Abstract
Thucydides Trap has become a familiar term in scholarly and even popular discourse on Sino-American relations. It points to the ancient rivalry between Athens and Sparta as an analogy for contemporary relations between China and the United States. This analogy warns about the increased danger of war when a rising power catches up to an established power. This essay raises concerns about (mis)application of historical analogy, selection bias, measurement problems, underspecified causal mechanisms, and so on that undermine the validity of the diagnosis and prognosis inspired by this analogy and other similar works. My objection to this genre of scholarship does not exclude the possibility that China and the U.S. can have a serious conflict. I only argue that this conflict can stem from sources other than any power shift between them or in addition to such a shift. By overlooking other plausible factors that can contribute to war occurrence, a monocausal explanation such as Thucydides Trap obscures rather than clarifies this phenomenon. Because it lends itself to a sensationalist, even alarmist, characterization of a rising China and a declining U.S. (when the latter in fact continues to enjoy important enduring advantages over the former), this perspective can abet views and feelings that engender self-fulfilling prophecy. Finally, as with other structural theories of interstate relations, Thucydides Trap and other similar formulations like power-transition theory tend to give short shrift to human agency, including peoples ability to learn from the past and therefore to escape from the mistakes of their predecessors.
Highlights
The clear implication is that as China becomes more powerful, the danger of war between it and the U.S rises. His writing was predated by others who have warned about the danger of war breaking out when there is a power transition
The last comment in turn points to another weakness in Allison’s formulation of Thucydides’ Trap. It presents a monocausal explanation, claiming that a power shift between two countries raises the danger of war between them
Thucydides’ masterful narrative provides ample evidence showing that a combination of forces conspired to produce this conflict, whose occurrence cannot be reduced to a single factor such as power transition
Summary
“Thucydides’ Trap” has become a popular term in narratives about relations between China and the U.S This term owes its popularity to Allison’s [2017] influential work, and refers to Thucydides’ explanation of the origin of the Peloponnesian War This ancient Greek historian is remembered by his pithy maxim, usually translated to say that the rise of Athens and the fear that this development had inspired in Sparta was the basic, even inevitable, cause of this devastating war some 2,500 years ago. I highlight and explain my reservations about and objections to their explanation of interstate wars in general and contemporary Sino-American relations Much of this discussion raises new issues and concerns in addition to those that I have already presented previously.
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