Superpower Showdown by James P. Pinkerton

The history of world great-power conflict is too obvious—and too ominous—to be ignored. We need to see the trouble coming, and we should be ready, and steady, when it arrives. A proper balance-of-power strategy would mean that when conflict erupts, it erupts in other countries first. That’s the formula for being the happy third, and it has been—and is—the right formula for dealing with ascendant and perhaps violent countries that we can’t contain and don’t want to fight.