Few ideas have shaped the way Washington talks about Beijing more than the Thucydides Trap. The Harvard political scientist Graham Allison built the phrase on a single line from the ancient historian Thucydides, who wrote that "it was the rise of Athens and the fear...

Since the end of the Cold War, Somalia has been a textbook case of the perils of foreign meddling. Once a pawn in superpower rivalry, it descended into state collapse, warlordism, and radical insurgency. Successive U.S. administrations, driven by shifting strategic...