Destined For War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides's Trap?—A Critical Examination of Historical Patterns Leading to War Between Great Powers

by Graham Allison

NATIONAL BESTSELLER | NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR. From an eminent international security scholar, an urgent examination of the conditions that could produce a catastrophic conflict between the United States and China—and how it might be prevented.China and the United States are heading toward a war neither wants. The reason is Thucydides’s when a rising power threatens to displace a ruling one, violence is the likeliest result. Over the past five hundred years, these conditions have occurred sixteen times; war broke out in twelve. At the time of publication, an unstoppable China approached an immovable America, and both Xi Jinping and Donald Trump promised to make their countries “great again,” the seventeenth case was looking grim—it still is. A trade conflict, cyberattack, Korean crisis, or accident at sea could easily spark a major war. In Destined for War, eminent Harvard scholar Graham Allison masterfully blends history and current events to explain the timeless machinery of Thucydides’s Trap—and to explore the painful steps that might prevent disaster today. SHORT-LISTED FOR THE 2018 LIONEL GELBER PRIZENAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR FINANCIAL TIMES * THE TIMES (LONDON)* AMAZON“Allison is one of the keenest observers of international affairs around.” — President Joe Biden“[A] must-read book in both Washington and Beijing.” — Boston Globe “[Full of] wide-ranging, erudite case studies that span human history . . . [A] fine book.”— New York Times Book Review

Genres: Politics, History, China, Nonfiction, War, International Relations, Military Fiction

389 pages, Kindle Edition

First published May 30, 2017

About the author

Librarian Note: Also writes under the name Graham T. Allison.

Graham Allison is Director of Harvard Kennedy School's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs and the bestselling author of Destined for War: America, China, and Thucydides's Trap (2017); Lee Kuan Yew: The Grand Master's Insights on China, the United States, and the World (2013); Nuclear Terrorism: The Ultimate Preventable Catastrophe (2004); and Essence of Decision: Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis (1971, 1999). Founding dean of the Harvard Kennedy School, Dr. Allison has served as Assistant Secretary of Defense and advised the secretaries of defense under every president from Reagan to Obama. He has twice been awarded the Department of Defense's highest civilian award, the Distinguished Public Service Medal, and serves on the Advisory boards of the Secretary of State and Secretary of Defense.

Reviews

[Charles Haywood · Rating 4 out of 5]

Graham Allison, a Harvard professor and sometime government functionary, is clearly a man who thinks a great deal of himself. On the other hand, most of his pride in himself actually seems justified by his experience and thought, and in these Trumpian days, perhaps immodesty is the Spirit of the Age. Therefore, if you can get through the scenes in “Destined For War” where Allison talks down to and instructs David Petraeus like a schoolboy, as the latter sits behind his CIA desk; and the passages where Allison exhaustively and irrelevantly enumerates the great men who have benefited from his role as “special advisor,” this book is actually very informative and thought provoking.

I’m not sure this book is all that thought-provoking, though. You have to be sorely under-educated to not at least already know, and grasp, the outlines of Allison’s argument. But it’s well-presented and offers clear-headed analysis and recommendations, free of the ignorant ideological cant about foreign policy that characterized both the Bush and Obama administrations. For me, mostly, this book was just depressing—not because it is inevitable that China and the United States will necessarily fight a war, a conclusion Allison repeatedly and emphatically disclaims. Rather, because whether we fight with China or not, it reminds us, though that is not its intent, that the United States will lose—and in fact we have already lost. We may not lose to China, but we can just as well lose our civilizational position to “None of the Above,” by the inevitable process of imperial decline. And in fact we have, even if we don’t acknowledge it yet.

But first, the book. It is designed to impress the reader from the start. The five blurb quotes on the back cover, each explicitly praising the book in glowing terms, are from Henry Kissinger, Joe Biden, David Petraeus, Walter Isaacson, and Niall Ferguson. Three of these men (the exceptions being Biden and Isaacson, not surprising given that Biden, at least, is not fit to comment on strip mall “Chinese” food, much less China as a country) are extensively and favorably quoted and cited throughout the book, so I’d take their august presences on the cover with a grain of salt. And I’m not sure what Isaacson is doing there.

Anyway, Allison begins by outlining what he has named Thucydides’s Trap, after the Greek historian of (and participant in) the Peloponnesian War between Athens and Sparta in the 5th Century B.C. This, of course, is one of the most studied wars in history. At its root it was a conflict between two very different Greek societies, one well-established as dominant, but not expansionist, and relatively unchanging (Sparta), and one rising, expanding and dynamically changing (Athens). The “Trap” is merely the observation that a rising power and a dominant power necessarily conflict, regardless of their political systems or (mostly self-perceived) benignity, since there is never permanently room enough for two major powers in any given geographic area. It is not a claim that the dominant power will be driven to attack the rising power. If there is war, it arises at some point, usually one not carefully considered or determined, from some combination of the factors to which Thucydides famously ascribed the Peloponnesian War: “fear, honor, and interest.”

The Trap is given its name because Thucydides said, “It was the rise of Athens and the fear that this inspired in Sparta that made war inevitable.” But really, the Trap is mostly a recognition of human nature—that any society that manages to achieve rapid growth and advancement cannot, in the cultural nature of things, countenance without resentment limitation set by those who came before. And the Trap is closely related to the “clash of civilizations” thesis of Samuel Huntington, trashed by the cognoscenti when first offered twenty years ago but now pretty obviously totally correct, which is doubtless why Allison repeatedly refers to it.

Allison begins by reviewing the extremely rapid growth of China in recent decades, including its recent ascension to being the largest economy in the world, at least if GDP is measured using the “purchasing power parity” method. The statistics he offers are well known, but they are competently used to make Allison’s point, which is that China is well on its way to being “The Biggest Player in the History of the World.” This first chapter is also where Allison introduces one of the men on whom he relies the most for analysis of China, the late Lee Kuan Yew, architect of modern Singapore and the man who called China “the biggest player in the history of the world.” Allison also introduces one of his main themes, which is how very different Chinese culture and traditions are from ours, in ways that matter and make China inscrutable to the lazy or incautious American. Unlike many modern authors examining the differences among countries, Allison rather emphasizes than downplays cultural differences, finding them extremely important, if not determinative.

Years ago, in the 2000s, I remember it was very fashionable to treat Chinese statistics as cooked, and therefore extremely unreliable, as well as to predict China’s imminent economic collapse and its growth being revealed as a giant fraud. Such claims seem to have largely died off, though, and Allison takes Chinese government statistics at face value. He reviews not only the top-line statistics, but annual rates of growth and, crucially, productivity, which has now risen to 25% of American productivity (measured per worker). His conclusion is that China shows no real signs of being thrown off its pace to greatly exceed the United States on measures of aggregate economic output.

Allison also uses anecdotes to make his point: In 2014, a “construction firm built a 57-story skyscraper in 19 days.” He further notes that “Today, China is doing in hours what it takes years to accomplish in the US. I have been reminded of this daily when I see the bridge over the Charles River between my office at Harvard Kennedy School and Harvard Business School. It has been under reconstruction, snarling traffic, for 4 years. In November 2015, Beijing replaced the substantially larger, 1,300-ton Sanyuan Bridge in just 43 hours.” If you can get past the preening (I teach at both the Kennedy School and the Business School! At Harvard! Look at meeeee!), this is damning to the US. And it shows why we have already lost—not because China has eaten our lunch, but because we have crippled ourselves with crushing regulation, government-led corruption, a lack of bold vision, a focus on stupid things, and general enervation. We built the Empire State Building in less than a year. We will never return to those days, which still exist, apparently, in China. But more on our predicament later—for current purposes, there is plenty of hard evidence that China is very much a power on the rise, which is Allison’s basic point.

What is more, China is focused on academic excellence in subjects that matter for purposes of national economic advancement, namely STEM subjects, and he claims that China is surpassing, or has surpassed, the United States on R&D spending. That latter claim may well be true, though it is less clear that such spending has the impact he implies it does, since I am not aware of any major technological advancement created in China, and none are mentioned. The country’s reliance on industrial espionage implies that China recognizes that, so far at least, they are followers in technology, not leaders—which seems like a big fly in the ointment. Allison recognizes this problem, but rather than ascribing it to a Chinese cultural failure (as has undoubtedly been its cause historically), he tries to avoid it by waving his hands and pointing out that China now has more supercomputers than us, has claimed to launch a “quantum communications satellite” (but without any evidence of that accomplishment), and has built the world’s largest radio telescope (though making something made by the West fifty years ago bigger is not advancement). The problem still remains—China has long hobbled itself culturally such that dynamic individual achievement is limited, as shown by numerous examples, which means no leadership in technological advancement.

Allison ends this chapter by noting the massive global Chinese “soft power” and “economic imperialism” efforts, which do not require any form of technological leadership, of course. These include everything from forming parallel international bodies such as the China Development Bank, in order to avoid participating in organizations dominated by the US, to the “One Belt, One Road” project to link China to Europe by hugely improving transport and communication across Eurasia. All under Chinese dominance, of course.

Having shown that China is a rising power, and assuming without argument that the United States is currently a dominant power not itself declining, Part Two, “Lessons From History,” documents Allison’s “Thucydides’s Trap Project”: sixteen historical examples that Allison has studied, where a rising power confronted a dominant power. These range from the 15th Century Spain and Portugal to the Cold War, and they are interesting enough. (This “Project” is a “Harvard” project, as Allison reminds us repeatedly, just in case we have lost focus on the critical fact that he is associated with Harvard, or rather Harvard is associated with him.) Twelve of these sixteen examples, which Allison claims are exhaustive over the past five hundred years, resulted in war. He reviews each, then spends an entire chapter examining the run-up to the First World War, examining Germany as the rising power to the dominant power of Britain. (Even though Allison repeatedly cites and apparently works directly with Niall Ferguson, he never addresses the argument in the book that made Ferguson’s career, in 1998’s “The Pity of War,” that Germany was beginning to decline relative to England.)

Part Three, “A Gathering Storm,” (cliché alert!), examines in detail another of Allison’s case studies—conflicts between Britain and the United States around the turn of the 20th Century, which (spoiler alert!) did not result in war. His point is that just as the rising United States pushed its Monroe Doctrine, in areas ranging from Venezuela to Alaska, it is not surprising that China views its geographical area the same way, even if there is no official “Xi Doctrine.” Allison implies that, like Britain, we should realize the justice, or at least the good sense, in letting China exercise some power over its surroundings. This makes sense, even if it’s unpalatable to us, although he also notes that the cultural similarities between America and Britain, and the possible advantages to Britain that resulted, such as confidence that the Atlantic did not require British naval resources, made this approach more beneficial for Britain than a similar approach by the United States would be for us with respect to China.

Next, Allison turns to “What Xi’s China Wants.” This is, of course, the critical question. Cleverly, Allison says Xi Jinping wants to “Make China Great Again.” (One of the pleasing subtexts of this book is that Allison takes Trump seriously; while he doesn’t appear often, he is never mentioned with contempt and he is treated as what he is, which is the wholly legitimate President of the United States.) For China, this means various forms of Asian predominance and domination, as well as “commanding the respect of other great powers in the councils of the world.” Allison notes that “At the core of these national goals is a civilizational creed that sees China as the center of the universe.” (Allison, and the Chinese, like to pretend China is a 5,000-year-old unitary civilization that has always had regional predominance, and ignore the ups-and-downs of Chinese history that imply more change, less unity, and less predominance than they like to admit, including repeated conquest by foreigners, from the Mongols to the Manchu, and centuries of internal chaos, such as the Warring States Period.) “China’s emergence as the number-one power in Asia—and its aspiration to be number one in the world—reflects not just the imperative of economic growth but also a supremacist world view bound up in Chinese identity.” What Making China Great Again does not imply, though, is universalism of Chinese values or even adversarial relationships with directly neighboring countries, as long as they get with the basic Chinese program of (reborn) Chinese predominance.

