Taylor H Lunsford

In my upcoming book The Myth of the Thucydides Trap, I debunk one of the most pervasive and influential ideas in US-China relations. But what is the Thucydides Trap, and how were so many leaders, scholars, and commentators won over by it?

The Thucydides Trap was first popularized by Harvard political scientist Graham Allison in a 2015 article for The Atlantic, where he argues that “great power transitions,” where a dominant ‘ruling’ power is threatened by a ‘rising’ rival, are particularly likely to result in war. He based this argument on a case file of great power transitions from the last 500 years of history and a dictum by the ancient Greek historian Thucydides:

“It was the rise of Athens, and the fear this instilled in Sparta, that made war inevitable.”

Allison’s thesis is simple- when a ‘ruling’ power, in this case the United States, finds itself in competition with a ‘rising’ power like China, a special historical pressure makes the two powers likely to go to war, even if both sides believe that war would be against their own interests and make efforts to preserve peace. Citing war in 12 of the 16 “great power transitions” in his historical case file, Allison argues that the odds of conflict are about 75%, a shocking number that suggests war is significantly more likely than peace.

Allison elaborated on this theory in his 2017 book Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides’s Trap?, a bestseller that turned the Thucydides Trap into one of the great buzzwords of modern international affairs. Suddenly the theory was everywhere in the pages of the New York Times, The Economist, and other international magazines and papers. Since then, it has become one of the most influential ideas in foreign policy circles on both sides of the Pacific. Where many American and Chinese commentators once believed that war between the two countries was virtually impossible, Allison persuaded them that it may be virtually unavoidable.

The Thucydides Trap has everything a great theory of international relations is expected to have- an Ivy League pedigree, an imposing-sounding Classical name, and a pessimistic view of the world. What it does not have is convincing evidence or even a consistent theoretical frame for understanding what great powers are, what it means to be in a “great power transition,” or how war relates to peaceful forms of competition. Instead of interpreting US-China relations through the two countries’ own circumstances and histories, Allison has built a grandiose historical theory on cases like Renaissance Portugal, 17th-century Sweden, and the unification of Germany. In The Myth of the Thucydides Trap, I dissect each of the flaws and contradictions at the heart of the Trap theory and offer a more grounded view of US-China relations based on current reality rather than forced comparisons.

The Myth of the Thucydides Trap will be available Summer 2024 through Kindle Direct Publishing.