ABSTRACT
This chapter arguments that in the particular case of Somali state collapse, relations of the rival countries of US and China with Somalia have shifted from direct bilateral relations between sovereign states to transnational diasporic engagement. Such linkage through non-state actors appears somewhat informal and unstable, but in a more complex globalized environment, diasporic communities increasingly acquire greater significance. The realist approach, in particular, dominated the conceptualization of inter-state relations which later on incorporated competing social constructivist dimensions. The decline of world ideologies, particularly the competition between earlier steadfast communism and expanding capitalism, led to the degeneration of bipolar superpower global rivalry. After more than seventy years of continuous resistance against Italian and British colonialism, independent Somalia befriended emerging global powers in the early Cold War years in the 1960s. Existing anti-Americanism in Africa, among other places, partially reflects a historical continuation of peoples' perception that the US inherits the legacy of European, particularly British, imperialism.
