How the Global South can navigate great power rivalry

 President William Ruto and Chinese President Xi Jinping during bilateral talks at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, China. [File, Standard]

Great powers stage their rivalries on summit platforms, but African countries, including Kenya, live with the consequences in prices, supplies, and stability, and must learn to read the architecture beneath the drama.

Kenyan households feel the cost of great power rivalry long before they see it on a summit stage. When superpowers study one another, they reach for the Thucydides Trap, the fear that a rising power and an established one are destined for collision. But when smaller nations study superpowers, they remember the Melian Dialogue, the moment when a great power destroyed a weaker society simply to preserve its credibility.