A risk associated with Thucydides’s Trap is that business as usual-not just an unexpected, extraordinary event-can trigger large-scale conflict. Moreover, current underestimations and misapprehensions of the hazards inherent in the U.S.-China relationship contribute greatly to those hazards. Indeed, judging by the historical record, war is more likely than not. When the parties avoided war, it required huge, painful adjustments in attitudes and actions on the part of not just the challenger but also the challenged.īased on the current trajectory, war between the United States and China in the decades ahead is not just possible, but much more likely than recognized at the moment. In 12 of 16 cases over the past 500 years, the result was war. Most such contests have ended badly, often for both nations, a team of mine at the Harvard Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs has concluded after analyzing the historical record. The Greek historian’s metaphor reminds us of the attendant dangers when a rising power rivals a ruling power-as Athens challenged Sparta in ancient Greece, or as Germany did Britain a century ago. The defining question about global order for this generation is whether China and the United States can escape Thucydides’s Trap. A millennium in which Europe had been the political center of the world came to a crashing halt. When the war ended four years later, Europe lay in ruins: the kaiser gone, the Austro-Hungarian empire dissolved, the Russian tsar overthrown by the Bolsheviks, France bled for a generation, and England shorn of its youth and treasure. When we say that war is “inconceivable,” is this a statement about what is possible in the world-or only about what our limited minds can conceive? In 1914, few could imagine slaughter on a scale that demanded a new category: world war. In policy circles, this appears as unlikely as it would be unwise.Īnd yet 100 years on, World War I offers a sobering reminder of man’s capacity for folly.

When Barack Obama meets this week with Xi Jinping during the Chinese president’s first state visit to America, one item probably won’t be on their agenda: the possibility that the United States and China could find themselves at war in the next decade.

The Landmark Thucydides by Thucydides