Xi was referring to the ancient Athenian historian and military commander Thucydides, who wrote The History of the Peloponnesian War, recounting the nearly three-decade conflict between the former Greek poleis (city-states) of Athens and Sparta. In his account, he wrote: “The growth of the power of Athens, and the alarm which this inspired in Lacedaemon [Sparta], made war inevitable.”
Writing for the Financial Times in 2012, Allison said that “the defining question about global order in the decades ahead will be: can China and the U.S. escape Thucydides’s trap?”
Xi’s invocation of Thucydides’ Trap comes at a time when tensions between the rival superpowers could boil over on any of a number of issues, from trade to AI to Taiwan.
In 2013, Xi reportedly told international leaders: “We need to work together to avoid the Thucydides Trap, which is a destructive tension between emerging powers and existing powers, or between two existing powers.”
In his 2023 meeting with then Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer in China, Xi again, according to Chinese state media, underlined how Thucydides’ Trap was “not inevitable” and that “the world is big enough to fully accommodate China and the United States’ respective development and common prosperity.”
Echoed by Chinese diplomats
Chinese diplomats have since echoed Xi in using the phrase to describe U.S.-China relations.
In 2021, Cui’s successor Qin Gang also rejected Thucydides’ Trap and assertions of a new Cold War between the U.S. and China, saying both countries must “jointly explore a way of peaceful coexistence.”
The view from America
It’s not just China referencing the Athenian historian and maxim. During Trump’s first presidential term, national security adviser H.R. McMaster was a known Thucydides buff. He wrote for the New York Times in 2013: “War is human. People fight today for the same fundamental reasons the Greek historian Thucydides identified nearly 2,500 years ago: fear, honor and interest.”
Politico also reported that in 2017 Allison briefed Trump’s National Security Council on Greek history and that then-Defense Secretary James Mattis was “fluent” in Thucydides’ work.In a February 2018 interview with GQ, Steve Bannon, Trump’s former campaign and White House strategist who is also a reported Thucydides aficionado, was asked if he was worried about starting a conflict with China “that the U.S. would lose.” In response, Bannon told the magazine, “I don’t think it has to happen. First off, the whole concept of the rising power and the declining power presupposes that the larger power that’s declining continues to decline.” He argued that Trump’s “America First” paradigm actually “revitalizes the United States of America and puts China on notice.”
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