National Interest

by James Holmes

    The Thucydides Trap assumes nations have no control over their actions and has been refuted by world history. Yet fear of it in popular imagination can have real geopolitical impact.

    Statesmen the world over, I am begging you: Do not ground your foreign policy or strategy in the “Thucydides Trap.” Harvard professor Graham Allison coined the metaphor after reviewing a sample of historical cases when an aspiring “hegemon,” the predominant power in a regional or global system, squared off against the reigning one. It’s a riff on the Greek historian Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War, his classic chronicle of great-power war in ancient Greece. Professor Allison concludes that, now as in antiquity, great-power war is likelier than not when rivalry ensues—hence the title of his book Destined for War (2014).

    Back in 2018, I chaired a panel on the Thucydides Trap at the Naval Academy in Annapolis. I led off by asking Allison whether the Thucydides Trap is a steel trap or a sand trap. If caught in it, in other words, can the contenders play their way out  Allison said it’s a steel trap. There’s no escape. Hence the word Destined.

But be wary of claims that some factor is “destiny” in international affairs. And it’s not just the Thucydides Trap. A good rule is to think twice before accepting claims deriving from articles or books you suspect few in authority actually read. Elite and popular discourse has a way of reducing a complex concept to sloganeering or a bumper sticker. For instance, misinterpretation of Francis Fukuyama’s treatise on The End of History (1992) did lasting damage to American statecraft. Fukuyama was not prophesying that diplomatic and military history had literally ended and thus that martial affairs were passé with the Soviet Union’s demise. And yet an extreme form of that claim seeped directly into—and distorted—the making of US diplomacy and strategy in those heady days. Economic globalization, we were told, was going to sweep the globe while geopolitics faded into irrelevance. Why prepare to fight a foe that will never emerge

    We in the US armed forces are still struggling to rebuild from our partial disarmament following the End of History—and this at a time when the next challenger, Communist China, is on the march. So caveat emptor with regard to big ideas. They can mislead even as they instruct.

• What the “Thucydides Trap” Idea Gets Right

    Don’t get me wrong. There is merit to the Thucydides Trap. Allison is onto a real force in affairs of state. But it is only one among many forces.

    Just review what martial sage Carl von Clausewitz says about the “climate” of politics and warfare. The Thucydides Trap drastically oversimplifies the Clausewitzian tumult of international interactions, making Allison’s metaphor an untrustworthy guide to policymaking if taken in isolation. And it could prove a lethal guide if statesmen in places like Washington DC—or Beijing, for that matter—take it seriously enough to act on it. Xi Jinping is worried. Earlier this month, in fact, the Chinese Communist Party general secretary invoked Allison’s metaphor during President Donald Trump’s state visit to Beijing. Xi reportedly asked President Donald Trump, “Can China and the US overcome the so-called ‘Thucydides Trap’ and create a new paradigm of major-country relations ”

    Why summon up a long-dead Athenian while waging US-China diplomacy  Because what he says carries weight across the centuries. Thucydides was classical antiquity’s father of history, as well as a forefather of the realist school of international relations. In his History of the Peloponnesian War, the historian surveys the immediate causes why the city-states of Athens and Sparta waged system-shattering war for 27 years during the fifth century B.C. He also opines about the conflict’s underlying causes: the “real cause … I consider to be the one which was formally most kept out of sight. The growth of the power of Athens and the alarm which this inspired in Sparta, made war inevitable.”

    That’s the kicker. That notion of historical inevitability—that the rise and fall of nations engenders fear that precipitates war—underwrites Allison’s Thucydides Trap.

•     Thucydides Never Postulated a Universal “Trap”

Allison frets that the growth of the power of China and the alarm which this has kindled in America, may make war inevitable. But parse Thucydides’ words again. He is more circumspect about the Peloponnesian War’s fundamental causes than the idea of a Thucydides Trap allows. The historian made no claim to have discovered some universal law of world politics. He even dissembled on whether his verdict was correct in the case of Athens and Sparta, the epoch to which he was an eyewitness and participant. Hence hedging language in that key passage such as “I consider,” and hence his talk of hidden motives impelling societies and individuals. How can you say for sure what motivates other human beings, in his case decisionmakers overseeing Greek city-states, if they keep their motives out of sight—in other words, if they never talk about what drives them

    You can’t.

