By Walter C. Clemens, Jr.
Neither country “should act on the self-fulfilling expectation that conflict between them is inevitable.”
Might China and the United States retrace the path taken by Athens and Sparta as they destroyed the glory that was Greece? Will the two great powers of our era fall into what political scientist Graham Allison, head of Harvard University’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, calls the “Thucydides trap” – the pressures that arise when an upstart threatens to overtake a hegemon? Updating what he wrote in Financial Times on August 21, 2012, Allison spoke to the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee on April 14, 2015, and again quoted the historian Thucydides: “It was the rise of Athens and the fear that this instilled in Sparta that made the [Peloponnesian] war inevitable.” A similar “trap” has often recurred, according to Allison: “In twelve of sixteen cases in the past 500 years when a rising power challenged a ruling power, the outcome was war.” Since war was avoided in four cases, hegemonic war is not inevitable. But since China is rising and the United States declining, Allison concludes, Americans face a “chronic condition” that must be managed.
All these issues are complicated and give rise to diverse interpretations. Is anything in politics “inevitable”? What kind of evidence is needed to show that most struggles between hegemons and challengers have ended or must end in war? Surely the answers depend heavily on definitions and whether the analysis focuses on underlying factors, intermediate causes, or trigging events. In what sense or senses is China outpacing the United States? Does a “Thucydides trap” exist?
The classic history by Thucydides The Peloponnesian War gives much ground to question whether the competition between Athens and Sparta needed to result in war. If there was a trap, both sides blundered into it by decisions that could have been handled differently. Each side acted in ways that inflamed existing suspicions. Thus, when Athens built a wall to protect the city and its port, this raised Spartan anxieties that Athens, strong at sea, could neutralize the land forces of Sparta. The situation resembled fears in Moscow that U.S. President Ronald Reagan’s “strategic defense initiative” could eviscerate the Soviet Union’s deterrent. That issue still festers, but has not led to war. Americans and Soviets kept talking, whereas on several critical occasions Athens and Sparta broke off their discourse and recalled their negotiators.
Leaving aside the more than two millennia since the Peloponnesian war, let us look at some of potential hegemonic wars of more recent times.
Read the full story at The Diplomat