Destined for War, by Graham Allison

Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides’ Trap? (2017)

Describes how great-power rivalries tend to end in warfare and lays down the vocabulary — the Thucydides Trap — around the inevitability of warfare. The framework has been heavily and correctly criticized on methodological grounds. Read it for the vocabulary you will meet everywhere, and read the critiques with it.

Read it asking: does the Thucydides Trap explain anything, or does it only predict? Is it a self-fulfilling prophecy?