    Despite Thucydides’ squishy wording, Allison insists on carrying the Athenian’s words to their extreme. The core claim in Destined for War is this: martial strife verges on inescapable when a rising power is poised to overtake the supreme power of the age by such indices of national power as economics, military might, diplomatic clout and cultural influence. The rise-and-fall dynamic Allison espies has supposedly entrapped the United States and China—making war not just thinkable but probable. Destined, even.

    The mechanism whereby the Thucydides Trap operates is as straightforward as the trap’s repercussions are dire. Around the crossover point where the new contender eclipses the reigning hegemon, both contestants find themselves tempted to take up arms. (To the extent he means to state a law of politics and warfare, Thucydides implies that a fearful incumbent power, playing the part of Sparta, is likelier to unsheathe the sword than the power playing the part of upstart Athens. But again, I doubt he meant to announce a general law.) The incumbent considers deploying armed force to forestall the challenge while it still retains its edge, while the aspirant to regional or global supremacy ponders using force to hasten its ascent. One or both pugilists yield to temptation.

    QED. Conflict ensnares competitors.

• Geopolitics Is Complicated—and Rarely Deterministic

    To repeat, the idea underwriting the Thucydides Trap makes intuitive sense. But reducing a complex society like Sparta or Athens, or today the United States or China, to one motive—fear—disregards multitudes of other factors, including some listed by Thucydides himself, such as lust for material gain and honor, while radically understating the role of choice in human affairs. Societies really can decide not to fight, whatever their impulses. Doing nothing is always a strategic choice.

    Plus, counterexamples to Allison’s account of history are legion. For example, no colossal war erupted between the United States and Great Britain or between Britain and imperial Japan during the fin de siècle years, when Britain ranked as the world’s foremost power and America and Japan were on the rise. In fact, Britain struck up a grand bargain with the United States in the Western Hemisphere and a formal alliance with Japan in the Pacific. Why  Because of the menace posed by imperial Germany close to home.

    The Thucydides Trap has a tough time accounting for intricate international geometry. The Cold War, which was more or less bilateral, remained cold except in peripheral theaters, thanks in no small part to nuclear deterrence. And does anyone think an established United States and a rising India are at risk of falling into the Thucydides Trap in the Indian Ocean today  Of course not. It’s doubtful the world’s oldest and largest democracies would clash militarily in any event, but certainly not while China is playing the role of imperial Germany a century ago—and cementing concord between Washington and New Delhi.

    In short, Thucydides’ judgment regarding the causes of the Peloponnesian War offers a scant basis from which to derive a law that purports to apply across all times and civilizations.

    Judging by his exchange with Trump, however, Xi seems convinced that such a snare does exist—that great-power dynamics almost automatically entangle rivals in warfare. Yet the Chinese Communist supremo was not always such a fervent believer in the Thucydides Trap. I liked his take on power politics better in 2015, when Destined for War was still fairly new and Xi took to insisting there was “no such thing” as inevitable war. At the time, he even publicly rebuked Allison’s hypothesis—and voiced concerns that US leaders would take the Thucydides Trap literally and talk themselves into war. Xi warned that, “Should major countries time and again make the mistakes of strategic miscalculation, they might create such traps for themselves.”

    This was sage counsel. The Thucydides Trap might not be real—but believing in it might beget fatalism about prospects for war and peace in the Western Pacific. If decisionmakers come to believe war is inevitable, what alternative is left except to get ready and fight it as best we may  General Secretary Xi and I agree on little, but when the man is right, he’s right. Let’s not talk ourselves into war—not even on the authority of the father of history.

    Philosophers and historians caution against “determinism,” the habit of adjudging effects such as war as inevitable owing to inexorable preexisting causes—or even a single cause. There’s more than a whiff of determinism around oft-heard claims that geography is destiny, demographics is destiny and so forth. Geography is important and so is demographics. But these factors are not all-important. Nor is fear. The rise of a powerful and domineering China has stoked anxieties in America for sure, not to mention among China’s Asian neighbors. And judging from Xi’s words, anxiety has taken hold in Beijing as well.

    But fear—though a real and compelling passion—is not destiny. Seldom if ever are human affairs that pat.

    Should practitioners of statecraft disregard Thucydides’ counsel  By no means. He was onto something elemental, however speculative. Nor should they disregard Graham Allison’s thesis unless taken to excess. The Greek and American scribes hold up a mirror. China and America should gaze at themselves in it—and ask themselves candidly whether Thucydidean motives are prodding them into not-strictly-rational actions they, Asia and the world will rue.