A Great Power can defend themselves. The Great Powers are never equal, but a nation defending themselves against an attack have a large logistical advantage, and to be a Great Power, one must, with this logistical advantage, be able to defeat any attack by another Great Power, so the weakest of the Great Powers must be able to defeat an attack by the strongest Great Power or they are not a Great Power.
Every Great Power are entitled to Indivisibility of Security, meaning no Great Power can increase their security at the expense of another Great Power. Such an increase in security at the expense of another Great Power would be an attack on the other Great Power, and a Great Power, by definition, can successfully resist such an attack.
Europe has been at war for most of the history we have of Europe, since they were never able to agree on who were and who were not a Great Power. Russia, in particular, have been very strong and very weak, and for the last two hundred years (that we know of) the Western Great Powers have wanted to defeat Russia and take some or all of the Russian resources, and have had differing degrees of success.
Napoleon attacked Russia with a military of 500,000. He returned to France in 1812 with a military of just 10,000 (and no longer being a Great Power, France were defeated, twice, by the UK after that visit to Moscow).
In the first part of the 20th Century, Japan, Germany, the US, UK, and France all managed to seize some Russian resources and Russia could do nothing and ended up dissolved and reformed as the Soviet Union.
Germany decided, in 1914, that they were strong enough to defeat the alliance of the UK, France, and Russia, and might have succeeded, but the US banks were sure that the UK and France were the only Great Powers in Europe, and loaned them lots of money to defeat Germany. Then, when it looked like the UK and France were sure to lose, the US joined them in their war against Germany to save the US banks, and Germany, while able to exhaust the UK and France, were themselves exhausted and unable to stand up to the US, UK, and French alliance.
In 1919, Germany were forced to sign the Treaty of Versailles, agreeing to hand all their gold over to the victors as war reparations and to completely disarm and agree never again to have a military.
But, not long after that, the UK and France decided that the Soviet Union were a serious threat and they needed an alliance with a moderately armed Germany to defeat the Soviet Union, so they allowed Germany to begin rearming in 1933.
Then, in 1938, five long years after the the UK and France decided that Germany needed to rearm, decided that Germany were getting too strong and must be defeated, but both were not ready, so the UK negotiated a peace treaty with Germany to give the UK and France time to prepare for war with Germany.
France and the UK wanted war in 1939, so they asked Poland to blockade East Prussia from the rest of Germany, an Act of War, and Germany responded by declaring war on Poland, which the UK, French, Polish Alliance meant justified the UK and France declaring war on Germany. Sadly, France and the UK were defeated in 1940, and Chamberlain, after his death, was blamed for not attacking Germany in 1938, since the UK desperately needed a scapegoat and Chamberlain, having died, could not defend himself.
After WWII, which the US claim to have won single-handedly, defeating Germany with their invasion of Europe in 1944 and Japan with two nukes in 1945, the USSR managed to keep all of Eastern Europe in the Warsaw Pact. The US and the rest of Western Europe hoped to defeat the USSR, but needed to beware of the USSR military with their nukes, obviously (to the US and Western Europe) stolen from the US.
In any case, the world noticed two Great Powers, the US and the USSR (the PRC proved they could defend themselves, the DPRK, and Vietnam from being overrun by the US, so they were probably a Great Power, but for most people, the US and USSR stuck out as Great Powers).
And then the USSR collapsed in 1991, the world had only one Great Power, everyone knew the US could (and did) destroy any nation they felt like destroying: Serbia so that NATO could establish a base against Russia in Kosovo, Afghanistan to destroy a weak nation as punishment for the September 2001 terrorist attack on the US (the attackers were renationalised as Afghans from 2001 until 2003, when they became not just Afghans but also Iraqis, Iranians, North Koreans, Syrians, Libyans, and Cubans, even though none of the attackers actually came from any of those nations, but the US was Global Hegemon, so if they renationalised the attackers, the re-nationalising stood). All the nations the US decided to blame for the 9/11 terrorist attack were attacked, some just with sanctions, some by sanctions and military attacks by the US and NATO.
This annoyed a lot of nations, but the US was obviously Global Hegemon, the only Great Power. The US could destroy any other nation, and no other nation could destroy the US, or effectively resist a US attack. So everyone accepted whatever the US did.
