Opening the Thucydides trap: a genealogy of rise-and-fall theory

Abstract

Abstract Over the last decade, Graham Allison's ‘Thucydides trap’ has become a predominant framework for analysing the prospect of great power conflict between the United States and China. The controversy surrounding this rise to prominence has reinvigorated a tradition of thinking about the effects of power parity on global order that previously flourished during the Cold War. This renewed attention has nevertheless come at a significant cost. By reconstructing the tradition from which the Thucydides trap emerges, a tradition that we call rise-and-fall theory, this article demonstrates how the ascendance of the Thucydides trap as a framework of analysis has obscured critical debates about the relationship between the rise and fall of competing powers and the onset of conflict. These debates problematize fundamental questions concerning how to conceptualize power, what types of interstate relations are to be analysed, and which causal mechanism(s) matter most in explaining revisionism and conflict. This article demonstrates how the Thucydides trap largely overlooks these debates, thereby providing analysts with less precise heuristics for thinking about the prospect of global conflict than they might otherwise have. We develop a more pluralistic approach to the application of rise-and-fall theory that makes use of its diverse perspectives and substantive divergences to provide more nuanced and holistic analyses.