President Trump can improve relations with Russia in ways that advance American national interests by going back to Cold War fundamentals. American presidents’ first responsibility is to protect and defend the United States of America. In a world in which Russia’s leader commands a nuclear arsenal that can erase the United States from the map, sufficient (and often politically painful) cooperation to avoid that outcome is indispensable. Just as in the Cold War, Americans and Russians today share a vital national interest in averting a nuclear war.

To mark the 90th birthday of the People’s Liberation Army on Aug. 1, China’s President Xi Jinping went to the Inner Mongolian steppe to the site where Genghis Khan began his conquest of Eurasia. There, at Zhurihe, he was welcomed by an impressive display of China’s martial might: a parade of Chinese troops, tanks, helicopters, aircraft and missiles. But the main course was a massive war game demonstrating the state of China‘s preparation to “fight and win” future military conflicts.

American leaders enjoy lecturing the Chinese on “maintaining the rules-based international order.” The message is clear: China should be more like us. But Americans should be careful what they wish for. In the United States of Amnesia, very few Americans have any inkling of how we behaved at an analogous period in our history.

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? 

"Since the election of Donald Trump as US president, the probability of a Sino-American conflict has soared. Last year Trump ran an aggressively anti-Chinese election campaign, repeatedly threatening to impose tariffs on Chinese imports. Trade is only one of several bones of contention. America remains committed to freedom of navigation in the South China Sea. China’s island-building programme is designed to make that sea Chinese in fact as well as in name. Trump is less committed than any US president since Richard Nixon to the 'One China' policy, which pretends that Taiwan is not an independent state."

"Is war the natural condition of mankind? That question drives a deeper story line in the summer blockbuster 'Wonder Woman.' While she is stopping a massive German gas attack, Princess Diana also finds herself grappling with a fundamental question about the relationship between mass violence and human nature.

Wonder Woman's first face-off against a World War I villain, German Gen. Erich Ludendorff, takes a dark philosophical turn. 'Peace,' Gen. Ludendorff sneers, 'is only an armistice in an endless war.' Wonder Woman immediately identifies the author of the quote: the ancient Greek historian Thucydides. But she disagrees, arguing instead that war is a seductive spell on mankind, not a reflection of our inherent corruption."

Graham Allison writes that the dangerous dynamic of a rising power that threatens to displace a ruling power is Thucydides’ Trap. "It is one of history’s deadliest patterns. Over the past 500 years, this has occurred 16 times. In 12 cases, the outcome was war. Today, the contest between an irresistible rising China and an immovable America is the 17th case."

Graham Allison (@GrahamTAllison), who is stepping down as the Director of the Belfer Center, a position he’s held for the past 22 years, takes a moment to talk with Aroop Mukharji (@aroopmukharji) about his new book “Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides’s Trap.” Allison explains the big idea that is Thucydides’s Trap, what might spark war between America and China, and what he has in common with Queen Elizabeth II.

Graham Allison (@GrahamTAllison), who is stepping down as the Director of the Belfer Center, a position he’s held for the past 22 years, takes a moment to talk with Aroop Mukharji (@aroopmukharji) about his new book “Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides’s Trap.” Allison explains the big idea that is Thucydides’s Trap, what might spark war between America and China, and what he has in common with Queen Elizabeth II.

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.”