USA, CHINA AND THUCYDIDES’S TRAP
- Maj Gen PK Mallick, VSM (Retd)
Graham Allison is the Douglas Dillon Professor of Government at Harvard University. He was previously director of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. In the first term of the Clinton administration, Allison served as assistant secretary of defense for policy and plans From 1977 to 1989, Allison was founding dean of Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government.His recent book Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides’s Trap published in May 2017 has got rave reviews and quickly became a national bestseller. 
Graham Allison thinks the world underestimates the risk of a catastrophic clash between China and the United States. When a rising power challenges an incumbent, carnage often ensues. Thucydides, an ancient historian, wrote of the Peloponnesian war of 431-404 BC that “It was the rise of Athens and the fear that this instilled in Sparta that made war inevitable.” Mr Allison has examined 16 similar cases since the 15th century. All but four ended in war. Mr Allison does not say that war between China and the United States is inevitable, but he thinks it “more likely than not”.
War would be disastrous for both sides, but that does not mean it cannot happen. No one wanted the first world war, yet it started anyway, thanks to a series of miscalculations. The Soviet Union and America avoided all-out war, but they came close. During the Cuban missile crisis in 1962, when the Soviets tried to smuggle nuclear missiles onto Cuba, 90 miles (145km) from Florida, there were at least a dozen close calls that could have led to war. When American ships dropped explosives around Soviet submarines to force them to surface, one Soviet captain thought he was under attack and nearly fired his nuclear torpedoes. When an American spy plane flew into Soviet airspace, Nikita Khrushchev, the Soviet leader, worried that America was scoping targets for a nuclear first strike. Had he decided to pre-empt it, a third world war could have followed.
China and America could blunder into war in several ways, argues Mr Allison. A stand-off over Taiwan could escalate. North Korea’s dictator, Kim Jong Un, might die without an obvious heir, sparking chaos. American and Chinese special forces might rush into North Korea to secure the regime’s nuclear weapons, and clash. A big cyber-attack against America’s military networks might convince it that China was trying to blind its forces in the Pacific. American retaliation aimed at warning China off might have the opposite effect. Suppose that America crippled China’s Great Firewall, as a warning shot, and China saw this as an attempt to overthrow its government? With Donald Trump in the White House, Mr Allison worries that even a trade war might turn into a shooting war.
Graham Allison himself summarize the core argument of the book in a few bullet points:
• When a rising power threatens to displace a ruling power, alarm bells should sound: danger ahead. Thucydides’s Trap is the dangerous dynamic that occurs in this interaction. In the case of the rise of Athens and its impact upon Sparta (which had ruled Greece for 100 years), or Germany in its rivalry with Britain a century ago in the run up to World War I, or China over the past generation as it has come to rival, and in many areas, surpass the US, this dangerous dynamic creates conditions in which both competitors are acutely vulnerable to provocations by third party actions. One of the primary competitors feels obliged to respond and there follows a cascade of actions and reactions at the end of which the two find themselves in a war neither wanted. Ask yourself again: how did the assassination of a minor archduke start a fire that burned down the whole of Europe at the beginning of the past century? How did North Korea drag China and the US into war 67 years ago last month?
• Destined for War examines the past 500 years and finds 16 cases in which a rising power threatens to displace a ruling power. Twelve of these cases ended in war; four without war. Thus to say that war between a rising China and a ruling US is inevitable would be mistaken. But to say the odds are against us would not be. 
• This book is neither fatalistic nor pessimistic. Instead, its purpose is to help us recognize that these structural factors create extreme dangers that require extreme measures on the part of both the US and China—if we are to escape Thucydides’s Trap. As I argue in the book, business as usual (which is what we have seen for the last two decades under both Democratic and Republican leadership) is likely to lead to history as usual. And in this case, that would be a catastrophic war that no one in Beijing or Washington wants. Indeed, every serious leader in both capitals knows that would be crazy. But none of the leaders of the major powers in 1914 wanted World War I. Neither China nor the US wanted war in 1950. The good news is that, as Santayana taught us, only those who refuse to study history are condemned to repeat it. We are under no obligations to repeat the mistakes made by Kaiser Wilhelm in 1914 or Pericles in classical Greece that led to war.
• We must recognize that a rising China is not a “fixable” problem but rather a condition that we will have to cope with for a generation. Success in meeting this grand challenge will require a surge of imagination and adaptability as remarkable as that demonstrated by individuals we now celebrate as the “wise men” who created the Cold War strategy that we sustained for four decades until success was at last achieved.