Allison then spends an entire chapter endorsing the late Samuel Huntington’s “clash of civilizations” thesis and noting how he correctly predicted flashpoints between the West and China. Huntington listed “five key ways in which Western and Confucian societies tend to differ,” ranging from cultural characteristics such as “the supremacy of state over society” to the Chinese tendency to define identity in strictly racial terms. Endorsing Huntington is not fashionable, of course, since multicultural dogma holds that all societies are basically identical, other than Western society, which is inferior. Most writers will do anything to explain Huntington’s accuracy away. But Allison’s point is that China is not “just like us”—they are different, and those differences matter. They don’t want democracy—they want a politically legitimate government, which is one that performs, not one that offers people a voice. They are just fine (as is pretty obvious) with “responsive authoritarianism.” As Lee Kuan Yew asked, “Where are the students of Tiananmen now?” Pretty obviously John Kennedy was wrong that “Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable”—that only is true of Western, Christian societies unwilling to kill their own people.

Another key cultural difference is that Chinese culture is patient, “as long as trends are moving in their favor, they are comfortable waiting out a problem. . . . Indeed, Chinese believe that many problems can only be managed, and that each solution inevitably yields more problems.” This is, ironically, a very Burkean approach to governance, in an age when Burke has gone out of fashion in his own civilization. Moreover, “Chinese seek victory not in a decisive battle but through incremental moves designed to gradually improve their position. . . . . [Quoting Kissinger] ‘. . . Where the Western tradition prized the decisive clash of forces emphasizing feats of heroism, the Chinese ideal stressed subtlety, indirection, and the patient accumulation of relative advantage.’” These differences matter—these “deeply divergent civilizational values” are largely the driver of what China does, so simply because “Xi and his Party mandarins no longer preach Marxist-Leninist doctrine, no one should be deluded into thinking that the regime today is a post-ideological movement concerned solely with its own power.”

Allison treats as a given that China can, if it wishes and is not prevented by the United States, dominate Asia, in the new Greater Co-Prosperity Sphere. Certainly no other hegemon will prevent such dominance—the European Union? Ha ha ha. But Allison ignores the possibility that regional powers, acting collectively, whether formally or informally, will limit China’s reach. It is no secret (but not mentioned here) that all the surrounding Asian countries, from Vietnam to Japan, hate and fear China, and they have weapons and money. They have, in many ways, a commanding geographic position that totally dominates Chinese sea lanes within the First Island Chain. Sure—the Chinese might drive the US from those waters with land-based anti-ship missiles. And China’s other enemies might drive the Chinese from those waters with their own. It seems to me that Allison does not seriously consider that there are conflicts other than those between hegemons, and that smaller nations with a collective self-interest can act hegemonically for purposes of foreign policy.

Allison also does not examine in any detail, though he does at least mention, difficult questions that make acute observers wonder if China will fail to reach its economic or social goals. For example, it is well known that the one-child policy has skewed Chinese demographics such that it will very likely become “old before it gets rich,” a problem both because the elderly need support but even more so because a young society is a dynamic society, and vice versa. Old people are risk averse and a society of old people is a dying society, literally and psychologically. Allison dismisses this as a problem for the future, namely starting in 2040 or so, but this is over-glib.

But even aside from demographic imbalance, it is not entirely clear that China is actually on the path to complete development. Allison notes that “At its current position on the development spectrum, China needs many more years of high growth rates to catch up to the living standards of the world’s most advanced economies.” China, as so many developing countries, seems to think that the path of getting richer is simple—follow the path of the West, using technology to increase productivity. But though the technology has been available for 200 years, very few non-European countries have really escaped the Malthusian Trap. The exceptions, such as Singapore, Korea, and Japan, succeeded by using Western technologies and methods, along with more government input than in the West, so perhaps that is the path for China. However, those countries were smaller, more unified, and, most importantly, operated under the rule of law, which has always been non-existent in China, as Francis Fukuyama has exhaustively detailed.

China may not be able to follow a similar path—yes, productivity has increased as Western technology has been adopted, but as Richard Baldwin argues in “The Great Convergence,” China and many other countries whose economies have rocketed upward in the past two decades have largely done so not by developing in the same manner as Western countries did, but by serving as (admittedly critical) sub-elements of the value chains of the already developed countries. It is not at all clear that this path can lead to the same ultimate degree of development. Being the cheap labor portion of the value chain is self-limiting, and when you combine this problem with what appears to be a nearly total inability of the Chinese to make actual advances, as shown by their total dependence on industrial espionage and other forms of copying, China may never get much beyond 25% of American productivity per worker.

For the rest of the book, Allison then examines several scenarios that could, through escalation, lead to war between the US and China, followed by “Twelve Clues For Peace,” exploring how war might be avoided by deriving clues from the Trap case studies. These clues include “higher authorities can help resolve rivalry without war” (although I am not sure the United Nations is a higher authority in same sense as a 15th Century Pope); “wily statesmen make a virtue of necessity—and distinguish needs and wants” (a second pleasing subtext of this book is a total refusal to use emasculated, clarity- and style-destroying “gender neutral” terms); and “alliances can be a fatal attraction.” These are all interesting, if somewhat uneven in their real applicability.

[Review continued as first comment.]

[Callum's Column · Rating 5 out of 5]

In describing the cause of the Peloponnesian War, Thucydides stated: "It was the rise of Athens and the fear that this instilled in Sparta, that made inevitable." Graham Allison utilises this dictum to expound the Thucydides Trap: "the natural, inevitable discombobulation that occurs when a rising power threatens to displace a ruling power." With newfound entitlement and sense of importance, a rising power demands greater influence. This undermines an extant powers security and galvanises them to defend the status quo. In the last 500 years, Allison identifies 16 instances of the Thucydides Trap. 12 ended in war.

America and China are the latest iterations of the Thucydides Trap. Pointing to the relatively peaceful conclusion of the Cold War (one of Allison's examples of the Thucydides Trap not ending in war), some argue that the prospect of great power war is mad because of the doctrine of mutually assured destruction (MAD). However, as Allison reminds us, the world came extremely close to World War III during the Cuban Missile Crisis. A similar structural spark could precipitate a similar America-China crisis--e.g., Taiwan declaring independence. The risk of great power war is as high as ever in the post-war period.

Some scholars disagree with Allison's argument, postulating that many great power wars in the last half millennia were triggered by rising powers seeking further growth after economically stagnating (this is currently happening in China). Others have critiqued Allison for being historically reductionist and neglecting other major causes of war. Allison's Thucydides Trap has nonetheless been repeatedly espoused by world leaders, including Xi Jinping. An America-China war, however, is not inevitable. Human agency can avoid it, though whether our leaders have the necessary temperament remains uncertain.

[Trish · Rating 4 out of 5]

Present foreign policy in the United States is examined in the context of one of the earliest consequential wars ever written about:

“While others identified an array of contributing causes of the Peloponnesian War, Thucydides went to the heart of the matter. When he turned the spotlight on ‘the rise of Athens and the fear that this instilled in Sparta,’ he identified a primary driver at the root of some of history’s most catastrophic and puzzling wars.”

Fear. Allison has the advantage of recent discoveries in behavioral science which show that “at the basic psychological level…people’s fears of loss (or intimations of ‘decline’) trump our hopes of gain—driving us to take unreasonable risks to protect what is ours.” Applied to the present day, America shouldn’t allow fear of China’s stupendous rise make policy makers forget what is their strategic interest: preserving the free nature of their democracy and fundamental institutions and keeping its people strong and resilient rather than preserving a heretofore unchallenged primacy over the western Pacific. Allison asks why we think we need to preserve that primacy at any cost.

China has finally turned its face to the world and intends to engage. History shows us they have a core belief in the superiority of the Middle Kingdom, so we can expect a fierce nationalism. Allison suggests we need to dial back actions and policies that strengthen an unreasonable hard-line nationalism in China that brooks no opposition. We should be expecting to live with this new rising power and chill with rhetoric that clouds an understanding of what our goals actually are in a changing world.

JFK faced a threat that could have led to war and he persistently dialed down the rhetoric, ignoring advisors, saying the enduring lesson of the Cuban Missile Crisis

“Above all, while defending our own vital interests, nuclear powers must avoid confrontations that force an adversary to choose between a humiliating retreat and nuclear war.”

An example of the US not heeding this lesson came nearly twenty years prior to JFK’s lonely decision-making. Less than a week before the surprise attack at Pearl Harbor by the Japanese, Tokyo had been complaining that they could not operate under the economic sanctions imposed on them by the U.S. and that they would prefer to fight, but the US ignored the ambassador’s message…

Allison teaches a class at Harvard which discusses instances of Thucydides’ trap—that is, when a rising power confronts a current power the result is war—playing out through history, so he’s had plenty of opportunity to hone his argument. It shows in the smoothness of the argument and clarity of the history he tells to bolster his thesis. We get examples of an established power feeling threatened by a rising power and the conditions under which this resulted in war and when it did not. Two recent examples would include England and Germany before WWI, 1860-1913. We also see the United States and the Soviet Union after WWII: one might argue relations between the two did precipitate an outbreak of hostilities, the Cold War. However, Allison argues the latter example is an example that war is not inevitable.

America since the second world war took on alliances with Europeans mainly, but also Japan and Taiwan, which entailed an American guarantee of lethal force in the case of an invasion or attack. This guarantee of protection came with spoken and unspoken obligations that extended and enhanced America’s influence abroad. In a town hall meeting in 2016, Hillary Clinton explained that countries around the world were often eager and asking for US protection. Allison tells us that, in Thucydides’ time, the Greeks also had an empire

“That empire was acquired not by violence,” they later claimed to the Spartans, but instead “because the allies attached themselves to us and spontaneously asked us to assume the command.”

President Trump has made clear that the US will no longer, while he is president, take a leading role as protector without a kind of tributary role being played by smaller states. China is pleased to take on the role of protector that the U.S. appears no longer to want. In the end, the present American administration may simply move aside to accommodate China without a clear foreign policy strategy.

This book was surprisingly readable and a very good one for clarifying the failures of strategic foreign policy by recent administrations. Allison was able to cut away much obfuscating bluster by spokespeople to have us look at Xi Jinping and Donald Trump with history’s eyeglasses: we see them as leading actors who each personify his country’s “deep aspiration for national greatness.” In his last chapter Allison anticipated Trump’s speech in China this past month, suggesting that each country should pay attention to their own strategic interests. Allison’s words are

“China and the US would be better served not by passive-aggressive ‘should diplomacy’ (calling on the other to exhibit better behavior) or by noble-sounding rhetoric about geopolitical norms, but by unapologetically pursuing their national interests. In high-stakes relationships, predictability and stability—not friendship—matter most. The US should stop playing ‘let’s pretend.’”

However, Donald Trump is anything but predictable and stable. And, Allison reminds us, when states repeatedly fail to act in what appears to be their true national interest, it is often because their policies reflect necessary compromises among parties within their government rather than a single coherent vision. This is true right now in the U.S.; the thing that brings us down may be ourselves rather than China.

Thucydides himself believed fear was at the primary driver at the root of the Peloponnesian War, when a rising Athens threatened Sparta. Donald Trump went out of his way, during the 2016 presidential campaign at least, to hype a type of fear in America about China’s rising militancy and wealth. He almost seemed to open his arms to conflict. The destructiveness of such a contest between the East and the West would be so catastrophic as to be almost unimaginable. Of course Thucydides’ trap is not inevitable, but we must find leaders with great understanding.

[Andrew · Rating 4 out of 5]

Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides’s Trap? by Graham Allison, is a look at current China/United States relations, examining them through the lens of the "Thucydide's Trap." The author explains this as the drive toward confrontation between an established power, and a rising power. The author examines a number of cases (laid out in brief in the appendix) where this was the case (Portugal and Spain in the 15th century, Germany and Britain in the 19th century, England and the Dutch in the 17th century are a few examples). This book is exceedingly Western focused, with little or no analysis of similar rising conflict issues within Asia, except for the Japanese confrontations against Russia and China, and the United States in the 20th century. One would think an analysis of Asian history would be pertinent in analyzing a potential conflict between a resurgent China, and an established United States.

