America vs. China: Is War Simply Inevitable? - Institute for Maritime and Ocean Affairs

Thucydides loomed large over last month’s summit between Presidents Barack Obama and Xi Jinping. Both noted the ancient Greek historian’s insight about the potential for conflict between rising and ruling nations in the context of managing U.S.-China relations. Their remarks, however, suggest a misunderstanding of the very point Thucydides made that could most help avoid conflict between the two great powers.

In a speech in Seattle on September 22, Xi remarked that “There is no such thing as the so-called Thucydides trap in the world. But should major countries time and again make the mistakes of strategic miscalculation, they might create such traps for themselves.”

Two days later, Obama stated that he doesn’t believe in a “Thucydides Trap”—or in the inevitability of war between the U.S. and China. Instead, he formally announced that“The United States welcomes the rise of a China that is peaceful, stable, prosperous and a responsible player in global affairs.”

Obama and Xi were quick to disavow the inevitability of war.But Thucydides doesn’t mean inevitable in the way it might seem, and, indeed, the Thucydides Trap itself can relate to strategic miscalculation. A clearer understanding of the underlying text can give leaders in Beijing and Washington clues to manage China’s rise peacefully.

For its part, a peaceful rise would defy the historical odds. Graham Allison and the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard’s Kennedy School have begun a Thucydides Project to track instances of conflict between ruling powers and the rising ones that threatened to displace them. They have identified sixteen such cases over the past 500 years. In twelve, the outcome was war. As Allison noted in a major essay for The Atlantic last month, “The defining question about global order for this generation is whether China and the United States can escape Thucydides’s Trap.”

To be caught in Thucydides’s Trap, however, does not mean that war is fated. It means that the shifting balance of power will inevitably strain the U.S.-China relationship, while producing seductive but dangerous visions of the national interest.