Is There a Thucydides Trap? If So, Can Washington and Beijing Avoid It?

Abstract

Is There a Thucydides Trap? If So, Can Washington and Beijing Avoid It? Walter C. Clemens Jr. (bio) Graham Allison, Destinedfor War: Can America and China Escape the Thucydides Trap? (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2017). Howard W. French, Everything Under the Heavens: How the Past Helps Shape China’s Push for Global Power (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2017). Lyle J. Goldstein, Meeting China Halfway: How to Defuse the Emerging US-China Rivalry (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2015). Michael J. Green, By More Than Providence : Grand Strategy and American Power in the Asia Pacific Since 1783 (New York: Columbia University Press, 2017). Andrew T. H. Tan, ed., Handbook of US-China Relations (Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar, 2016). “It was the rise of Athens and the fear that this instilled in Sparta that made war inevitable.” So wrote Thucydides in the fifth century BCE. Will the rise of China and the anxiety this instills in the United States make war inevitable in the twenty-first century? Each of the books reviewed here addresses this question. Each approaches it from a different angle. Each reaches far back in time to provide insight into present-day problems. Each captures the nuances and contradictions in Chinese as well as American feelings and thinking. Each of the four monographs reviewed makes a major contribution to understanding these issues and to responding to them in a constructive manner. Each book provides a model of systematic investigation, objective deliberation, deep and wide sourcing—plus empathy for each player on this global chessboard. [End Page 717] The fifth book, an anthology of shorter articles by experts on various aspects of US and Chinese policies, provides material to support as well as to challenge Allison’s thesis. Warnings from the Past Might China and the United States retrace the path taken by Athens and Sparta as they destroyed the glory that was Greece? Will the two great powers of our era fall into what political scientist Graham Allison, for many years director of Harvard University’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, calls the Thucydides trap—the pressures that arise when an upstart threatens to overtake and upset a hegemon? A similar “trap” has often recurred, according to Allison: “In twelve of sixteen cases in the past 500 years when a rising power challenged a ruling power, the outcome was war.” Since war was avoided in four of sixteen cases, hegemonic war is not inevitable. But since China is rising and the United States declining, Allison concludes, Americans face a “chronic condition” that must be carefully managed. A Sino-American war can be avoided but history suggests that war is possible and perhaps even likely—unless leaders in Washington and Beijing handle their relationship with great skill. In what sense or senses is China outpacing the United States? Does a Thucydides trap exist? Is anything in politics “inevitable”? What kind of evidence is needed to show that struggles between hegemons and challengers have usually ended in armed conflict? Such questions are complicated and give rise to diverse interpretations. Answers hinge heavily on definitions and whether analysis focuses on underlying factors, intermediate causes, or triggering events. To be persuasive, of course, the alleged facts underlying any theory must be correctly understood. Reviewing Destined for War, Ian Buruma (2017) states that the book errs in places because it relies too heavily on the views of Henry Kissinger and Lee Kwan Yew.1 The classic history by Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War, gives reasons to question whether the competition between Athens and Sparta needed to result in war. If there was a trap, [End Page 718] both sides blundered into it by decisions that could have been handled differently. Each side acted in ways that inflamed existing suspicions: Athens rebuilt the long walls that fortified the city and port at Piraeus ignoring Spartan anxieties that Athens, strong at sea, could neutralize the land forces of Sparta. The situation parallels fears in Moscow that US president Ronald Reagan’s “strategic defense initiative” could weaken the Kremlin’s deterrent. Analogous fears spread to Beijing in 2017 as US “THAAD” radars and defense missiles appeared in South Korea. Russia was no longer...