As Henry Kissinger’s explains, for the Chinese this means that “far better than challenging the enemy on the field of battle is maneuvering him into an unfavorable position from which escape is impossible.” In economic relations today, China is doing just that to its Asian neighbors and indeed to the US. China primarily conducts foreign policy through economics because, to put it bluntly, it can. It is currently the largest trading partner for over 130 countries — including all the major Asian economies. As China’s dominant economic market and its “One Belt, One Road” plan to network Asia with physical infrastructure (at a scale 12 times that of the Marshall Plan) draws its neighbors into Beijing’s “economic gravity,” the United States’ post–World War II position in Asia erodes.
Critics say : But Mr Allison’s overall thesis is too gloomy. China is a cautious superpower. Its leaders stoke nationalist sentiment at home, but they have shown little appetite for military adventurism abroad. Yes, the Taiwan strait and the South China Sea are dangerous. But unlike the great powers of old, China has no desire to build a far-flung empire. And all the wars in Mr Allison’s sample broke out before the invention of nuclear weapons. China and America have enough of these to destroy the world. That alone makes war extremely unlikely.
[https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/09/united-states-china-war-thucydides-trap/406756/ ]
What is The Thucydides Trap . The Thucydides Trap is a political metaphor. Thucydides was a 5th-century BCE Greek historian and politician who wrote the most famous account of the Peloponnesian War. Here's what he observed in the outbreak of the nearly 30-year conflict that rocked the Greek city-states.
Professor Graham Allison has popularized the phrase “Thucydides’ trap,” to explain the likelihood of conflict between a rising power and a currently dominant one. This is based on the famous quote from Thucydides: “It was the rise of Athens and the fear that this inspired in Sparta that made war inevitable.” This usage has even spread to Chinese President Xi Jinping who said “We all need to work together to avoid the Thucydides trap – destructive tensions between an emerging power and established powers … Our aim is to foster a new model of major country relations.” However, those like Graham Allison who talk about a Thucydides trap only capture half the meaning of the History of The Peloponnesian War. The true trap is countries going into, and continuing, war clouded by passions like fear, hubris and honor.
In Thucydides’ history, human emotion made conflict inevitable, and at several points where peace was possible, emotion propelled it forward. In the beginning, there is a set of speeches in Sparta debating the possibility of going to war with Athens. Archidamus, the Spartan king, tells the Spartan people not to underestimate the power of Athens and urged that Sparta “must not be hurried into deciding in a day’s brief space a question which concerns many lives and fortunes and many cities, and in which honor is deeply involved – but we must decide calmly.” However, Sthenelaidas, a Spartan ephor, advocated, “Vote, therefore, Spartans, for war, as the honor of Sparta demands.” The Spartans followed Sthenelaidas, which led to a war of honor and fear against the Athenians.
In the seventh year of the Peloponnesian War, at the battle of Pylos, the Athenians won a major victory over Sparta. Because of their loss, Sparta sent envoys to Athens offer a peace treaty. The Spartan envoys enjoined the Athenians to “treat their gains as precarious,” and advised that “if great enmities are ever to be really settled, we think it will be, not by the system of revenge and military success… but when the more fortunate combatant waives his privileges and, guided by gentler feelings, conquers his rival in generosity and accords peace on more moderate conditions than expected.” However, the Athenians, led by Cleon, who Thucydides described as the most violent man in Athens, accused the Spartans of not having right intentions, and made further demands on Sparta for a return of territories that Athens had previously ceded to Sparta before the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War, resulting in a continuation of the war.
The best advice that Thucydides’ work offers is clear, do not let emotions such as hubris, fear and honor drag you into a hegemonic war, and if war does occur, do not let these same emotions cloud your judgment if there is a chance for peace. This is a hard lesson to learn, but unlike the mechanistic vision of Thucydides’ Trap it accounts for human agency and shows a path towards peaceful co-existence rather than letting passions lead the way.
[https://thediplomat.com/2015/05/the-real-thucydides-trap/ ]
As China challenges America’s predominance, misunderstandings about each other’s actions and intentions could lead them into a deadly trap first identified by the ancient Greek historian Thucydides. As he explained, “It was the rise of Athens and the fear that this instilled in Sparta that made war inevitable.” The past 500 years have seen 16 cases in which a rising power threatened to displace a ruling one. Twelve of these ended in war.
Of the cases in which war was averted — Spain outstripping Portugal in the late 15th century, the United States overtaking the United Kingdom at the turn of the 20th century, and Germany’s rise in Europe since 1990 — the ascent of the Soviet Union is uniquely instructive today. Despite moments when a violent clash seemed certain, a surge of strategic imagination helped both sides develop ways to compete without a catastrophic conflict. In the end, the Soviet Union imploded and the Cold War ended with a whimper rather than a bang.
