In his classic account of the Peloponnesian War, Thucydides concluded that the conflict was the consequence of growing Athenian power instilling fear in Sparta. In “The Thucydides Trap”, an influential essay published in 2015, Graham Allison of Harvard University examined whether the same dynamic would apply to America and China. He identified 16 historical episodes where an established power’s position was disrupted by a challenger. In 12 of those cases the shift ended in war. A repetition today was not inevitable, he concluded, but escaping the trap “requires tremendous effort”.
Mr Allison’s analysis was studied closely in Washington and Beijing. Nonetheless, in the past five years the relationship between the world’s superpower and its Asian challenger has deteriorated in a manner that suggests few are paying heed to history. Under Xi Jinping, China has become more aggressively assertive abroad and more authoritarian at home. Under Donald Trump and now Joe Biden, American policy towards China has shifted from hubristic faith that it could be integrated into the existing American-led world order to something closer to paranoid containment marked by auapicion of China's intentions and a fearful bipartisan consensus that America's global eminence is at risk.
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Rivalry between America and China will shape the post-covid world | The Economist
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