Can Washington and Beijing escape the Thucydides Trap?

During the recent summit talks between the United States and China (May 14-15), Chinese leader Xi Jinping referred to the term ‘Thucydides Trap’ and cautioned US President Donald Trump: “We all need to work together to avoid the trap.”

The term was popularised by Graham Allison, a US political scientist, during the 1980s to describe an apparent tendency towards war when an emerging power threatens to displace an existing great power as a regional or international hegemon. Xi was alluding to the relationship between the US as the great power and China as the rising power.

Describing the protracted conflict between the two city-states of Athens and Sparta in ancient Greece, Greek historian Thucydides, in his classic work, The Peloponnesian War, opined that “it was the rise of Athens and the fear that it instilled in Sparta that made the war inevitable”. Athens was a growing power with imperial ambitions that alarmed Sparta. Finally, Spartan dominance replaced Athenian supremacy, but the military and economic exhaustion weakened both city-states.

In his book, Destined for War (2017), Allison argued that “China and the US are currently on a collision course for war. Though not inevitable, war will be very difficult to avoid and requires extensive diplomatic attention and execution in the case of a ‘Thucydides Trap’. Nearly a decade later, while there has not been any military war between the two, the world is witness to an intense economic war through trade and tariffs.

In a way, the current US-China conflict reflects the Cold War between the US and the Soviet Union during the latter part of the 20th century, when trade between the two blocs was severely restricted. According to experts, in the current situation, the strong retaliatory stand taken by the two powers can create a head-on conflict between the Chinese law and the regime that US multinationals are required to follow. That’s possibly why Xi brought up the proposal of avoiding the Thucydides Trap. It was a shrewd move on the part of the Chinese leader, putting the onus of avoiding a direct confrontation with the US President. While Trump did not respond to this proposition, the meeting did not produce any other kind of positive result, including commercial transactions.

Herman Wond, a World War II veteran, in a lecture delivered at the US Naval War College in 1980, compared the US-Soviet Cold War to the ‘cold war’ that developed between Athens and Sparta, once they had defeated their common enemy, Persia, and said: “And more than two millennium later, we seem still strapped in Thucydides world. None of the ways in which those quarrelsome Greeks behaved are suited to these dread times of nuclear menace, yet we still behave in those ways and can find no other. How do we break out of that Thucydides Trap
which now threatens to strangle, if not
destroy, the world?”

In the harsh reality of power relations, moral arguments count for little, and those with strength act according to their will, while the weak have to endure the consequences. In the tension between justice and power, ethical principles become subordinate to practical considerations of strength. This is the predicament in which India is placed today. While we may consider ourselves an emerging superpower, currently, both the US and China are much stronger, militarily and economically, and India is forced to play a subordinate role.

In ancient Greece, when the neutral island of Melos refused to negotiate with the stronger Athens, the latter conquered the island and enslaved their women and children. That’s how the US is behaving now-in dealing with the much weaker Venezuela, whose President was kidnapped in the midnight from his bedroom, or with the less powerful but unyielding Iran. India has wisely adopted the way of negotiations to settle the tariff issue, while China has adopted a somewhat retaliatory stance because of its strength in manufacturing and critical minerals.

Allison carried out extensive research on the Thucydides Trap involving 16 case studies relating to conflicts between a ruling power and a rising power between the late 15th century and the late 20th century. The findings showed that in 14 cases, they ended in war. They all pertained to the European powers fighting for colonial supremacy and the US joining during the two world wars. The European power rivalry was finally settled only after the world wars, carrying terrible consequences. It also marked the rise of the US, and subsequently the Soviet Union, leading to the Cold War era, until the Soviet Union was split and the US emerged as the sole superpower.

How will the cold war between the ruling power, the US and the rising power,China play out in the future? How will the US respond to the Chinese proposal to manage the global challenges together, building a ‘constructive China-US relationship of strategic stability’ to avoid the Thucydides Trap?

Here, there is a lesson from recent European history — in how the European countries,after centuries of distrust and conflicts,embraced co-operation,leading to formation of the  European Union.A new approach was adopted to resolve political disputes and trade issues viz,legal processes and  treaty obligations,thanks to visionaries like Jean Monnet of France,Konrad Adeneur of Germany and George Marshall of United States.

Can the US and China and Russia (vis-à-vis Ukraine) act together in the interests of world peace, conforming to the international ‘rules-based order’, and can India play a part in this endeavour, or will Thucydides’ words prevail: “The strong do what they have to do, the weak accept what they have to accept”?

(The writer is a former chief secretary, Government of Karnataka)

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.