Professor Graham Allison gave a statement to U.S. Senate Subcommittee on East Asia, the Pacific, and International Cybersecurity Policy on “American Leadership in the Asia-Pacific, Part 4: The View from Beijing” on 14 November 2017. The gist is given below.
How does the Chinese leadership view the United States and its role in the region and the world
China’s leaders believe that America’s grand strategy for dealing with China involves five “to’s”: to isolate China, to contain China, to diminish China, to internally divide China, and to sabotage China’s leadership. this is based on “a deeply held, deeply ‘realist’ Chinese conclusion that the US will never willingly concede its status as the preeminent regional and global power, and will do everything within its power to retain that position.”
Chinese leaders recognize that the role the US has played since World War II as the architect and underwriter 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. As Xi told a gathering of Eurasian leaders in 2014, “In the final analysis, it is for the people of Asia to run the affairs of Asia, solve the problems of Asia and uphold the security of Asia.”
How is China’s regional and global posture taking shape under President Xi Jinping? What is your perspective on the outcomes of the recent 19th Party Congress?
In his speech at the 19th Party Congress, President Xi was very clear about China’s posture today. He said: “the Chinese nation now stands tall and strong in the East; no one should expect China to swallow anything that undermines its interests.” Moreover, he was bold enough to put a target objective and a date together, declaring China’s intention to become “global leader in terms of composite national strength and international influence” by 2050. If, by mid-century, China achieves a per capita GDP equivalent to that of the US, its economy will be four times larger than ours—since it has four times as many people. He declared: “History looks kindly on those with resolve, with drive and ambition, and with plenty of guts; it won’t wait for the hesitant, the apathetic, or those shy of a challenge.”
How has the United States’ view of China evolved over the past century, and how do you see it evolving in the decade ahead?
Celebrating the US position as the Unipolar Power, Frank Fukuyama famously declared the End of History. Democratic capitalism had swept the field and hereafter nations would follow our lead first in adopting market capitalism in order to grow rich. As they developed a middle class, they would become democracies. And according to the “democratic peace” hypothesis, war would become obsolete since democracies do not fight each other. Thomas Friedman popularized this argument with his “Golden Arches” theory, declaring that two nations that had McDonald’s Golden Arches could not fight each other. Americans are now waking up to the fact that, a powerful China will insist on “being accepted as China, not as an honorary member of the West.”
What is your perspective on the Obama Administration’s “Asia Pivot” or “rebalance” policy, and what policy should the Trump administration pursue with respect to the Asia-Pacific, and China in particular
While we have been debating whether we should put less weight on our left foot (the Middle East) in order to put more weight on our right (Asia), China has just kept growing — at three times the US rate. As a result, America’s side of the seesaw has tilted to the point that both feet will soon be dangling entirely off the ground
But I believe that we need first to understand the shape of the challenge we face. There is no “solution” for the dramatic resurgence of a 5,000-year old civilization with 1.4 billion people. e ground. What America needs most at this moment is not a new “China strategy,” but instead a serious pause for reflection, followed by a surge of strategic imagination as penetrating as that displayed by those “wise men.” In short, it will demand something far beyond anything we have seen since the opening to China.
What I will say is that the strategy toward China that America has followed since the end of the Cold War, known as “engage but hedge,” is fundamentally flawed: it is a banner that permits everything and prohibits nothing. It relies on balancing China while hoping that China will become a liberal democracy, or at least accept a subordinate place in the American-led international order. It should now be obvious that this is not going to happen. If the US just keeps doing what it has been doing, future historians will compare American “strategy” to illusions that British, German, and Russian leaders held as they sleepwalked into WWI.
What is the current state of China-North Korea relations? How have they evolved in recent years? Given China’s desire to avoid a collapsed state and/or having the US military close to its borders, how much pressure can China be expected to apply to North Korea?
China-North Korea relations are worse than ever before. Outraged by Beijing’s support for sanctions, some North Korean statements have even begun implicitly threatening China, noting that North Korea’s missiles can fly in any direction. Chinese internet users commonly refer to Kim Jong Un as “Little Fatty” and reportedly Xi Jinping personally cannot stand him. However, the strategic situation has not fundamentally changed for China. They see stability on the Korean Peninsula, even with an antagonistic neighbor, as preferable to any feasible alternative. They remain unwilling to support any action that would lead to the collapse of the regime. And they continue to see the biggest anomaly on the peninsula as the presence of the US.
How likely is it that a US-North Korea military conflict would trigger a wider Sino-American war? Under what circumstances might we expect China to intervene (or not intervene) in an American conflict with North Korea?