Besides the above criticism, this book stands out as an important analysis of Sino-American relations, and the potential for conflict between these two parties. This reader picked up this book as the Taiwan Straits became a focal point for a military standoff once again, although at the time of writing this review, that crisis may have cooled a tad. And a timely read it made. The book looks at the world from both a Chinese and US perspective, noting the spheres of interest of each nation, and the similarities and differences in their perspectives. The author focus' much on culture, something Lee Kuan Yew, the authors seeming muse, also spoke frequently about. Chinese culture and American culture seem much different on paper. The stereotypes revolve around a patient, persistent and calculating China, and a land of grand experimentation, blisteringly fast growth, and massive population. An American perspective may be characterized by aggression, a universalist view of events, and possible decline as the premier world power. These two cultures clash, as do the events, geopolitical necessities, and domestic considerations of each. The author notes that, in 12/16 cases examined using the Thucydides Trap method, war has broken out between a rising power, and an established power. The author particularly examines the four cases where this has not happened. Spain overtaking Portugal as the premier world power in the 15th and 16th centuries, the United States supplanting Great Britain in the Western hemisphere in the 19th and early 20th century, the Cold War, and the emergence of a united Germany in the 1990's in Europe (this last one seems a stretch, in my opinion). The author notes that a number of factors can keep states away from conflict, including tactful and active diplomacy, an understanding of each perspective, mutually assured destruction, and domestic considerations on the home front. So far, mutually assured destruction has kept the peace, although we have only been in such an era for less than a century at this point, certainly not the longest golden age of peace ever. And even in such an era as we are in, conflicts are common, frequent and raging.

The authors perspective here is interesting. Allison takes the stance, somewhat, of an outsider, examining the emerging conflict between the United States and China from afar. Allison offers policy suggestions for the United States to avoid a conflict, including an active and robust reexamination of its current international stance toward Asia and the Pacific in general. All in all, an interesting and timely read, although one with a serious flaw related to the lack of analysis on Asian conflicts within a Thucydides Trap perspective. Even so, the history, analysis, and ideas in this book seem interesting and thoughtful, and it has certainly earned its reputation as an impotent read on the subject.

[D]

This was well-written and informative. A few takeaways:
- China's growth can hardly be overstated. It's genuinely impressive, and unprecedented in terms of modern metrics.
- Chinese folks, by and large, have a pretty pragmatic view of the world - democracy is not going to happen as long as the country is getting more prosperous under the CCP. If responsive autocracy is working, why fix it? In other words, hardly anyone is still talking about Tiananmen Square, now that China is on the path to growth that it's on.
- Not everyone thinks like Americans think. As a newer country, it's important to understand this. The American ability to look back on history is naturally more limited.
- Chinese especially don't think like Americans think (generally speaking)
- Watch for U.S. concessions in Asia in the years to come.
- Watch for rising tension between China and its neighbors in the years to come.
- Preventing war isn't as simple as "well, nobody wants it, so it's not going to happen" or "they've both got too much for it to lose, so it's not going to happen" or "their economies are so intertwined that war would be national suicide, so it's not going to happen." Just as conflicts among individuals often arise out of miscommunication, even when nobody wants conflict, so it is with international conflict - only the information regarding true intention is more difficult to access and the path to escalation can be set upon without either side intending it. One side's Tactful and skillful diplomacy is extremely important. Words and gestures can mean the difference between war and peace, and alliances can really complicate the matter. A key example is the First World War, in which the war that nobody truly wanted happened, with both sides unable to control the path to escalation.
- De-escalation is much more difficult than escalation. Especially because de-escalation can be interpreted as escalation.
- Mutually assured destruction is still a relevant concept, but not every conflict between nuclear powers is bound to go nuclear.
- The U.S. military is still supreme, but expect China to catch up as a natural consequence of their economic growth
- Countries will test each other to know what they're dealing with.
- Again, alliances are really tricky business.
- Chinese ethnocentrism probably runs deeper than its American counterpart. Honestly though, pretty much all the countries in East Asia...
- T.R. was prolific, any way you spin it. He's largely responsible for the America of the twentieth century and as a result, the America of the twenty-first - and if Great Britain's hands weren't tied during so much of the early nineteen hundreds, there probably would have been some more conflict. Hopefully Xi Jinping isn't a Chinese T.R.
- Eventual violent conflict can be avoided, but a lot of things need to go right.
- History is very instructive in this matter.

以往发生的事，将来还会发生；先前做过的事，将来也必再做。日光之下，根本没有新事。列邦动荡，列国倾覆。上帝的声音使大地熔化

[Murtaza · Rating 4 out of 5]

History shows that changes in the balance of power often occur gradually over time. The spectacular confirmation of the new order sometimes comes only after the fact, when it is punctuated by a decisive war or political collapse. This book argues that the reemergence of China will upend the post-Cold War order in which the United States has been the preeminent power internationally. In the picture that Allison paints, China will not just match the United States as a superpower but will utterly dwarf it within a few decades, particularly in economic terms.

While predicting the future is obviously hazardous the relative growth statistics he cites here are stunning and should be a major wake up call about how decadent America has become during its period of superpower hegemony. For all it’s powerful merits in comparison with Chinese authoritarianism, the dysfunctions of modern American democracy are making meaningful collective action to compete with China effectively impossible. This is a bad portent when one considers the challenges of the years to come.

The Chinese perception of world order is one in which they have a central place. They certainly don’t see themselves as a marginal civilization somewhere in Asia that will allow an outside power to set the terms in its neighborhood. Allison poignantly articulates the stresses that China’s rise is likely to have on the current order. He also examines it in comparison with the United States’ very bellicose emergence as an empire, in addition to several other “Thucydides Trap” situations in history. His examination of Chinese strategic thinking is reasonably compelling, although it is superficial due its brevity and perhaps also overly deterministic since it’s largely based on reviewing old published texts.

There is quite a fatalistic subtext to the book. Not in the sense that war is inevitable (though he makes a convincing case of how it could happen, even against both parties wishes), but rather in the ability of an increasingly dysfunctional United States to hold its own against the rising behemoth that modern China is becoming. Most Americans do not seem to be aware of what is in store for the future or how radically the world is forecasted to change in the next few decades. Let’s hope that the worst outcomes can be avoided, and that at least American leaders will pay attention to the warnings in this book and do what they can to prepare their society accordingly.

[J TC · Rating 5 out of 5]

É um tema seminal, um livro bem escrito e cativante. É mesmo viciante! Linguagem culta mas simples, prende o leitor e leva-o a ler mais um par de páginas antes de interromper. Há poucos livro assim e sobre história ou política da actualidade esse número é seguramente muito menor.
Para além deste notório mérito é um livro riquíssimo na informação que nos trás e na forma como nos esclarece sobre os bastidores do mundo da política e da diplomacia. É um livro que nos enriquece.
E se estes não fossem motivos suficientes para o ler, é ainda um livro que apresenta uma ideia, uma tese, que fundamenta exemplarmente e cuja compreensão é de incontornável valor para podermos construir um futuro melhor e politicamente mais sustentável

[Stanislav Stanchev · Rating 2 out of 5]

Graham Allison's "Destined for War" is an accessible book about one of the most important topics in current international affairs - the relations between the U.S. and China. However, I was actually a bit disappointed with the amount of new content and ideas in the book. The actual idea of a "Thucydides Trap" - where the rise of a new power and the relative decline of the ruling power creates so much stress in the inter-state system that war is likely to break out - was clearly put forth in Allison's original 2015 article in The Atlantic. The idea is so simple that it is immediately compelling. But it is not really developed as a proper hypothesis or theory of international relations. In comparison, I though that Samuel Huntington's "Clash of Civilizations" did a much better and more convincing job at expanding upon the author's central thesis. As a book that deals with a similar topic - but in a more ambitious attempt to generalize and specify the key variables of why wars between major powers occur, I can recommend Dave Copeland's "Origins of Major War".

However, taken as a more popular take on the topic, Allison's book does have some goodies. He draws interesting parallels between the U.S. during the Teddy Roosevelt years and what China seeks to achieve today. However, I wish Chinese history had been explored in much further detail. In places, I almost had the impression (due to the numerous direct quotations) that the author had read material by Lee Kuan Yew, Henry Kissinger and a few others and called it a day.

That is probably very unfair of me, but I was surprised at how little new historical analysis there was in this book. In other places, where I was better able to judge critically, I found outright issues with the argumentation. For instance, Germany is seen as the principal "rising power" that Britain feared in the prelude to WW1. However, the massively impressive The Sleepwalkers" by Cristopher Clark debunks exactly this thesis. Instead, it was Russia that was seen as the Empire#s main challenger and the system's rising power. The entente with Russia and France was a way for Britain to ensure that it would not be the target of Russian aggression and imperial rivalry (and these relations were getting very strained by 1914).

Now, Allison himself writes that - of course - each case of the Thucydides Trap is more complicated "than that" - because "it always is". So I might be nit-picking. Nevertheless, the Britain-Germany case is showcased as a prime example of the Thucydides Trap and yet Allison himself mentions that Britain saw Germany as the rising power, while Germany feared Russia as the rising power instead (?) Would it not be logical to assume that Russia indeed was perceived as the system's rising power in Europe? Or is it more complicated than that - and hence we need a slightly more elaborate model (a la Copeland) to properly explain when major wars occur and when they don't.

Anyway - in summary, I would say that the 2015 article in The Atlantic spurred my own imagination about the Thucydides Trap. By the time I read this book, I may have thought about the issue a lot and hence now feel disappointed. But even with that assumption, I would have been interested in more original insight as to Chinese history and current strategic thinking, because there are so many books about European major wars and so few (that I have read or been recommended) about the vast history of Asia. The scenarios about how a conflict between the US and China could escalate were interesting bits of "what-ifs" but also a bit bare-bones.

All in all, it's a very accessible and easy to read book. It's just not a great book within either international relations or history, in my humble opinion. And I simply expected more, since the author's original idea was at least 3 years old by the time of publication.

[فهد الفهد · Rating 5 out of 5]

Destined for War: can America and China escape Thucydides's Trap?

من أهم قراءات 2018 – ترجم للعربية مؤخراً -، يقدم فيه أليسون عقدة ثوسيديديس وهي الصدام المتوقع بين قوة مسيطرة وقوة ناهضة، يستعرض أليسون تاريخياً كل هذا النوع من الصدامات، من صراع أثينا الصاعدة مع اسبرطة المسيطرة وحتى الصراع المتوقع بين الصين الصاعدة وأمريكا المسيطرة، يحذر أليسون بأن هذا الصراع قد يكون دموياً ومدمراً للطرفين، ولكنه كذلك يطرح أمثلة على صراعات انتهت سلمياً وبلا حرب.

[Mike · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a book for any Westerner that believes China will be an upstanding member of the international community. That the Chinese want a western style democracy, that we should just keep looking the other way as China steals western technology. Pretty clear that China is on a different path. This is also a book to clarify whether and when the West should confront China or cooperate. This book was published just as Trump was taking office. I’d love an update on this now. This is also a book that takes a clear-eyed picture of the US, how we acted in the past and how we might act going forward. Not always a pretty picture. The US had a short period of unipolar status but now there are two big powers. China wants to be respected and wants to influence the world similar to how the US has since the end of WWII. 5 Stars

In businesses, when disruptive technologies allow upstart companies like Apple, Google, or Uber to break quickly into new industries, the result is often a bitter competition that forces established companies like Hewlett-Packard, Microsoft, or taxi operators to adapt their business models —-or perish. Thucydides’ Trap refers to the natural, inevitable discombobulation that occurs when a rising power threatens to displace a ruling power This can happen in any sphere. But its implications are most dangerous in international affairs.

Sixteen cases are examined and you can find them at the below site.

https://www.belfercenter.org/thucydid...

In twelve of those, the result was war. The four cases that avoided this outcome did so only because of huge, painful adjustments in attitudes and actions on the part of challenger and challenged alike. I found the UK-US case at the turn of the 19th-20th Century and the UK-Germany case leading to WWI to be the most interesting and applicable.

If leaders in Beijing and Washington keep doing what they have done for the past decade, the US and China will almost certainly wind up at war.

Let China sleep; when she wakes, she will shake the world. —Napoleon, 1817

The left admires the efficiency of the CCP. The NYT’s Friedman just wants the US to be “China for a day” . And he’d be happy to make us do what needs to be done.

Friedman devotes an entire chapter of his book Hot, Flat, and Crowded to a fantasy about the far-reaching reforms the United States could enact if only it were “China for a day.” Today China is doing in hours what it takes years to accomplish in the US. I have been reminded of this daily when I see the bridge over the Charles River between my office at Harvard Kennedy School and Harvard Business School. It has been under reconstruction, snarling traffic, for 4 years. In November 2015, Beijing replaced the substantially larger, 1,300-ton Sanyuan Bridge in just 43 hours

China steals western IP and many in the west just let it go unchallenged. Worse, China monopolizes production of key items, like medicine and the west lets it. China has immense economic power. Do you trust them?

