Thucydides's Trap

The Asia Policy Institute recently released a collection of speeches by its President and former Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd about the rivalry between China and the United States. In his forward to the collection, Graham Allison explains why relations between the two countries have become "the defining issue of international relations in the 21st century", and why Kevin Rudd is uniquely equipped to provide insight into them. Read on for both the full introduction and the full report.

"Within the covers of this book, long-time China watcher and former Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has provided an analytic snapshot that would normally only be available to the president or prime minister of a major nation. In substance, it would be the envy of the best professional intelligence agency."

Kori Schake’s essay (and the book from which it is adapted) provides a serious, penetrating, and provocative invitation to debate the overriding geostrategic challenge of our time: what to do about the rise of China. Safe Passage is an outstanding example of the sort of work we champion at the Harvard Belfer Center’s Applied History Project. It illuminates current challenges by careful analysis of the historical record. And the case she examines in which the United States rose to rival and eventually surpass the British global hegemony is among the most instructive of the 16 cases in the Harvard Thucydides’ Trap case file for policymakers seeking to cope with the current U.S.-China competition.

Will Presidents Trump and Xi, or their successors, follow in the tragic footsteps of the leaders of Athens and Sparta or Britain and Germany? In his new Gelber Prize-nominated book, Allison says the omens are not good

An interview with Graham Allison in Asahi Shimbun.

Xi is now not only the most powerful leader of China since Mao. He is also the most ambitious leader of any country today. In the past five years, he has proved himself the most effective in advancing his nation’s position in the world. And among all of the competitors on the international stage, he is the most likely to leave a lasting mark on history.

"Belfer Center Newsmakers" highlights members of the Belfer Center community who have been featured recently in the news.

The centerpiece of President Trump’s conversation with Chinese President Xi Jinping on Thursday will doubtless be North Korea. Before their first meeting in April, Trump’s message to Xi was unmistakable: You solve this problem, or I will, and you won’t like the way I do it. Then, just after he served Xi and his wife chocolate cake at Mar-a-Lago, Trump excused himself and went to an adjacent room to announce that the U.S. was launching 59 cruise missiles against Syria. Message: I’m serious.

Will the 21^st century be defined by great power war or peace? By prosperity or poverty? The answers depend largely on the course set by Washington and Beijing.