The handful of nuclear states knew that they could try using nukes against the US, but would probably do only limited damage while being utterly destroyed. And the US could inflict unbearable damage without nukes by stopping all international trade plus non-nuclear military attacks.
But times keeps a changin': now there are two or three nations that think they might be Great Powers.
Russia seemed to think they could defeat the US Proxy attack, but all the US/UK/EU news media assure us that the US/UK/EU proxy attack on Russia has just about destroyed Russia, which was no longer a Great Power, but has lost to a US/UK/EU armed Ukraine that have killed more than a million Russian troops, totally destroyed the Russian economy, left Putin in a precarious position, probably soon to be pushed out of the presidency. Russia thought they could take all of the Ukraine in three weeks, but have only a tiny sliver (which is still far too much) of the Ukraine after three years. So Russia have already been defeated, and it's just a question before that defeat turns to total destruction and reorganisation of Russia into a bunch of neutral, demilitarised states, all with governments bought and paid for by the US that all do whatever the US order them to do.
Of course, there are other news media that say the Russian military were never interested in quickly overrunning all of the Ukraine, but wanted to minimise Russian losses while maximising Ukrainian losses, especially of NATO weaponry, the goal being to demilitarise the Ukraine, and the Ukrainian losses have been vastly greater than the Russian losses, while the Russian economy has expanded in spite of all the US/UK/EU sanctions, including in weapons production, so the Ukraine are rapidly running out of NATO weapons and troops while the Russian military are very well supplied with a massive inventory of weaponry.
Of course, both the US/UK/EU news media and the other news media say they are the only news media telling the truth, the other news media with the opposite story are pure propaganda.
So, if one believes the US/UK/EU news media, Russia were never a Great Power and are now very close to total defeat, but if one believes the other news media, Russia are now very close to victory, meaning a Ukraine that will never dare try to join NATO and will obey Russian requirements about freedom for ethnic Russian that remain in whatever is left of the Ukraine after part reverts to Russia.
And then there are the PRC, no longer the nation with the largest population, but now the nation with the largest number of petrol-powered vehicles and the largest number of electric vehicles. And those are just filling the streets with people and goods moving about, that's not counting the military vehicles, of which they have the largest number on land, sea, and air.
PRC security is strange. The US agreed in 1972 that they would accept that Taiwan are just another PRC Province, but implemented what is called Strategic Ambiguity: the US say that Taiwan are just another PRC Province while acting as if Taiwan are an independent country. Taiwan have a person in the US with all the duties and responsibilities of an Ambassador residing in a building that serves all the functions of an Embassy, but the person has a title that is not Ambassador and the building has a name that is not Embassy.
And the PRC have accepted this since 1972. But will the PRC continue to accept this, and where does the PRC and US security stop with regard to Taiwan? No one has a clue.
Finally, there are Iran, with the US and Israel demanding total and unconditional surrender or total destruction, but no one knows if Iran are a Great Power or not, Can the US and Israel attack Iran without unacceptable losses? No one knows. The more cautious officials in the US strongly suggest that the US do not want to find out. The less cautious officials say the US must proceed to destroy Iran ASAP, which is not only without the slightest risk to the US or Israel, since Iran cannot respond by doing any real damage to the US or Israel, but that will also return all Iranian oil to the rightful owners: the US, and cut the PRC off from all that Iranian oil, so what are the US waiting for?
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I have left out India, which have the economy that is now producing the 3rd largest amount of goods in the world, but because of low prices (for Indian citizens), is only producing the 4th largest amount measured by how much it is bought and sold for. And India make their military less obvious than Russia or the PRC. But they are likely to be a Great Power that mostly keep their heads down (except for war with Pakistan, one of the basic Indian-Pakistani traditions since independence being war with each other).
So India are a Great Power, but one that somehow manage to keep their security concerns (and their military) out of sight and out of mind.
(While fighting fairly obvious wars with Pakistan, India kept fighting a very obscure war with the PRC along the Line of Actual Control, lost somewhere up in the mountains, but India and the PRC proclaimed peace at a meeting in Kazan, Russia in October, 2024.)
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