An edited version of the discussion on Graham Allison's book first posted on Asia Times.
The
just published book called “Destined for War” addresses the question: “Can
America and China escape Thucydides’s Trap?” Given the state of tension between
the two powers, the publication is timely and the subject matter vitally important.
Coined
by author Graham Allison, the Thucydides trap is based on the “History of
Peloponnesian War” written by historian Thucydides who observed that a rising Athens
inevitably came to blows with a ruling Sparta.
Allison
is the founding dean of Harvard Kennedy School, eminent scholar and prominent
adviser to the federal government on matters related to defense and national
security. He and his students reviewed the past 500 years of history and
identified 16 cases of a rising power facing a reigning power. Twelve of those
cases ended in disastrous wars.
The
book is a tour de force on identifying all the different ways a rising power
and a reigning power can collide despite the best of intentions and despite conscious
efforts to avoid war. Some times the process begins with a trivial
misunderstanding that magnified with each reaction until open conflict becomes
inevitable.
One
of his chapters was devoted to conjectures of how a war between China and the
US could develop. Various scenarios begin with a minor provocation
misunderstood by the other side, which leads to a response in turn
misunderstood and thus an escalating series of thrust and parry until the two
countries stand at the brink of nuclear holocaust.
The author
did not intend to sell his book as a prophesy of doom but to make sure that his
cautionary tale is sufficiently frightening, so that readers will take the threat
of conflict seriously and more importantly leaders in Beijing and Washington
will be sufficiently alarmed to avoid the trap.
As his four no-conflict
cases demonstrated, war between a rising power and reigning power does not have
to be inevitable. Allison suggests that China and the US face four “mega
threats” that would require their working together rather than in opposition,
and in so doing help them avert falling into the trap.
The first is
the threat of mutual assured destruction from a nuclear Armageddon. Both sides
should be deterred from an all out nuclear war from which there can be no
winners. This is the same deterrent that kept the 70 years of the Cold War
between the US and the Soviet Union from getting hot.
Along the
same lines, both powers have the same interest in keeping nuclear weapons out
of the hands of as many nations as possible and out of the hands of terrorists.
He calls this scenario “nuclear anarchy.” Joint efforts would naturally be more
effective in preventing nuclear anarchy than working separately.
Both also
face terrorism based on biological weapons derived from genetic engineering.
“Extensive cooperation, through bilateral intelligence sharing, multilateral
organizations and the establishment of global standard will be essential,” said
Allison.
The fourth
common mega threat identified by Allison was combating emission of greenhouse
gases to stop global warming. The President of the U.S. has said, “This is not
going to happen.” Oh well, three out of four should be enough for leaders of
Beijing and Washington to choose collaboration rather than competition.
On his book
tour at Stanford, Allison and his moderator and former colleague at Harvard,
Niall Ferguson, joked that the Chinese leaders follow western ideas and
thinking closely and most have already read this book even before it was
published—suggesting another case of piracy (ha-ha). Both lamented that the
Trump White House is unlikely to have read the book and probably never will.
Sitting in
the audience, I asked whether a model of one hand clapping could still evoke
the risk of falling into the Thucydides’s trap. I was hoping that they would
take the cue to discuss the dominant US role as the provocateur in face of a relatively passive reaction from China.
Allison understood my question but he simply said that China’s island building
activity in the South China Sea could create two hands clapping required by the
trap.
Allison
admits that his expertise is in national security and not on China. I believe
seeing China from a western frame of reference is a significant flaw of his
book. While he acknowledges a China as a 5000-year Confucian based
civilization, he seems to attribute China with the same zero-sum mentality of a
western nation.
All sixteen
cases of Thucydides’s trap involved western nations. Japan was the rising power
in two of the cases, but I would argue that Japan became a rising power after
they decided to vigorously adopt all manner of western values and thus should
be counted as a westernized nation.
As Michael
Wood, award-winning producer of documentaries on major world civilizations,
concluded at the end of his series that only the western civilizations went around
killing each other and slaughtering others to extinction.
China does
not send battleships to the Caribbean nor surveillance planes off the coast of
California. China’s presence in the Middle East has been to help restore and
rebuild infrastructure. The soldiers China dispatches overseas wear the blue UN
helmet and serve as peacekeepers under UN auspices.
Washington
gasped in alarm when China finally established its first offshore military base
outside of China. China justified their base in Djibouti on the horn of Africa
as needed to support their naval ships on patrol as part of the multinational
efforts to combat piracy off the coast of Africa.
China’s
heavy-handed influence on Djibouti was to lay a fresh water pipeline in the
country and connect the coastal port with a railroad to Addis Ababa, capitol of
landlocked Ethiopia. This is an example of China’s strategy to “dominate” the
world, namely helping other countries build their infrastructure via the Belt
and Road Initiative.
The author is
rightly concerned about world and American national security. I respectfully
submit that the hand doing the clapping, namely the United States, is the
reigning power that can do the most to cease and desist their aggressive
actions and thus avert the infamous trap.
