According to Dr. Graham Allison, the most significant world event of the last several decades was not 9/11 or the collapse of the Soviet Union. It was the rapid rise of China. Dr. Allison, the author of Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides’s Trap?, spoke to cadets in a packed Robinson Auditorium for a recent Modern War Institute Speaker Series forum, cosponsored by the Department of Social Sciences.
“Never before has a country risen so fast, so far, and in so many different dimensions as China,” Dr. Allison said. In his book, he lays out the case that while war with China is not inevitable, in historical cases where a rising major power eclipses a ruling power, twelve out of sixteen have resulted in conflict.
The logic of his argument is what he calls the Thucydides Trap. This is a reference to a passage in Thucydides’s History of the Peloponnesian War, in which the cause of that war was the rise of Athens and the fear this engendered in Sparta. A similar dynamic risks ensnaring the United States and China into a war neither may seek, yet which neither can avoid.
Dr. Allison, who is the former Director of the Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, said he wrote the book not to be fatalistic but to provide a lens with which he hopes to prevent war. The past seven decades, which has seen no war among great powers, is a historical anomaly, he said, and something not to be taken for granted. To avoid a great power war with China and falling into the Thucydides Trap, he urged American policymakers “to stretch our imaginations.”
“If we expect business as usual, we will get history as usual,” Dr. Allison cautioned, and war with China, whether over North Korea or some dispute in the South China Sea, would be “catastrophic.”
Dr. Allison claimed that by any indicators (e.g., GDP by purchasing power parity), China has already surpassed the United States in power, and worried about how the United States will handle being the world’s second largest economy, when “it’s in our DNA to be Number One.”
Dr. Allison is perhaps best known for his 1971 book Essence of Decision, an examination of the Cuban Missile Crisis that dissects the case using three models of governmental decision-making: a rational model, an organizational model, and a governmental politics model.
The idea that Dr. Graham mentioned about Athens and Sparta is a very interesting take on the possibility of war b/w china and the US. It urges me to want to learn about Chinese culture and further understand their interests. In doing so this will allow me to have a better relationship with them if I ever encounter them in my military career.
As the trump administration destroys the state dry how can we have voices to advice him and hone the issues and possible solutions? Govt employed who seek to respect other nations and see k to build bridges?
How do we allay fears of a standiffish america?
Answering Allison's questions with answers from a dysfunctional government seems to guarantee a China US war!
I admire the long march, the ch come in tennis shoes attacking our marines; the grit they have to work and develop their factories. Islf theycare gods folks too, can t we admire their pluck?
99.8% of all DNA is the same. Seems right we give reward for their efforts! Our Chinese brothers! Small world. Beautiful world. They take steps to save we walk away. So sad! Our lives depend on good stewardship!
Open our eyes!
Blinkers and nonsense.
To think that China, who ignores treaties (e.g., Human Rights, UN Charter, International Courts, etc) at-will, violates the national sovereignty of other countries (e.g., Tibet, Vietnam, etc), and is a communist oligarchy that rules China with an iron first (they like laogais and mental institutions for their populace), routinely violates their own Constitution, has a Human Rights rating of 14, and locks people up to prevent what they might do and somehow you think we are the bad guys.
Dr. Graham mentions that it is a historical anomaly that no great powers have gone to war in seventy years. I agree that this should not be taken for granted, and it would be beneficial to ask why it is that this has happened. Is it due to better diplomacy? Perhaps the level of damage that modern weapons can inflict have caused countries to be unwilling to engage in any major conflicts? Following this train of thought, perhaps it can be expected that the United States and China will continue to avoid war with each other in the years to come.