Top Signs You’re Heading for a Quagmire

Foreign Policy columnist Stephen Walt argues that avoiding costly, open-ended conflicts is the real test of great-power judgment, and that China has passed that test better than the U.S. or Russia in recent decades. He points to Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Yemen and the failed Israeli-Palestinian mediation effort as U.S. missteps, and now adds Trump's confrontation with Iran to that list.

Russia, meanwhile, gets tagged for frozen conflicts, failed client states, and the ongoing war in Ukraine, which Walt says has cost it economically and pushed it toward dependence on China. He credits Beijing's approach of building leverage through supply chains and reserves rather than military entanglements, while noting China's assertiveness has alarmed its neighbors.

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