Thucydides's Trap

Douglas Dillon Professor of Government Graham Allison took the stage at TED World Theater in New York in September to discuss the question: How will the U.S. respond to the rise of China? Allison's TED Talk was part of TED's "We the Future" event that explored some of the world's most daunting challenges along with possible solutions. 

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Less than three months after declaring that he had “great confidence” China would rein in North Korean belligerence, President Trump ranted on Twitter last week, “Trade between China and North Korea grew almost 40 per cent in the first quarter. So much for China working with us — but we had to give it a try!” Losing patience with China, Trump may take unilateral, even military, action against North Korea’s nuclear programme. Could this escalate into a second Korean War? 

Chinese analysts, from President Xi Jinping on down, have nominally rejected Allison’s pessimistic analysis. “There is no Thucydides Trap,” Xi has argued, claiming that he had devised an alternative “new type of great-power relations” that would avoid war by recognizing that each Asian giant had its own legitimate interests. More recently, he has shifted to arguing that “China and the U.S. must do everything possible to avoid [the] Thucydides Trap.”

Washington must think the unthinkable to credibly deter potential adversaries such as China.

In a new book, the Harvard Kennedy School’s Graham Allison looks at how the power struggle between Athens and Sparta in classical Greece offers important insights into the looming complexities as China’s meteoric rise threatens to displace the U.S. as the dominant world power.

We should honor their sacrifice by applying lessons of wars past in order to avoid unnecessary wars that could send future generations to premature graves.

An approach that requires the United States to accept what it longed deemed “unacceptable” will strike many people in Washington as irresponsible.

I am handing the baton to Ash and Eric for the next lap of the race, confident that the best for the Belfer Center is yet to come.

Senator Dan Sullivan (R - Alaska) discusses Graham Allison's book Destined for War: Can American and China Escape Thucydides's Trap? during a senate session on May 8, 2017.