Will the U.S. and China Collide in the 21st Century?

More than 2500 years ago, Thucydides, the Athenian historian and general, wrote his history of the Peloponnesian War. In his oft-quoted summary, he concludes: “It was the rise of Athens and the fear that this inspired in Sparta that made war inevitable.” In a forthcoming article, Graham Allison writes that “the defining question about global order for this generation is whether China and the U.S. can escape Thucydides’ Trap.”

Reviewing the past 500 years, Allison finds that in 12 of 16 cases where a rising power threatened to displace a ruling power, the result was war. He notes that while a war between the U.S. and China seems remote, the 100th anniversary of World War I reminds us of “man’s capacity for folly.”

“On the current trajectory, war between the U.S. and China in the decades ahead is not just possible, but much more likely than currently recognized,” Allison contends. Indeed, he writes, “on the historical record, war is more likely than not.”

The Next Great War: The Roots of World War I and the Risk of U.S.-China Conflict, a new publication edited by the Center’s Richard Rosecrance and Steven E. Miller, suggests that while there are differences between today’s world and 1914, there are also some unsettling similarities between the current China-U.S. relationship and conditions that led to WWI.

In U.S. China 21: Constructive Realism, Common Purpose, a report to be released this spring, former Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, a senior fellow at the Belfer Center, argues that the U.S. and China can avoid Thucydides’ Trap by better understanding each other and undertaking a series of measures to build strategic trust. The report emerges from a major study at the Center, headed by Rudd, on the possibilities and impacts of a new strategic relationship between China and the United States.

Harvard Distinguished Service Professor Joseph S. Nye warns of the dangers of a self-fulfilling prophecy in his newly released book Is the American Century Over? The rise of China, he writes, “recalls Thucydides’ other warning that belief in the inevitability of conflict can become one of its main causes. Each side, believing it will end up at war with the other, makes reasonable military preparations which then are read by the other side as confirmation of its worst fears.”

The Next Great War?

In The Next Great War? The Roots of World War I and the Risks of U.S.-China Conflict, leading experts reconsider the causes of World War I and explore whether the great powers of the twenty-first century can avoid the mistakes of Europe’s statesmen in 1914 and prevent another catastrophic conflict. They find differences as well as similarities between today’s world and the world of 1914—but conclude that only a deep understanding of those differences and early action to bring great powers together will likely enable the United States and China to avoid a great war.

Comments on U.S.-China Relations

Steven E. Miller, Introduction, The Next Great War? The Roots of World War I and the Risk of U.S.-China Conflict

One of the most troublesome aspects of the international order in 1914 is partially reproduced today. If there is one warning that particularly leaps out from the pages of this volume, it is the danger of entrapping alliances. The most likely route to war with China is via a dispute involving one or more of the United States’ Asian allies. This is not a purely hypothetical danger. Asia’s many territorial disputes, on both land and sea, are potential flash points.

Graham Allison from a forthcoming publication

Thucydides went to the heart of the matter in focusing on the inexorable, structural stress caused by a rapid shift in the balance of power between two rivals. Note that Thucydides identified two key drivers that create this structural dynamic: the rising power’s growing sense of its importance, entitlement, and demand for greater respect...on the one hand, and the insecurity, fear, and determination to defend the status quo this engenders in the established power, on the other.

In sum, Thucydides’ Trap refers to the natural, inevitable, inescapable discombobulation that accompanies a tectonic shift in the relative power of a rising and ruling state. Under such conditions, unexpected actions by third parties that would otherwise be manageable can provide a spark that leads to results neither major competitor would have chosen.

Kevin Rudd from his forthcoming report, U.S.-China 21: Constructive Realism, Common Purpose

The core question for the future of U.S.-China relations is the extent to which the values divide renders broader cooperation between Washington and Beijing ultimately futile.

Specifically, the core question from the American perspective is whether or not China, because of its successful economic development program, will ultimately transition and therefore become an active supporter and participant in the international liberal rules-based order. Or alternatively, whether China will succeed in defying Fukuyama’s ‘end of history’ and produce an entirely different, sustainable model of political economy for China’s long-term future, which in turn, will also deeply shape China’s view of the world.

For China, the related core question is whether the United States fundamentally accepts the legitimacy of their current political system, or whether China concludes that the United States is either directly or indirectly working to subvert that system. While this may seem an obscure and unsubstantiated point from the perspective of most Western analysts, the same analysts may be surprised to learn how profoundly this question of perceived political legitimacy underpins much of the U.S.-China relationship.

The question for the future is whether a common landing point is possible between these different value systems. Or at least a landing point that does not prevent the stable development of other critical dimensions of the U.S.-China relationship. Or impede U.S.-China cooperation in strengthening the existing international rules-based order.

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