As a Chinese colleague once explained to me, what Americans call R&D (research and development), Chinese think of as RD&T, where the T stands for theft.

China enjoys such superiority in its balance of economic power that many other states have no realistic option but to comply with its wishes, even when the international system is on their side.

An interesting discussion on the international system, largely developed by the West and the US since WWII. China was weak and not a part of various agreements and treaties. Now they want to have their say. Not a bad argument.

In both the IMF and the World Bank, one—and only one—country has a veto over any changes in governance of the institutions: the United States.

Predictably, as China’s economy has grown, its leaders have become unhappy with these inherited arrangements, and have thus begun to forge new ones. After years of the United States’ refusing to accommodate China’s request for a larger share of the votes at the World Bank, in 2013 Beijing stunned Washington by establishing its own competitive institution, the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB). Despite an intense campaign by Washington to pressure nations not to join China’s bank, fifty-seven signed up before it launched in 2015 — including some of America’s key allies, with the UK in the lead.

I thought this was a very frank observation:

We typically see ourselves as more benign than we are, and are quicker to attribute malign motives to potential adversaries. Because states can never be certain about each other’s intent, they focus instead on capabilities.

The US-UK relationship was changing at the turn of the 19th Century. What would we think and how would we react if Xi acted like Teddy Roosevelt when the US started to feel its oats?
Although the United States was just emerging on the world stage, Roosevelt knew in his bones that the hundred years ahead should be an American era, and he was committed to do everything in his power to make it so. Believing determination to be the handmaid of destiny, TR seized, and on occasion even manufactured, every opportunity to define that century on his own terms. In the decade that followed his arrival in Washington, the US declared war on Spain, expelling it from the Western Hemisphere and acquiring Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines; threatened Germany and Britain with war unless they agreed to settle disputes on American terms; supported an insurrection in Colombia to create a new country, Panama, in order to build a canal; and declared itself the policeman of the Western Hemisphere, asserting the right to intervene whenever and wherever it judged necessary —a right it exercised nine times in the seven years of TR's presidency alone.‘

After the maneuvers to get the Panama canal built, a bold statement:

As his secretary of war, Elihu Root, told TR: “You have shown that you were accused of seduction and you have conclusively proved that you were guilty of rape.”

China is an ancient civilization and they have desires, long denied:

….the intense yearning of a billion Chinese: to be rich, to be powerful, and to be respected. Xi exudes supreme confidence that in his lifetime China can realize all three by sustaining its economic miracle, fostering a patriotic citizenry, and bowing to no other power in world affairs…. As Lee said, “This reawakened sense of destiny is an overpowering force.”

Returning China to the predominance in Asia it enjoyed before the West intruded. Reestablishing control over the territories of “greater China,” including not just Xinjiang and Tibet on the mainland, but also Hong Kong and Taiwan.

Recovering its historic sphere of influence along its borders and in the adjacent seas so that others give it the deference great nations have always demanded. Commanding the respect of other great powers in the councils of the world,

At the core of these national goals is a civilizational creed that sees China as the center of the universe.

As Lee summarized the world view shared by hundreds of Chinese officials who sought his advice (including every leader since Deng Xiaoping), they “recall a world in which China was dominant and other states related to them as supplicants to a superior, as vassals came to Beijing bearing tribute.’” In this narrative, the rise of the West in recent centuries is an anomaly.

The fentanyl crisis in the US is the UK-France Opium War in reverse. China is happy for the degradation of the west.

The subsequent Treaty of Bogue forced the Qing Empire to recognize Britain as a nation equal to China And thirteen years later, in 1856, the French joined the British in the Second Opium War, eventually burning the imperial Summer Palace in Beijing to the ground in 1860. The defeated Chinese were forced to legalize both foreign merchants’ attempts to hook them on opium and foreign missionaries’ efforts to convert them to Christianity. ”

China has a huge chip on its shoulder for past humiliation and that motivates them:

Meanwhile, the phrase …“never forget our national humiliation,” has become a mantra that nurtures a patriotism grounded in victimhood and infused with a demand for payback. As Geoff Dyer has explained, “The Communist Party has faced a slow-burning threat to its legitimacy ever since it dumped Marx for the market.” Thus the Party has evoked past humiliations at the hands of Japan and the West “to create a sense of unity that had been fracturing, and to define a Chinese identity fundamentally at odds with American modernity.”

Interesting turn of phrase. The left demonizes the MAGA right, do they also intend to demonize the CCP?

“Making China Great Again” means:

Returning China to the predominance in Asia it enjoyed before the West intruded.

Reestablishing control over the territories of “greater China,” including not just Xinjiang and Tibet on the mainland, but also Hong Kong and Taiwan.

Recovering its historic sphere of influence along its borders and in the adjacent seas so that others give it the deference great nations have always demanded.

Commanding the respect of other great powers in the councils of the world.

Today, few in China would say that political freedoms are more important than reclaiming China’s international standing and national pride. “If you believe that there is going to be a revolution of some sort in China for democracy, you are wrong. Where are the students of Tienanmen now?” Lee Kuan Yew asked provocatively. And he answered bluntly: “They are irrelevant. The Chinese people want a revived China.”

“Once both China’s dominant economic market and its physical infrastructure have integrated its neighbors into China’s greater co-prosperity area, the United States’ post-World War II position in Asia will become untenable. Asked to distill China’s message to the US, a Chinese colleague answered: Back off. His colleague proposed a more candid two-word summary: Butt out.

The US had/has the Monroe Doctrine, what if China decides to impose an “Asia Doctrine”?

As realistic students of history, Chinese leaders recognize that the role the US has played since World War II as the guardian of regional stability and security has been essential to the rise of Asia, including China itself. But they believe that as the tide that brought the US to Asia recedes, America must leave with it. Much as Britain’s role in the Western Hemisphere faded at the beginning of the twentieth century, so must America’s role in Asia as the region’s historic superpower resumes its place.

Hard to argue that China does not have some justification for an attitude:

But while China projects its internal order outward, it has a nearly visceral mistrust of any external interference in its domestic affairs. As Macartney’s failed mission to eighteenth-century China suggests, long before the century of humiliation, Chinese were wary of foreigners who landed on their shores. They prohibited them from learning Chinese or living among the general population. Strands of this suspicion persist into the present. American historian Crane Brinton captures the depth of resentment in an anecdote in his book Anatomy of a Revolution: “We Americans will for a long time share the blame for that sign in a Shanghai park, ‘Dogs and Chinese not allowed.’” Similarly, as a colleague of mine was told by a deputy mayor of Shanghai, he would know that China was rich again when every upper-middle-class family in Shanghai had an American houseboy.

I really liked this characterization—seems pretty true:

Despite their many differences, the United States and China are alike in at least one respect: both have extreme superiority complexes. Each sees itself as exceptional —literally without peers….The clash of these two number ones will require painful adjustment. Will it be more difficult for the Chinese to rationalize a cosmology in which there are two “suns,” Of for the US to accept that it must live with another, and possibly superior, superpower? Lee Kuan Yew had doubts about America’s ability to adapt to a new reality: “For America to be displaced, not in the world, but only in the western Pacific, by an Asian people long despised and dismissed with contempt as decadent, feeble, corrupt, and inept is emotionally very difficult to accept. The sense of cultural supremacy of the Americans will make this adjustment most difficult.””

In some ways, Chinese exceptionalism is more sweeping than its American counterpart. “The empire saw itself as the center of the civilized universe,”

China (and most Asian countries) are racist while many western countries have avenues to assimilate foreigners into the society:

Chinese attitudes toward foreign political systems have a counter-. part in Chinese views of foreigners in general. American society is as inclusive as China's is exclusive. As a “nation of immigrants,” most Americans are proud of the fact that anyone can become an American. ……..In contrast, to be Chinese one has to be born Chinese.

The differences in political systems reflect the histories of the countries:

America’s government was conceived as a democratic republic, Whereas China’s——under the Qing emperors and Communist Party leaders might best be characterized as responsive authoritarianism.

…there were the Han people and, beyond that, only barbarism. Whatever was not civilized was, by definition, barbaric.” The Chinese, notes Kevin Rudd, take great pride in their resilience and civilizational achievements, and this exceptionalism imbues their very way of thinking, having “generated a self-reverential body of philosophical thought."
Americans, too, revere their civilizational achievements, especially political ones, with nearly religious fervor. The country’s revolutionary history has imparted a passion for freedom unequaled around the globe. It is enshrined in the core of the American political creed, the Declaration of Independence, which proclaims that “all men are created equal” and that they are “endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights.” The Declaration specifies that these rights include “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” and that these are not matters of opinion but rather “self-evident” truths.

For Americans, democracy — government of, by, and for the people —is the only legitimate form of government. It is required to protect citizens’ rights and allow them to flourish. ……The political legitimacy of any government, Americans believe, can only be derived from the consent of the governed.

Most Chinese would disagree. They believe that political legitimacy comes from performance.

The US is a recent arrival on the world scene compared to China. This impacts how each sees itself.
American and Chinese time horizons — their sense of past, present, and future —are as different as night and day. Americans look forward to celebrating the country’s 250th birthday in 2026, while Chinese note proudly that their history spans five millennia. Americans mark July 4, 1776, as the birth of their nation, but China has no recorded genesis. Thus, unlike every other nation that traces its development along a path of rise and fall, China sees itself as a fixture of the universe: it always was; it always will be, US leaders refer to the “American experiment, ” and their sometimes haphazard policies follow in kind. By contrast, Chinese leaders see themselves as trustees of a sacred inheritance, and act accordingly.

China is a serious player. How many in the West would prefer to operate in a Chinese-designed system vs the current one.

Americans urge other powers to accept a “rule-based international order.” But through Chinese eyes, this appears to be an order in which Americans make the rules, and others obey the orders., they would inevitably point out that those rules were made when they were absent from the world stage,” Dempsey remarked. “They are no longer absent from the world stage, and so those rules need to be renegotiated with them.””

[Richard · Rating 3 out of 5]

There is much that is important in this book. Allison makes some strong points about the differences between China’s worldview and our own, and how it affects our respective approaches to the world. He discusses how we need to approach foreign policy, and more importantly, what we need to understand about ourselves before we can come up with a coherent strategy to deal with China and other international challenges.

However, the book never quite comes together. It feels like scraps from several different books, and the basic premise – that the future of the China/America relationship, the likelihood of war, can be illuminated by a study of Thucydides’ work on the war between Athens and Sparta – is used very unevenly and not fully developed.

Allison explores several historic cases in which a developing power and an existing power come into conflict, and looks at why those conflicts did or did not lead to war. I think it is a brilliant concept, and could help shed light on a difficult, complex, and frightening topic.
The first few examples, though, felt dumbed-down and almost pandering. A quick re-cap of an ancient story, a brief lecture with the term “The Thucydides Trap” repeated ad nauseum. (It’s an old trope of non-fiction writers trying a little too hard to make a point. Has anyone else read “The Conundrum?”)

As the stories begin to reflect more recent (and specifically American) history, the book shifts. The tales become much more detailed, but often bog down in endless detail that has nothing to do with the overall theme of the book. Theodore Roosevelt’s personality, etc. etc. etc. And the concept of The Thucydides Trap seems to disappear.

Then Allison returns to the discussion of the relationship between China and the US. This is where the heart of the book lies. Allison is not afraid to bluntly lay out the challenges facing us as we navigate our way through a complex, changing, and frightening world. Options we must consider, though they seem repugnant to us. And a wholesale re-examination of our place in the world that we need to do to truly re-gain any control of our national destiny.

Though saying, essentially, that policy-makers need to be wise is not really very helpful.
So is it a perfect book? Unfortunately, no, far from it. But it is nonetheless an important book for anyone concerned about our relationship with China, and more importantly, with our place in the new world.

My recommendation is to read it, to skim the boring or annoying bits, but to think deeply about the more challenging parts.

[Angie Tang · Rating 3 out of 5]

By far the best review of Allison’s book by Sinologist Arthur Waldron - ouch!
“How to conclude a look at so ill conceived and sloppily executed a book? Do not blame Allison. The problem is the pervasive lack of knowledge of China — a country which is, after all, run by the Communist Party, the police, and the army, and thus difficult to get to know. This black hole of information has perversely created an overabundance of fantasies, some very pessimistic, some as absurdly bright as a foreigner on the payroll can make them.”