Anyone who finds it hard to believe that a military conflict with North Korea could drag the US into war with China should remember 1950. In June of 1950, a Communist North Korea lad by KJU’s grandfather attacked South Korea and almost succeeded in reunifying the country under his control. The US came to the rescue at the last minute and US troops pushed the North Koreans back up the peninsula, across the 38th parallel, and rapidly approached the Chinese border. McArthur expected to wrap things up before Christmas so that US troops could come home. The possibility that China, which just the year before had consolidated control of its own country after a long, bloody civil war, would attack the world’s sole superpower, who just five years earlier had dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, was for McArthur inconceivable. But he awoke one morning in October to find his forces attacked by a “peasant army” of 300,000 Chinese who beat the US back down the roads they had come up, to the 38th parallel, where the US was forced to settle for an armistice. Tens of thousands of Americans, hundreds of thousands of Chinese, and millions of Koreans died in that war.
for China the prospect of South Korea conquering the North and bringing US troops to China’s borders is as unacceptable today as it was in 1950. Expect China to intervene in some fashion on the peninsula in almost any military scenario―even if only to seize and hold a buffer zone in the north, as Chinese troops have recently been drilling to do.
Even if Chinese forces entered North Korea with no intention of fighting the US, there are many scenarios in which war could still occur through miscalculation, including a “vertical track meet” between Chinese and US special forces rushing to secure the North’s nuclear weapons in the event of a regime collapse. These weapons are held near China’s borders, so it is very likely that if and when US troops arrive, they will find Chinese special forces already there.
What diplomatic role can China play to defuse tensions between the US and North Korea, and advance diplomacy to denuclearize the Korean peninsula?
The immediate cause of tension between the US and North Korea is North Korea’s drive to develop a credible threat to strike the American homeland with nuclear weapons, on the one hand, and President Trump’s determination to do whatever is required to prevent that from happening, on the other. This is the dynamic that will in the next 12 months take us to one of three destinations: (1) North Korea will have completed the next series of ICBM tests and be able to hold American cities hostage; (2) Trump will have ordered airstrikes on North Korea in an attempt to prevent that from happening; or (3) a minor miracle in which Xi and Trump, working together, convince Kim to halt his nuclear advance.
China controls North Korea’s oil lifeline. If it squeezes that pipeline, North Korean aircraft, tanks, missile launchers, trucks, cars and factories will feel the pain. China has been reluctant to exercise this influence for fear of how Kim might react. But after recent provocations, Chinese officials have begun signaling that Xi might be willing to take that risk.
If Trump and Xi seek to hammer out a joint plan for stopping Kim from further ICBM and nuclear tests, what could that look like? The Chinese government has offered a formula it calls “freeze for freeze.” North Korea would stop testing for the year ahead and the U.S. would stop or significantly modify joint U.S.-South Korean military exercises that Kim despises. The U.S. has rejected that idea outright. But if Trump recognizes that the only alternatives are the two previously mentioned, it should be possible to find adjustments the U.S. could make in exercises, bomber flights and troop levels in South Korea that, while uncomfortable and ugly, do not compromise anything vital. Whether that would be sufficient to persuade Xi to threaten Kim’s oil lifeline, and whether Kim would accept a freeze for freeze, is uncertain. And even if such a deal were possible, this would only kick the can down the road for another year.
Other than North Korea, what flashpoints do you see that could trigger military conflict between the US and China?
The dangerous dynamic of Thucydides’s Trap leaves both parties vulnerable to actions by third parties, or events that would otherwise be inconsequential or readily managed, but that trigger reactions by the primary competitors that lead to war. five all-too-plausible scenarios that could escalate mundane crises into a war that neither the US nor China wants: North Korea; an accidental collision in the South China Sea; a move by Taiwan toward independence; a clash between China and Japan in the East China Sea; and an economic conflict that escalates into a shooting war.
How do you assess President Trump’s visit to the region?
One is reminded of Zhou Enlai’s response to Henry Kissinger when Kissinger asked him how he assessed the French Revolution. Zhou said: “it’s too soon to tell.”
Overall, the trip seems to have been more successful than most observers had expected. Through a twelve day marathon, an individual known not to like to travel or to participate in big meetings with foreign leaders played his role and stayed on script. Since his primary objective was to develop support for stopping KJU’s nuclear advance, the fine words we heard both from Trump and from all his counterparts are good enough. But the proof of what was accomplished on this front—or not—will be in actions we see in the weeks ahead.
The Trump Administration’s choice to focus on Xi and to do whatever it can to persuade him to rein in KJU was, in my view, the best of the feasible approaches available—given the realities they inherited in January.
How one wishes we have some system where experts in respective fields are invited to give their opinion and issues concerning National Security.
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