics with an attempt to apply past lesions to the future. To do so, I will outline some of the historic relevant events relevant for this assessment, focusing on the cold war period and the balance between the United States of America and the Soviet Union. From there, I will discuss relevant theory and their application for this paper, focusing on superpowers and hard / soft power differences. This will allow me to demonstrate the potential military risk of an imbalanced world order, and to portrait the rising soft power influence of the Peoples Republic of China. After laying the theoretical framework necessary I will try to apply the past lesions to potential future conflict scenarios. With this I hope to demonstrate how seemingly minor changes in technology might tip the sensitive scale of international politics.