[Vidur Kapur · Rating 4 out of 5]

As a professor at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, Graham Allison has had privileged access to policymakers in Washington for many decades, and was mentored by none other than the notorious Henry Kissinger.

What he has seen, vis-à-vis US policy on China, frightens him. American officials have until recently downplayed China's commercial and military gains, and adopted an incoherent strategy, one which "permits everything and prohibits nothing". In actual fact, a patient, carefully calculated strategy, similar to that devised by policymakers in the late 1940s when confronted with the rise of the Soviet Union, is sorely needed.

Why? Historically, as Allison recounts, when a rising power has challenged the established dominant power, it has more often than not led to destructive warfare. This is the essence of what Allison terms the "Thucydides Trap", for it was Thucydides who first recognised this dynamic.

It should be noted that some classicists have challenged Allison's interpretations of Thucydides, but their objections seem to be rather pedantic. Allison does not claim that war between the United States and China is inevitable, for instance, and notes that Thucydides probably wasn't claiming that war between Athens and Sparta was inevitable either. Nor does Allison ignore the differences between ancient Greece and the modern world: yes, we have nuclear weapons that act as a deterrent to warfare, but participants in war games and simulations (which he describes at length) "are repeatedly surprised to find how often and easily small sparks lead to large wars." And while there are debates about the best translation of Thucydides, the central idea, that of the potential for war during a power transition, has been studied by international relations theorists for decades. Ultimately, many of these classicists seem to be annoyed that political scientists and international relations theorists are encroaching on their territory.

Others, for instance the writer Ian Buruma, have objected to the book on account of the people that the author evidently admires, including Henry Kissinger and Lee Kuan Yew. While they are undoubtedly controversial figures, their insights on China should not go unheeded, and Destined for War does not exclusively rely on these individuals by any means. Allison and his colleagues themselves have clearly had many off-the-record conversations with Chinese officials.

As for the book's recommendations, some critics have claimed that Allison wants to "appease" China just as Nazi Germany was appeased by Britain in the 1930s. This is a misreading: Allison sketches out a number of strategies, including "accommodation" (which requires concessions from China as well as the United States) but also "undermine". Whereas Henry Kissinger, in his earlier book On China, advocated a Pacific Community, similar in scope to the European Union, in order to defuse tensions and foster cooperation between the US, China and other regional powers, Allison is arguably more realistic about what can be achieved.

Others, including the UK Prime Minister's Chief Adviser Dominic Cummings, have interpreted Allison to be implying that the strategies he outlines are mutually exclusive. This, too, is likely to be a misreading: Allison notes that Bismarck would likely have handled the events leading up to the First World War much more deftly than the actual German leadership did, and that he would have employed a mix of strategies in order to do so. Similarly, Allison argues, the bipartisan strategy towards the Soviet Union followed by successive administrations included multiple elements, from agreements on arms control to support for dissidents in Communist-controlled countries. What is key is that Bismarck, and Cold War-era US administrations, had their respective countries' core interests in mind.

To many, this call for a return to geopolitical realism (Allison's mentor was Kissinger, after all) will be a hard pill to swallow. It may involve sacrifices in the South and East China Seas, and indeed on the question of Taiwan. Is the risk of war really large enough to justify these sacrifices; is the status quo not working relatively well? Allison, fairly persuasively in my view, makes the case that war is indeed much more likely than our intuitions might lead us to assume.

[Allen Roberts · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good assessment of U.S.-China relations, with numerous comparative historical examples. Two or more rival world economic powers have been mutually drawn down the path to war in the past, but there are certainly cases proving that this is not an inevitability. However, shrewd leaders who are mindful of history are needed in order to successfully navigate the dangerous waters of international politics. Is America capable of picking such leaders? For the sake of all our futures, I certainly hope so. For those interested in international affairs, this is well worth a read. 4 stars.

[Owlseyes]

President says US will act unilaterally if China does not pressure Pyongyang
in: https://www.ft.com/content/4d9f65d6-1...

[Raghu Nathan · Rating 3 out of 5]

The spectacular rise of China’s economic and military might in the past twenty years has given rise to hope as well as anxiety and fear among diplomats and policy makers in the United States. Even the academics and historians are intrigued by what it portends for the future. Consequently, we have a plethora of books, essays and analysis in the media and from the publishing houses. This book is one more contribution to the subject, but quite an original and interesting one. It focuses on the question of whether China and the US will inevitably stumble into war with one another, as a result of China’s challenge to displace US as the primary military power in the Asia-Pacific. How does one predict a prognosis of war between two superpowers, who are separated from each other physically by ten thousand kilometers and are linked only by trade and diplomacy? Author Allison reaches far back into history, invoking the theories of Thucydides, a 5th century Athenian historian and general, to provide the framework for an answer. Thucydides analysed the Peloponnesian War of the 5th century BCE between Sparta and Athens and pronounced that severe structural stress is caused when a rising power threatens to upend a ruling one. In such conditions, not just extraordinary , unexpected events, but even ordinary flashpoints of foreign affairs, can trigger large-scale conflict. This is called the Thucydides Trap by the author. History has seen many instances where new rising powers have challenged ruling powers in the world . Allison enumerates sixteen such instances in the past 500 years of world history and shows that as many as twelve of them have resulted in Wars. From these sixteen instances, the author distills the clues as to when war results and when it does not. He then proceeds to apply these principles to the current US - China conflict and suggest prescriptions for how the conflict may be managed.

First of all, is there a rational basis for the US to conclude that China, as a rising power, threatens the United States? Or is the US just demonstrating the normal ruling power syndrome of exaggerated fears, insecurities and dread of changes in the status quo? Let us look at the facts on the ground. On the one hand, Western experts, after deep engagement with China, say that China’s leaders believe that the grand strategy of the US in dealing with China is based on five ‘to’s: to isolate China, to contain China, to diminish China, to internally divide China and to sabotage China’s leadership. Such a deeply held negative view is not conducive to peace, especially when both see each other as equals. The past decade has seen the Chinese economy catch up with the US in GDP (on PPP terms), providing a lot of resources to augment its military strength. In addition, China has seen the ascendency of Xi Jinping as its leader. Xi’s vision is to reclaim the purported historical greatness of China as the pre-eminent power in Asia, before Western imperialism intruded to upset it in the 19th century. A corollary of this vision, as per Xi himself, is to re-establish control over the territories of ‘greater China’, which includes Tibet, Xinjiang, Hong Kong, Taiwan and the islands in East Asia and south China sea. A further corollary is to recover the historic sphere of influence in its neighbourhood and make them defer to China as was the case in history, according to this narrative. In addition, China wants to command respect of other great Western powers of the world, to offset their century of humiliation. All this is articulated as part of the Centennial goals by Xi himself. With such a dominant vision and a strong suspicion of US motives, conflict seems a natural fall-out. However, in a world used to ideas based on Enlightenment and Reason for two centuries, there will be severe resistance to such a dominant vision, particularly from other powers in Asia, such as Japan, India, Vietnam and Indonesia, not to mention the US and other Western powers. Hence, the US has good reasons to be wary of China and the Thucydides trap.

However, the Thucydides trap does not mean that war is inevitable. The book elicits twelve clues from the past four instances in history where the Thucydides trap skirted war. When I look at these clues, I find that some clues are applicable in this case but do not seem strong enough to prevent war. Some others are not applicable in this case at all. In the end, I find that only three of them are decisively applicable to the current US-China situation. They are: Nuclear weapons on both sides, the doctrine of MAD (Mutually assured destruction) and deep economic interdependence due to globalization. Seen in this light, it looks as though the author has arrived at the same conclusions that others have arrived at long ago even during the Soviet era, without having to invoke the Thucydides Trap. Even though these above mentioned clues might prevent war, the author says that it is necessary for the US to review all its strategic options, however contradictory and ugly. The strategic options are: accommodating China, undermining China, Negotiating a Long Peace and redefining the relationship. As accommodation, the US can consider curtailing its commitment to Taiwan in exchange for concessions on south China sea, withdrawing troops from S.Korea in exchange for Chinese denuclearization of N.Korea. In undermining China, the US could foment regime change or divide China against itself, question the legitimacy of the Communist Party as Ronald Reagan did with the USSR, support Taiwanese, Hong Kong and Tibetan independence, support dissidents, do substantial cyber damage and even train and support insurgents in Xinjiang. In negotiating peace, Washington could limit surveillance operations along China’s borders, especially near China’s military installations on Hainan island in return for Beijing removing anti-ship and anti-air missiles from the south China sea. China could be asked to end patrols near the Senkaku islands in return for the US stopping provocative navigations in the south China sea.

In spite of the phenomenal accomplishments of China in the past thirty years, I find that some assumptions by Western scholars are based on dubious grounds. They accept the Chinese communist line that historically China has been the dominant power in Asia, to which other countries in the neighbourhood deferred, paid tributes in return for Chinese largesse. Such a narrative is advanced by China to project a powerful image of itself, when reality is probably a few notches down. Much as the West might pay obeisance to this narrative, the rest of Asia does not really see it this way at all. It is not true that China was such a dominant power in all of Asia at any time. Many tribes in China’s periphery have harassed Chinese rulers in history and extracted tribute. The Manchus ruled China for 250 years. The Mongols conquered all of China and ruled them for over a century. Areas such as Xinjiang and Tibet are acquisitions by these invaders rather than by the Han Chinese. What happened at the hands of the British and the Japanese in the 19th and 20th centuries is well known. Elsewhere in South-East Asia, the civilization is influenced more by India than China. West Asia is influenced by Islam much more than China. China’s dominance seems to have been limited just to East Asia and Vietnam rather than all over the vast Asian continent. Still, western academics seem to toe the Chinese line that they were the dominant power in Asia in history and that other nations paid tribute to it.

Secondly, Allison seems to readily grant China an equivalence with the US and implore a need to accommodate its superpower ambitions. Except for nuclear weapons and missiles, China lags significantly behind the US in many key areas, like science, technology, per capita income, soft power and many other areas of military capabilities. The US is still a young nation with active immigration which lets it renew itself constantly. Whereas China is said to age faster than its economic growth, limiting its future possibilities. The option of a younger future population through immigration also seems unlikely due to China’s historical insularity. China’s economy is slowing down and it has mounting debt issues. All these factors might point to the daunting odds of China closing the gap between itself and the US. But, many Western scholars seem to grant an easy pass for China as a superpower on par with the US.

Thirdly, I find it odd that many scholars write approvingly of China’s navigation of international affairs and diplomacy as something based on the three pillars of ‘tian xia’ (China’s view of itself as being the center of the world), Confucian wisdom and Sun Tzu’s theories of war. If an Islamic nation conducts its world affairs today based on the Quran or a Christian nation does it based on the Bible, scholars would slam them as being fundamentalist in outlook. Confucian ethics and Sun Tzu’s works, though secular, are much older than the Quran or the Bible and they were guidelines for a world which was much different from what it is today. But China is spoken of admiringly for invoking Confucian wisdom in dealing with the world rather than being slammed as ‘fundamentalist’. I would think that this is a weakness of China rather than its strength, if it is at all true that the Chinese leadership is really guided by these principles.

Nevertheless, this is a thought provoking book, written in a fast-paced style.

[Moh. Nasiri · Rating 4 out of 5]

تله توسیدید و جنگ قدرتها

کتابی که رویارویی قدرتهایی جهانی در قرن و دهه حساس فعلی به تصویر کشیده است شنیدن پادکست صوتی آن خالی از لطف نخواهد بود

لینک پادکست صوتی با صدای دکتر ایمان فانی(مدرسه زندگی)

https://imanfani.com/تله-توسیدید-و-جن...

