Geo Political Economics

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Destined for War
Can America and China Escape Thucydides’s Trap?
By Graham Allison

https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/b9ad/5c29be85e8e95a3a3a344c945394e5998faf.pdf

Professor Graham Allison gazes into the future of US-China
relations in Destined for War: Can America and China Escape
Thucydides’s Trap? only to find the best guide to the future is the
past. Specifically based on Thucydides’s well-known observation that “It
was the rise of Athens and the fear that this inspired in Sparta that made war inevitable,” Allison has popularized the phrase “Thucydides’s Trap” to describe the dangerous historical dynamic that develops when a rising power threatens to displace an established ruling power.

This dynamic was summarized aptly in an earlier article: “The rise of a new power has been attended by uncertainty and anxieties. Often, though not always, violent conflict has followed. The rise in the economic and military power of China, the world’s most populous country, will be a central question for Asia and for American foreign policy at the beginning of a new century. ”

In researching cases of rising powers challenging ruling powers over
the last 500 years, Allison and the Thucydides Trap Project at Harvard
University found 12 of 16 cases resulted in war. Avoiding Thucydides’s
Trap thus equates to avoiding war. Based on this analysis, Allison
concludes that “as far ahead as the eye can see, the defining question
about global order is whether China and the United States can escape
Thucydides’s Trap.”

The high percentage of cases that resulted in war provide persuasive
support to the overall argument that war between the United States and
China may be more likely than generally considered. Yet a few cautionary
notes on the data set and methodology are warranted.
First, while the principal result of the study (12 of 16 cases led to
war) seems objective, decisions on what cases to include necessarily
involve some subjective analysis. As such, the overall data supporting
the general argument have evolved since the initial Thucydides’s Trap
argument was presented. In 2012–14 the argument cited 11 of 15 cases
leading to war.