Xi Jinping warns Trump not to fall into ‘Thucydides Trap’ – what ancient Greece can tell us about US-China relations

The world has reached a new crossroads. Can China and the United States transcend the so-called “Thucydides Trap” and create a new paradigm for major-country relations?

Thucydides has been surprisingly prominent in international affairs this year. In January, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney cited a line from the Melian dialogue that “the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must” to warn of the decline of the rules-based order.

Others have cited it to describe U.S. military actions — both positive and negative — in Venezuela and Iran.

Xi Jinping instead focused on Thucydides’ view of the “most authentic but least discussed cause” of the Peloponnesian War between Athens and Sparta. The most familiar translation of his words in 1875 is: “It was the rise of Athens, and the fear it aroused in Sparta, that made war inevitable.”

American international relations scholar Graham Allison thus developed the idea of ​​Thucydides’ Trap.

Thucydides’ stated goal is that readers will find his history useful in understanding future events. So Allison thinks we can turn his words into a universal principle: When an “established power” like Sparta faces a “rising power” like Athens, conflict is usually the outcome.

History bears this out, Allison claims. Over the centuries, 12 of the 16 instances in which established powers faced emerging rivals resulted in war, including both world wars.

Will this also be the case between the United States, the global hegemon after the collapse of the Soviet Union, and a rising China challenging its dominance, especially economic dominance?

three traps

Allison’s idea sparked widespread discussion. In 2017, he was invited to the White House to talk about Sino-US relations. Therefore, Xi Jinping’s reference to the “Thucydides Trap” is less a new idea than a throwback to Trump’s first term as president.

This theory is taken seriously by the Chinese government, if only as a guide to American thinking. Together with the Tacitus Trap and the middle-income trap, it is known as one of the three major traps facing China today.

Discussion of Thucydides’ Trap focuses primarily on Allison’s description of the contemporary situation. At issue is whether his characterization of U.S.-China relations is correct, and whether the emergence of nuclear weapons and/or economic interdependence has changed this dynamic.

Ellison raised the “Thucydides Trap” as a warning to encourage the two governments to seek compromise and cooperation. The risk is that existing powers may believe Thucydides is telling them to suppress potential rivals before they become a threat—even if this increases the likelihood of war.

Therefore, Xi Jinping emphasized the need to avoid falling into traps. But China hawks see it as a strategy to delay conflict until the balance of power is more even.

cautionary tale

Since this is a theory based on historical data and Thucydides’ authority, it is worth noting that it is questionable on both counts. It is questionable to characterize many past conflicts as involving only two hostile powers (an established state and an emerging state). For example, was World War I just about Britain and Germany?

As for Thucydides, the key lines are a very loose translation of what he actually wrote, which is even more ambiguous.

A more literal version is: “Athens’s power frightened the Spartans and forced them to go to war.”

Forcing who? Thucydides does not specify. Spartan? both sides? Or the whole situation? He’s just not clear – or is this intentional, to push his readers to think deeper?

After presenting this opaque and somewhat vague statement, Thucydides recounts in detail the events leading up to Sparta’s declaration of war. This includes many points at which things could have turned out differently.

His explanation emphasizes short- and long-term development, personal decisions and emotions, and structural factors. His “trap” is far more complex – and definitely not inevitable.

This will be very familiar to critical readers of Thucydides. His work does not provide direct laws of war and politics, but rather illustrates the complexities of human behavior in a way that prompts us to think more deeply. But his ideas are often misrepresented as simplistic principles that appear to explain the world.

Trump’s response to Xi—that America may be in decline under Biden, but it is now the hottest country ever—is even a misreading of Allison’s simplified version of Thucydides. The “trap” theory makes no mention of decline, only that the established superpowers now face competitors.

But now Western thought is pervaded by anxieties about decline and decadence. Perhaps this is evidence of the same fear that dominated Spartan thinking and, as Thucydides himself recounts, dragged both countries into a devastating war. SCY

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This article was generated from automated news agency feeds without modifications to the text.