توسیدید ژنرال ارتش آتن در قرن پنجم پیش از میلاد، پدر تاریخنگاری علمی از نظر غرب شناخته می شود. وی در کتاب تاریخ جنگهای پلوپونزی، دینامیسم دشوار و به سختی اجتناب پذیری را توضیح می دهد که درآن خطر جنگ میان یک قدرت مستقر و یک قدرت در حال رشد به شدت بالا می رود. این مکانیزم در مفهوم مدرن، ابتدا در مورد برخورد چین و آمریکا مطرح شد اما کاربردی بسیار فراتر دارد و تنش کنونی آمریکا و ایران را هم توضیح می دهد.
در این گفتار به نظرات گراهام آلیسون استاد علوم سیاسی دانشگاه هاروارد در مورد توسیدید در کتاب «جنگ محتوم» هم پرداخته می شود. مفاهیم دیگری که در این مقاله صوتی به آن می پردازیم، هژمون و هژمونی، قدرت نرم و قدرت سخت و نظریه هارتلند هالفورد مکیندر است.

*Thucydides

نقل از سایت مدرسه زندگی،ایمان فانی

[Aristotle · Rating 4 out of 5]

Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides’s Trap? by Graham Allison

Only the dead have seen the end of war. Or have they? Renowned political scientist Graham Allison seeks to analyze the complex situation that presents itself between the United States and China in Destined for War, and discover if the historical precedent of destructive conflict can truly be avoided. Above all else, I found this book to extremely gripping and informative, written in a digestible essay style that still has it’s creative extensions.

For such a striking the title, the book itself is by far one of the least alarmist pieces of literature I’ve read on the topic of China under the CCP. While the book does haveit’s fair share of heavy handedness, it possesses a far greater understanding of the varying dynamics and nuances underlying China’s policies and politics than I was expecting by far. Allison’s Destined for War also makes broad use of history and statistics from the very first pages of his book, giving all his writing the legitimacy of an expert. Further into the book, his conflict comparisons seek to give examples of both war prevailing and being forgone. This even focus helps Allison’s analysis stay on the objective side of things, being the advocate for Realpolitik that he is. In the books third part which is it’s strongest, a much more focused look at China and the US in the modern day is given. Differences, similarities and war itself is given attention in detail. The final part is a more meditative but very necessary look at how peace can prevail. Destined for War isn’t without some flaws, which I will cover as well.

As mentioned, the title of this book is a bit questionable. Indeed, many of the people I mentioned it to automatically assumed the book to be largely alarmist, which I believe it very well isn’t. I think something as simple as adding a question mark directly at the end of Destined for War would have markedly improved it’s first impression. If I was somebody more sympathetic to both sides of the pacific ocean, I might not have picked up this book in the first place. Luckily for Graham Allison, I’m not. In saying that, I am surprised at how much the contents of this book defy the title. So much so that my own views on the pacific struggle have been significantly re-angled after reading through this piece.

I’ve consistently vouched for the use of evidence in non-fiction titles and I’m rarely unsatisfied with most works, but Allison’s Destined for War superbly impressed. Even without the mountainous Index, Appendix and Notes section housed at the rear of the book, Destined for War does an excellent job of integrating historical and statistical evidence into it’s pages. Whether it’s comparisons, quotes, numbers or percentages, everything appears to be sourced and always used in a measured degree. Essentially, Allison’s use of statistics throughout Part 1 provides a jumping off point for the rest of the book.

A good central chunk of Destined for War is dedicated specifically to historical study, or as it’s termed: ‘Applied History’. Allison uses examples such as Britain and Germany, and more importantly Athens and Sparta. This is important because throughout the book Allison repeatedly quotes, references and even reveres Thucydides’s History of the Peloponnesian War. He uses the work to make important comparisons to today’s confrontation between the USA and China. It’s these largely accurate comparisons that he utilizes to form the basis of his approach towards peace, not only through examples of war but also examples of where peace has occurred as well. Allison never seemed to focus too much on any one thing and the examples never got boring, thus I think it helped the book a great deal.

Destined for War is at it’s strongest in it’s third part. In this part Allison orchestrates four key ideas. Without getting into serious detail or spoilers, he covers all you’d expect him to: Xi Jinping and his connection to the past, OBOR and the Monroe Doctrine, civil differences between the PRC and USA along with several war scenarios. Among these, it was Allison’s theories on a future war between the two nations struck me best. As a fan of strategy and world politics myself, I found they had a great deal of plausibility and accuracy and were rather far from alarmist calls in the media.

The book ends itself on the kind of note I was hoping for: One that looks forward positively towards the future. Allison demonstrated throughout the book a keen understanding of both China and the USA, how they operate, how they see the world, how their people perceive their government and so on. So with this, he takes a look at both today and the past for clues towards peace. With that, he lays a respectable roadmap towards another détente in our age. Only time will tell if these maps are accurate or not, but they do certainly seem well put together.

There were only two main flaws I found with Destined for War. The first is that, while I don’t mind that he is, Graham Allison being an adherent to the ideas of Henry Kissinger limits the scope of his book. It would have been better for him to simply refer to the ageing statesman as a reference alongside all others in the book, rather than showing his obvious faith in him. Kissinger is still debated today as either a war criminal or diplomat of the ages, but considering the amount of litigation against him and the fact that he is still alive, Allison’s use of him in this book struck a wrong chord with me. Allison also makes rare but sweeping claims regarding the history of things like social democracy, capitalism and communism. While I largely agreed with what he had to say, I think his book would have a more active lifespan if he took a step away from the historiography of today.

In summary, Graham Allison’s Destined for War is a well researched analysis of relations between the USA and China that despite Allison’s best efforts still possesses a lot of the archaic beliefs of the post-Cold War school of thought. Whether this was unavoidable or not, I can’t say, but Allison’s consideration for the Information Age is still commendable. While I’ve taken pains to pick it apart, the book did still grant me a much wider degree of thought on the topic and gave me new questions moving forward. I would say it’s a must read for anyone looking to learn more on the future of the world’s two prevalent superpowers. I’d be happy giving it an 8/10.

[Bakunin · Rating 4 out of 5]

"It was the rise of Athens and the fear this instilled in Sparta that made war inevitable."
- Thucidides, History of the Peloponnesian war

This is in essence Thucydide's trap which great powers face when confronted with a rising power. Harvard professor Graham Allison doesn't think war is predetermined but sees it as a very possible outcome in the case of US versus China. One must take the historical cases into account and therefore ponder the risks involved. Allison essentially categorizes the conflict between US and China as one between different civilizations (quoting Samuel Huntingtons famous paper).

How many times have such a confrontation between powers led to war in the last 500 years? 12 out of 16 times. One case is the one between Britain and Germany in the early 1900's. I hadn't heard of the Crowe memorandum which was writted by an official in the foreign office whose german expertise allowed him to see risks involved with an expansionist Germany. Germany was at this point building a navy and effectively challenging Britains dominance. He therefore surmised that Germany's intentions did not matter; what mattered was their capabilities. "A vague policy of growth could at any time shift into a grand design for political and naval dominance"

Allison has a whole chapter devoted to TRs presidency and the ramifications this had on the world stage. I had previously read Kissingers somewhat positive account of his foreign policy (tending to realpolitik rather than some form of neoconservatism). Allison made me rethink Roosevelts this however and see how warlike TR war. He was the kind of person who would often threat other countries with war if they did not comply to his term and even went to war with Spain in order to gain new territorities (and actually participated in the war). TR often conflates his foreign policies goals (i.e. an expansion of American power and influence) with a moral which sounds a lot like neoconservative foreign policy. The key difference is perhaps that TRs language is often tilted toward power politics which show his true intentions. Make America Great.

Chinese foreign policy on the other hand is not missionary but expands by way of cultural osmosis. Chinese civilization is - according to Allison - as exclusive as the West is inclusive. It is ethno-centric. I enjoyed reading about Xis background and how tragic his early life was (his father was close to Mao until he was labeled a traitor). Allison goes into great detail to explain how Chinese take a longer view on things and how they see every policy as part of a holistic vision of what they want China to be (or rather: what Xi wants for China). I hadn't thought about foreign politics in terms of geoeconomics which indeed managed to change my perspective on things.

I just don't see how anyone can steer the market seeing as how it is essentially something decentralized. Obviously a great deal of the rise in GDP growth of China comes from urbanisation but how can they maintain a high level of innovation given their totalitarian system? I don't see how this is possible. But perhaps they don't need to innovate as much - they simply steal the latest tech from the US.

I recommend this for anyone interested in politics!

[Alexandru · Rating 4 out of 5]

Destined for War by Graham Allison is a book about the geopolitics between China and the US, specifically whether the two super-powers can avoid going to war and potentially destroying the whole world in the process.

The author places this geopolitical situation within the so-called Thucydide's Trap. This 'trap' refers to the situation when a rising power (China) challenges an established power (USA). It was first noted by the Greek historian Thucydide in antiquity when the rising power of Athens challenged Sparta and the two states engaged in a devastating war known as the Peloponnesian War.

Graham Allison notes that in the past 500 years there have been 16 such international situations and only in 4 of them the rival powers managed to avoid war (Britain and US in early XXth century, the USSR and Japan in the 70-80s, the USSR and US in the Cold War and UK-France and Germany in the 1990s). In the rest of the cases major wars broke out and one of the powers ends being defeated and losing its status of world power. The best known cases are the Napoleonic Wars, World War I and World War II.

China has experienced a 'century of humiliation' between the XIXth and XXth centuries which has left deep marks in the Chinese psyche. The Communist Party has managed to raise China from its international humiliation and as such enjoys widespread legitimacy among the population.

Since the opening of the Chinese economy to trade with the West the country's economy has grown at a staggering pace. It is now larger than the US economy if measured in PPP. If Chinese workers had the same level of productivity as their American counterparts the Chinese economy would be 4 times bigger than the US. This staggering economic growth has led to China quickly becoming a world superpower and it is now challenging the US in technological, economical, cultural and military fields.

The Chinese leaders believe that now is the time for the country to claim its place among the world's superpowers and wash away the shame of the previous centuries.

A few of the key takeaways of the book include:

- China is challenging the American hegemony in Asia and the Pacific
- China has a very long term view of geopolitics and history being able to postpone and prepare actions for generations, for example in the 1980s Deng Xiaoping postponed the resolution of a dispute with Japan for a generation in the hope that the next generations will be wiser and have better tools to deal with it
- the US by contrast is all about achieving success in the moment and has a very short-term view of history
- China sees government as the most important element of society and Confucianism's main tenet is 'Know thy place'. As such, the citizens of China are seen as wheels in a greater system and their role is to further the state and their community. China expects all of its people to work in the interest of the state and this includes even Chinese ethnics which are citizens of other countries
- the US sees government as a necessary evil, individualism and distrust of government is embedded within the American way of thinking and even within the US Constitution.
- the Chinese government and the state is controlled by the Party with the leader at the top
- The US state is by definition built in such a way that no one person or organisation has the whole power. This decisions are usually very slow and are easy to be blocked by various factions
- China will not become a democracy due to the fact that the Communist Party has brought wealth and prosperity, the Tienanmen Square massacre is all but forgotten
- the US has a very American-centric view of the world believing that the Western values of freedom and democracy should be exported to the whole world
- China prefers expanding its influence using economic means, gradually drawing the countries around it into its sphere of influence without the need to use violent means
- by contrast, ever since the US became a global superpower in the early XXth century it used military interventions to enforce its influence

The author also deals with a few scenarios in which war could break out between China and America. What all the scenarios have in common is the fact that despite the fact that both powers try to avoid war certain events happen which lead to an escalation of hostilities until all out war happens. A war could break out in several situations:

- an event directly involving China and America such as an American warship accidently colliding with a Chinese warship. This could lead to Chinese retaliation and could escalate to all out war.
- an event involving an ally of China and America such as the collapse of the North Korean regime and South Korea trying to reunify the country or the Japanese enforcing their claim on disputed islands. In this case China or America will need to intervene on behalf of its ally and war could break out.
- an event involving a nefarious third party such as a Russian hackers impersonating Chinese hackers doing a cyber attack on the US. In this case the US might order a counter-strike against China's main cyber hubs triggering a military reaction.

It remains to be seen whether war can be avoided as China's military becomes more and more powerful and its ships, bases and airplanes start encroaching on US interests in the South China Sea, Taiwan, Japan and beyond.

[Steven Peterson · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is Thucydides’ Paradox (from his towering work, The Peloponnesian Wars) and its implication for American-Chinese relations, as per Graham Allison:

About the Peloponnesian War that devastated ancient Greece, the historian Thucydides explained: “It was the rise of Athens and the fear that this instilled in Sparta that made war inevitable.” Over the past 500 years, these conditions have occurred sixteen times. War broke out in twelve of them. Today, as an unstoppable China approaches an immovable America and both Xi Jinping and Donald Trump promise to make their countries “great again,” the seventeenth case looks grim.

