There is little doubt today that we live in a time of renewed global competition between major state powers. This also means that we live in what is, potentially, an extremely hazardous age. In recent times, we have little to be thankful for from some of the so-called ‘Great Powers’. China (albeit most likely by accident) has brought us pestilence in the form of the Covid-19 virus. Russia (most definitely, by design) has brought us war in Ukraine. Not even one-quarter of the way into the 21st Century, and already we seem to have endured (and may continue to endure) two of the Biblical ‘four horsemen of the Apocalypse’. It is against this forbidding backdrop that the 2022 JAPCC Conference will take place.