Beyond the Thucydides Trap — The Course of a New Cold War

Twenty-four hundred years ago, the ancient Greek historian Thucydides distilled the cause of a great war that engulfed Athens and Sparta into a single sentence. What made war inevitable was the rise of Athens and the fear it instilled in Sparta. A nation gaining new strength, and a nation that fears its position is threatened. When these two meet, the world has often slid toward catastrophe, he said.

The one who gave this ancient insight a modern name was the American political scientist Graham Allison. He calls it the Thucydides Trap. And now, a rising China and an America that has held hegemony. Are these two great powers, too, not standing at the entrance to that trap? Having witnessed the hundred-year story of the US and China, we must at last confront this question. Is a clash an unavoidable destiny?

The Thucydides Trap — The Probability History Tells

Allison, together with a research team at Harvard University, traced back five hundred years of history and examined cases in which a rising power challenged an existing ruling power. The number came to sixteen. And of those, fully twelve cases ended in war.

This figure confronts us with a heavy question. For by the probability of history, it can be read that the chance of the US and China heading toward war is by no means low. Allison himself, in his 2017 book Destined for War, strongly warned of the danger that the two countries are walking a path toward a clash.

A World That Cannot Be Drawn in Two Poles — The Reality of Multipolarity

Moreover, the world of the twenty-first century is not cleanly split into two camps, as in the former US-Soviet Cold War. Here lies a circumstance decisively different from past contests for hegemony.

In recent years, what has risen is the great grouping of emerging and developing nations called the Global South. India, Brazil, Indonesia, South Africa. These countries make up the majority of the world’s population, and it is reported that their presence continues to grow in economic scale as well. Through frameworks like BRICS, they have begun to raise voices distinct from the Western-led order.

What deserves attention is that many of these countries avoid resolutely siding with either the US or China. They side with America, and they also deal with China. For their own interests, they face both on a case-by-case basis. This posture, reminiscent of the Non-Aligned Movement of the Cold War era, is argued to show that the world is shifting toward a multipolar structure made of several poles rather than two. The age in which the fate of the world is decided by the two great powers of the US and China alone may no longer be here.

The Conditions for Coexistence — To Cross Beyond the Trap

So, is there a path for the US and China to avoid catastrophe and coexist? Looking back over the hundred-year story, several clues come into view.

One is economic interdependence. As we have seen in this series, the US and China have become deeply entangled with each other through trade and technology. At times that became a weakness, and a spark for confrontation. Yet at the same time it means that all-out conflict would be an immeasurable loss for both. Two economies that have grown too connected cannot easily be pulled apart. This very fact, some hold, could serve as a brake against a reckless plunge. When one considers that the US and the Soviet Union of the Cold War were almost entirely cut off economically, the US-China relationship is of a different nature. They need each other’s prosperity even as they harbor hostility. It is pointed out that this very complexity may, on the contrary, keep the worst outcome at bay.

Another is not letting the channels of dialogue go silent. What the historical cases that avoided the Thucydides Trap have in common, it is said, is that the leaders did not misread one another’s intentions and continued their efforts to manage crises. Mechanisms to prevent accidental clashes, venues where leaders exchange words, and the imagination to try to understand the other’s core interests. It is precisely these steady, humble endeavors that become the strength to hold one’s ground at the edge of the trap.

Where Are We Headed?

The story, which began with the hopes of the open door, has changed its form dizzyingly through war and revolution, Nixon’s handshake, the grand gamble of engagement, the honeymoon of Chimerica, the divergence of values, and on to a cold war over tariffs and technology. The two great powers drew close and then apart, believed and were betrayed, and yet, never fully parting, have walked all the way here.

Now, we stand at a fork in history. Will we be swallowed by the Thucydides Trap and head for catastrophe? Or will we learn from the wisdom of the past and carve out a path of coexistence? That is not a predetermined destiny. Each single choice, each single dialogue, decides the shape of the future. The hundred-year story continues quietly, as a question addressed to us who live in the present. Where will the world, and the two great powers, head from here? It is none other than we ourselves whose role it is to witness what lies ahead.

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Thank you for accompanying us through all ten installments on this long journey. If the hundred-year road the two great powers traveled can become one clue for reading the world of today, there is no greater joy than this. Let us meet again in some other story.

【The US-China Great Game: A Century of Two Powers — End】