This book explores the developing relationship between China and the United States in terms of Thucydides.

Allison is an eminent student of politics. His work on the Cuban Missile Crisis is a classic (and deservedly so). Thus, we should probably take this work seriously. However, it seems unlikely that this would be the 13th case out of 17 that lead to war. Allison’s discussion of prior example of the Paradox coming in to play is quite useful.

Some pluses of this work—the examination of examples of the Paradox taking place, the historical perspective on the US versus China. Still, China has not shown a real interest in spending a fortune on its military to challenge the United States. Moreover, its economic growth will soon allow it to outstrip the US in terms of GDP (even though is has surpassed the United States already if we use an alternative measure—PPP (Purchasing Power Parity; see https://www.investopedia.com/updates/...). China is more a status quo power than a revisionist power.

An interesting book, but I’m not so sure that Thucydides’ Paradox is really “in play.”

[Noah Graham · Rating 3 out of 5]

The books premise that there will naturally be war between a dominant power and a rising one seems to describe the exception rather than the rule, because as change is the only constant their is always some power rising and some power falling, but wars are not happening in most of the world most of the time.
For example; in the 1980's Japan was asia's leading economy, now it is china. there was no war between the 2.
Similarly russia was asia's dominant military power (Usurped by china again)
In 1930 China was the biggest democracy in the world. in the 1950 india was. The 2 didn't fight.
In 1990 Japan designed the best electronics in the world now America does. Again no war.
1989 the soviet block was the biggest coherent voting block in the united nations. in 91 the European union was. No war.
It's almost impossible to define dominance in such as way as to make Thucydides trap true (have more than 50% of dominance shifts accompanied by war).
Now I agree that war between america and china is a significant concern. America and China fought before in Korea and both define their strategic interests in such a way that they could easily step on each others toes. And war may really be more likely in times when the balance of power is shifting, simply because it is unnecessary when both parties know who would win. But if someone needed to understand US-China relations and only had time to read one book I can not in good conscious recommend this one.

[Muhammad Jalal · Rating 5 out of 5]

An interesting insight into how realists in International Relations view the ongoing security competition between the USA and China in the Asia Pacific and beyond. Allison draws upon his understanding of the Peloponnesian wars and puts forward a novel argument that in the past 500 years, on the majority of occasions the rising power and the established power would find it almost impossible to prevent the steady march to war. Writing before the Coronavirus war of words and the trade war, Allison argues enormous concessions would need to made by the USA to accommodate the inevitable rise of China.

A brilliant read, not really for anyone looking to find optimism in this new world.

[Scriptor Ignotus · Rating 5 out of 5]

While Graham Allison’s grim prognosis on the Sino-American rivalry intends primarily to contextualize it within the historical patterns of shifting imperial tectonics, it also serves inadvertently to underscore the utter uniqueness—and consequent danger—of the current world situation. Never before have two civilizations of such profoundly antipodal character—historical, cultural, and ideological—so alien to one another in the very shape of their language and thought, and each so brazenly confident in its own indispensability, faced off in the form of a single bilateral contest between two nations, with so much at stake for themselves and for the world.

While America painted itself on a (mostly) blank canvas within the remit of modernity, applying fresh Pollockian coats and colors with each generation, Chinese civilization is so ancient as to be more archetypal than historical. If the “United States of Amnesia” has no past, but is ever-present, then China has no origin linking it to time, but only tradition linking it to eternity. If America’s highest values are individual freedom and equality, viewing government as, at best, a necessary evil, China roots itself in order, hierarchy, and organized collective enterprise, prizing centralized authority as the kelson of civilization. If America understands itself as a nation of immigrants, united by common ideals and a respect for its hallowed laws and institutions, the Chinese imperium is unabashedly racial, claiming to encompass every Chinese face both at home and abroad. If America is the world’s indispensable missionary of liberty, the arsenal of democracy, and the last, best hope of earth, then China is the very bridge between earth and heaven, around which every other nation must gather in subservience to partake of its divine emanations.*

Since 1945, the United States has stood at the pinnacle of a world order anchored by its economic girth, regulated by its unparalleled command of international trade and finance, motivated by its ideals of liberal democracy, international law, human rights, rules-based conduct, and open trade, and underwritten by its military supremacy. Yet the astonishing rise of China following its “march to the market” under Deng Xiaoping in the 1980s is likely to completely overturn this “rules-based international order,” sidelining a notoriously unilateralist and “exceptionalist” America while rewriting the rules of an international system that was constructed when China was too weak to play an integral role.

From 1980, China’s economy has grown at an average rate of 10 percent each year. While this growth has slowed more recently, China has accounted for a jaw-dropping 40 percent of the entire world’s economic growth since the “Great Recession” of 2007-08. Although in nominal terms the United States retains the world’s largest GDP, when this GDP is measured in the purchasing power of their respective currencies to account for market fluctuations, China surpassed the United States in 2014 and continues to widen the gap, now accounting for more than 18 percent of world GDP. China has become the largest trading partner of more than 130 countries, marking a dramatic reversal of American trade dominance over the last thirty years. By midcentury, the Chinese economy could be more than three times the size of its American counterpart. If the productivity of Chinese workers were to equal that of Americans, its economy would be four times larger. No longer merely the factory of the world’s cheap consumer goods, China has also become the largest consumer of most products, including automobiles, cell phones, energy, and even luxury clothing brands.

And if history is any guide, economic dominance is almost always followed by military dominance. While China lacks America’s unique capacity for power projection, engendered by the latter’s naval supremacy; and while historically it has only been territorially expansionistic when ruled by foreigners (the Yuan and Qing dynasties being the best examples); and while its traditional lack of a seafaring nature despite its lengthy coastline made it vulnerable to the repeated invasions of Japan and the Western powers that characterized its “century of humiliation” from the Opium Wars to the communist victory of 1949; China is rapidly developing an “area-denial” capability that would currently make it unsafe for American aircraft carriers to operate within a thousand miles of its coasts in the event of hostilities: namely by employing such asymmetrical weapons systems as antiship and antisatellite missiles, which could neutralize American naval effectiveness in a battlespace close to Chinese shores.

In the event of a Sino-American war, America’s “Air-Sea” doctrine would call for the usage of long-range bombers to destroy Chinese missile platforms before moving its carrier groups within striking distance; but it is highly-questionable how well such a strategy would succeed in a real scenario; and the fact that, in the event of a naval confrontation in the South China Sea, America’s only options might be to either back down, or launch a full-scale bombing campaign, or else risk allowing China to strike the first blow by sinking American ships and killing thousands of sailors and marines in a matter of hours, means that any naval collision or game of “chicken” at sea has the potential to rapidly escalate into full-scale war.

In addition to countering America’s naval advantages on the cheap, the geoeconomic strategy behind China’s One Belt, One Road (OBOR) initiative—a massive international infrastructure project linking Asia, Europe, and North Africa with a high-speed overland transportation network—threatens to make sea power increasingly irrelevant within the “World Island” of Eurasia. In a sense, Alfred Thayer Mahan’s thesis on the primacy of sea power for imperial greatness may soon be superseded by Halford Mackinder’s adage that “Who rules the World Island commands the World.” China threatens to close off the World Island for itself, realizing a perennial American nightmare and leaving the indispensable nation out in the cold.

When one looks for historical analogues to the Sino-American contest, one finds little in the way of consolation. The brutal reality is that whenever a rising power has challenged an established hegemon the way China is challenging the United States, the confrontation almost always results in war. This conundrum is what Allison calls “Thucydides’s Trap,” referring to the rivalry of the fifth century BC between a dominant, terrestrial Sparta and a rising maritime Athenian empire which spun out into a twenty-seven-year war and immolated the entire Greek world. Unless both China and the United States take dramatic, conscious action to change course, says Allison, they are heading toward a disaster of unparalleled proportions.

The precedents are legion. The Anglo-Dutch wars of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries resulted as England displaced the Dutch Republic as the leading maritime power in the North Atlantic. The selection of Charles I of Spain over Francis I of France for the title of Holy Roman Emperor raised the specter of France’s encirclement by the Habsburg dynasty and the establishment of a universal European monarchy, prompting an alienated France to fight a series of wars stretching through the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries for the purpose of thwarting the consolidation of Habsburg lands. When a rising North German Confederation threatened to replace France as Europe’s leading power in the nineteenth century, Bismarck exploited France’s “ruling power syndrome,” provoking the latter to declare a war it was not prepared to fight and overturning the European order with a rapid victory that sealed the unification of the German Empire. A naval arms race between a dominant British Empire and a rising Germany that sought its “place in the sun” threatened to choke off the former from its far-flung colonies and imperiled its very survival, precipitating Britain’s decision to join the Great War as the German army invaded the low countries. Germany’s entry, for its part, was largely motivated by its fear of a rising Russia and the prospect of diplomatic isolation.

Just as a marginal clash between the small city-states of Corinth and Corcyra erupted into the Peloponnesian War; and just as an assassination in Sarajevo exploded into the deadliest war the world had ever known; so too could a devastating Sino-American war emerge from trivial beginnings. The potential flash points are many: a naval standoff over the status of Taiwan (made perhaps more realistic by the Chinese furor over Nancy Pelosi’s recent visit to the island and the Biden Administration’s seeming abandonment of “strategic ambiguity”); an implosion of North Korea and an ensuing power struggle that could cause the Korean War to resume right where it left off 70 years ago; a dispute between China and Japan over any number of small, uninhabited islands; a cyber attack that does more damage than the perpetrator anticipated, or which is disguised as the work of America or China while really originating from a third party (like Russia); or even a trade war. Any of these scenarios could ensnare both countries in a diplomatic crisis from which they could not easily extricate themselves.

Allison insists that, despite the obvious danger, war is not inevitable; but the historical examples he offers—the handful of instances in which a rivalry between a rising power and a ruling power was peacefully defused—offer little encouragement. Spain and Portugal settled their naval contest with the 1494 Treaty of Tordesillas, submitting themselves to the arbitration of the Pope; but America and China are unlikely to submit to such arbitration, since they represent competing international systems rather than two players within one system. Likewise, a reunified Germany was peacefully embedded within the European Union after 1989; but no economic union as substantial as the EU could ever accommodate the world’s two largest economies. The rivalry between the United States and the British Empire in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries ended peacefully; but only because Britain decided to prioritize European affairs rather than trying to counter America’s claims to hegemony over the western hemisphere, and because it counted on its ability to draw on a shared heritage, language, religion, and value system to enlist the United States as an ally. America cannot pivot away from East Asia, since it is now the world’s economic center of gravity; and its differences with China are more profound than its commonalities with Britain. The Cold War never became a hot war; but only because one side disappeared. Neither China nor America are going anywhere anytime soon.

The two nations could, as Allison recommends, build mutual trust by partnering against common threats, such as terrorism and climate change; but in order for such a partnership to be anything more than an empty display, the common threat would have to be a profoundly serious one—more serious perhaps than the Sino-American rivalry itself—and it’s unclear whether anything short of an extraterrestrial invasion would rise to that level. They could also—and should also—focus on their domestic problems rather than confront one another abroad; but the economic nature of the rivalry and the interconnectedness of the global economy make the distinction between foreign and domestic policy a hazy one at best. In the end, it may only be a mutual recognition of the unacceptability of war—and a great deal of swallowed pride—that could hold open the door of escape from this fatal impasse.







*This may help explain the Chinese government’s hostility to Christianity, which presents a rather more accessible “middle kingdom”.

[Dimitar Angelov · Rating 3 out of 5]

Успях да хвана основната теза на Алисън, а именно, че историята ни дава уроци, които бихме могли да приложим към съвременната международна политика (оттук и идеята му за дисциплина "приложна история"). Останалият анализ ми се видя твърде общ, а препратките към примери от миналото - не съвсем адекватни. В края на книгата оставам с впечатлението, че според Алисън война САЩ-Китай може и да има, може и да няма...,което, трябва да призная, не е съвсем впечатляващо заключение. Иначе стилът и обемът на книгата са достъпни и правят прочита приятен. За разлика от затормозяващи с факти книги по темата "Китай", тази е може би най-достъпната.

