Today’s foreign policy must begin with a concerted effort to discourage major-power rivalry, competition, and above all conflict from again becoming the dominant feature of the international system. The reasons are twofold. First, any such deterioration in major-power relations would be extremely costly even if it did not lead to direct conflict and incomparably more costly if it did. Second, adversarial relationships between and among the major powers would prove to be a major distraction that would make it far more difficult for them to work together to deal with the many global and regional
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