[noblethumos · Rating 5 out of 5]

Graham Allison’s Destined for War (2017) is a widely discussed contribution to contemporary debates on great-power competition, offering a historically informed but policy-oriented analysis of the structural forces driving tensions between the United States and China. At the center of Allison’s argument is the concept of the “Thucydides Trap,” derived from the ancient Greek historian’s observation that the rise of Athens and the fear it instilled in Sparta made war virtually inevitable. Allison extends this insight into a general theory of great-power transitions: when a rising state threatens to displace a ruling one, structural stress increases the probability of conflict—even if neither side desires it.


The book’s analytical structure rests on two pillars: a review of historical cases of power transitions and an assessment of contemporary U.S.–China relations through that historical lens. Drawing on a research project conducted at Harvard’s Belfer Center, Allison identifies sixteen instances in the past five centuries in which a rising power challenged an established one, arguing that twelve culminated in war. This comparative framework gives the book an empirical grounding, although scholars have debated both the coding of these cases and the causal weight assigned to structural factors relative to contingent or domestic variables. Nonetheless, the historical survey provides a useful heuristic for thinking about the dynamics of strategic rivalry.


Allison is most effective when distilling complex structural arguments into accessible formulations. He emphasizes that the dangers of U.S.–China relations arise not primarily from ideological hostility or leadership personalities but from a deep shift in the global distribution of power. China’s economic growth, technological capabilities, and expanding regional influence challenge long-standing American assumptions about primacy in Asia. Meanwhile, the United States—accustomed to its postwar leadership role—faces incentives to preserve existing institutions, alliances, and norms. Allison frames this interaction as a classic setting for miscalculation, overreaction, and escalation, particularly in flashpoints such as the South China Sea, Taiwan, and the broader Western Pacific.


Yet Destined for War is not deterministic. Allison argues that although structural stress creates powerful pressures toward conflict, war is not unavoidable. He draws on historical cases—most notably the Cold War—to illustrate how adversaries can escape the trap through strategic imagination, diplomatic innovation, and mutual restraint. His policy recommendations include clearer red lines, crisis-management mechanisms, and creative diplomacy capable of accommodating China’s rise without destabilizing the international system. This normative dimension positions the book squarely within the genre of strategic studies, seeking not merely to analyze but to influence policy debates.


The book’s strengths, however, also reveal its limitations. Allison’s structuralist framing often underplays the complexities of China’s domestic political economy, regional perceptions of Chinese power, and the agency of smaller states in shaping strategic outcomes. Furthermore, critics from both realist and liberal perspectives have argued that the “Thucydides Trap” heuristic risks oversimplifying the multidimensional nature of contemporary U.S.–China relations and may encourage fatalistic thinking. Some of the historical comparisons, particularly those involving premodern powers, rely on analogies that are suggestive but not analytically rigorous. This tendency reflects a broader challenge in applying classical concepts to modern international relations without succumbing to historical determinism.


Despite these caveats, Destined for War remains a significant intervention in the literature on power transitions and great-power competition. Allison succeeds in elevating structural analysis into public discourse and in framing U.S.–China relations as a historically consequential challenge requiring prudent statecraft. For scholars of international relations, the book offers a provocative and accessible synthesis of power-transition theory, historical cases, and contemporary strategic analysis. Its enduring value lies not in its predictive certainty but in its capacity to stimulate debate about how major powers might navigate one of the most consequential geopolitical shifts of the 21st century.

GPT

[Nguyen Huy Tu Quan · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Chính sự trỗi dậy của Athens và nỗi sợ hãi mà nó gây ra ở Sparta đã khiến chiến tranh trở thành điều tất yếu." - Thucydides, Lịch sử Chiến tranh Peloponnese.

Nhận định nêu trên của Thucidides là ý tưởng cốt lõi của khái niệm Bẫy Thucydides, mô tả xu hướng gia tăng căng thẳng và khả năng chiến tranh giữa quốc gia thống trị trật tự chính trị hiện tại và quốc gia trỗi dậy mạnh mẽ thách thức trật tự đó.

Quả vậy, khi nghiên cứu trường hợp của Sparta đối đầu Athens, ta thấy rằng dù các bên đều không mong muốn chiến tranh, nhưng nỗi sợ hãi của cường quốc thống trị và sự tự tin của quốc gia trỗi dậy, kết hợp lại, tạo thành một mãnh lực lôi cuốn 2 bên rơi vào một vòng xoáy của sự leo thang căng thẳng và chiến tranh.

Thừa hưởng thành quả của Dự án bẫy Thucydides nghiên cứu 16 trường hợp đối đầu trong lịch sử (trong đó chỉ 4/16 trường hợp không xảy ra chiến tranh), tác giả đã tường thuật các trường hợp này một cách chi tiết, cho ta thấy được đánh giá và hành động của các bên thay đổi ra sao theo thời gian, trong đó cuộc đối đầu Sparta - Athens trước chiến tranh Peloponnese, cuộc đối đầu Anh - Đức trước thế chiến I được báo cáo chi tiết nhất. Mục đích của những tường thuật này là giúp người đọc hiểu được cơ chế vận hành của Bẫy Thucydides. Tức là hiểu được rằng Làm thế nào mà 2 quốc gia không mong muốn xung đột, cuối cùng bị đưa đẩy tới chỗ xung đột.

Trên nền tảng đó, tác giả dành 4 chương để phân tích về cuộc đối đầu giữa Mỹ và Trung Quốc hiện nay. Trừ trường hợp Trung Quốc sụp đổ trong tương lai gần (điều rất khó xảy ra), Trung Quốc cũng sẽ trở thành một cường quốc mạnh mẽ. Quyền lực trỗi dậy đó bị bó buộc trong trật tự chính trị hiện tại ở khu vực (dựa trên thương mại tự do, quyền lực hải quân áp đảo của Hoa Kỳ, sự tôn trọng luật biển quốc tế), cuối cùng sẽ tìm cách phá vỡ trật tự lạc hậu này và thay thế chúng bằng một trật tự mới (thông qua thương lượng hoặc chiến tranh). Kết cục có khả năng cao nhất, theo như tôi hiểu, đó là Mỹ phải từ bỏ địa vị thống trị ở Châu Á, hoặc Mỹ sẽ phải đương đầu với một cuộc chiến với Trung Quốc mà Trung Quốc có quá nhiều lợi thế để chiến thắng.

Phần cuối, tác giả nhắc nhở người đọc rằng chiến tranh không phải là tất yếu. Bài học của việc Anh công nhận quyền lực của Mỹ ở Tây Bán Cầu, của Mỹ và Liên Xô đối đầu nhưng tự hạn chế mình khỏi xung đột vũ khí nóng, của Đức vươn lên thành cường quốc ở Châu Âu nhưng không quân sự hóa, gợi mở một giải pháp hòa bình cho đối đầu Trung Mỹ.

Tuy nhiên, với Việt Nam, điều đó có nghĩa rằng Mỹ sẽ rút lui khỏi khu vực, kéo theo sự thoái trào của các xu hướng dân chủ. Rơi lại vào vòng ảnh hưởng của Trung Quốc, có lẽ không còn là một thực tế dễ chịu đối với chính quyền và người dân Việt Nam.

[Mihai Zodian · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is popular among US and Chinese decision-makers and is useful for anyone interested in the mainstream thinking about Sino-American relationships. Destined for War enlarged an impactful essay written by G. Allison around a decade ago. The Romanian translation was prefaced by my formed PhD coordinator, Mihail Ionescu, a military historian who studied hegemonic war, among other subjects. Many of his students bear this mark which mixes Great Power politics with history.

G. Allison argues that the US and China are facing a high risk of going to war, because of misperception and bad decision-making. The rise of China led to a change in the distribution of power between these two countries, which represents a dangerous situation, requiring skillful management. However, according to Destines for War, in most of these processes, politicians have led their countries to disastrous wars. This book is acceptable for anyone interested in the quality of mainstream thinking in this era.

As a standalone argument, the book has many flaws. The author reinvents the wheel and rehashes old arguments. The is a general agreement in academic literature that changes in the distribution of power like the current one are dangerous and require care and subtle negotiations. G. Allison tends to inflate China`s power, quotes Henry Kissinger and Samuel Huntington whom he knew, and doesn`t neglect the cliché of comparing chess with go (computers are better at both now).

But Destined for War isn't entirely bad. Political elites need to be convinced when threats are looming. Prudence is good when political confrontation seems to get out of hand. G. Allison's 16 case studies may be inconclusive (the opposite thesis can be argued from the same data), but the seriousness of his intentions and the gravity of the situation shouldn't be underestimated. The book should be read each time nationalist rhetoric in China, or the US becomes too popular.

G. Allison made his name with a good analysis of the Cuban missile crisis, and he reminds the reader of Kennedy`s prudent references to Barbara Tuchman's books on the origin of World War I. He saw his arguments in the same way and he his point went through. The US and China have recently reinstated multiple communication channels (Wilder 2023). But the reader shouldn't expect much novelty and intellectual subtlety from Destined for War.

See Dennis Wilder, A `floor` for US-China Relations in 2024, Georgetown Journal of International Affairs, 22 December 2023.

[Michael Huang · Rating 4 out of 5]

Allison’s book is a well-written deposition of facts surrounding a series of conflicts between a rising power and a ruling power, starting from the Peloponnesian war documented by Thucydides. Only in a minority of the cases was war avoided. The current case of China vs US is a particularly interesting one since it concerns those of us alive today.

In the book, Allison summarized the salient circumstances concerning each conflict and discussed the relevant parts to the current conflict. Take Britain vs Germany as an example: Despite having blood relations (Wilhem II loves grandma Queen Victoria and England), the classic anxiety of the ruling power and the ambition of the rising power drove the subsequent arms race. King Edward’s remark in 1909 really foreshadowed Hitler: “Germany would have the power of demolishing her enemies, one by one, with us sitting back with folded arms, and she would then probability proceed to attack us”. In the end, fear of Russia gave Germany no choice but to back Austria, who took things into their own hands... Similarly, a third-party conflict could throw the two superpowers into a disastrous armed conflict.

Of course, not all change-of-guards results in war. Britain, for example, recognized that it is not *really* their vital national interest to be the world’s No. 1 and managed to gracefully avoid a conflict with the rising power (United State).

I can understand how a few leaders/fuhrers want more and more power unto themselves. I never quite understand why an average citizen would so easily go along with the notion that the more powerful their government is on the world stage, the greater their nation is. In my apparently minority view, a great nation is closer to the Scandinavian model (where the government provides a safe and prosperous environment for their citizens to go about their individual life) than to a powerful state with a strong military ready to convert the barbarians on moment’s notice. I have been very suspicious of President Xi’s consolidation of power and the whole shebang of “Make China Great Again” (which precedes MAGA). But at the moment, the Chinese society appears to be firmly behind Xi’s agenda. We shall see how things play out this time.

[Max · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read it as part of an EA reading club and really enjoyed it. The book is the result of a history research project which found that 12 out of 16 cases of a rising power threatening to displace ruling power in the end culminated into a war. In the book, Allison is working to extract lessons that help us avoid escalating tensions between US and China. Maybe because of this motivating purpose the historical analyses felt very alive and gripping to me. I think this approach to history works really well for me.

The book opened my eyes to many developments around China that I wasn't aware of. My superficial understanding that China is still only catching up technology-wise and is only beginning to invest more in its own technology innovation was clearly wrong. I still find the idea appealing that an oppressive state should be at a disadvantage in harbouring and attracting people that are most innovative, but given China's technological innovations, this idea seems less convincing.

German Randbemerkung: I think in this quote something got lost in translation

When King Edward had toured Europe in 1907, presumably to seek further conspirators against Germany, the kaiser told an audience of three hundred that his uncle was “Satan. You cannot imagine what a Satan he is!”

I know from old movies that "Teufel" (Satan in German) is used as a friendly description for a cunning man, maybe daredevil would be a better translation.

After having read the first chapter, our reading club made a quick gut-prediction on the risk of war between the US and China in the next 10 years and the four of us said 3% (me), 5%, 10% and 65%. None of us are trained forecasters, but even a small chance like that seems to warrant a lot of attention. Metaculus' current median for Will there be active warfare between the United States and China by the end of 2026? (link) is 10%, which I just saw and find worrying.