Escaping Thucydides.

• Author: Mitrovich, Gregory

The escalating strategic rivalry between the United States and China represents the greatest foreign policy challenge that President Joe Biden's administration faces today. The growing confrontation over the South China Sea (scs) and China's increasing threats towards Taiwan have left many fearing that war could erupt due to crisis miscalculation. Experts warn, however, that the risk of war between the two powers will remain high, regardless of whether the situation in the scs improves, due to the structural tensions caused by China's rise. This rise, in the long term, could potentially set off a global war for the dominance of the international system.

The new Biden administration is thus faced with two difficult tasks--tempering the immediate risk of conflict in the scs and reducing the probability of hegemonic war triggered by China's rising power.

In his influential book Destined for War, Graham Allison argues that the greatest threat of hegemonic war occurs when rising powers attempt to overturn an established global order. These challenges in turn trigger a "Thucydides Trap" like that which sparked twelve hegemonic wars over the past five hundred years. The increasingly heated confrontation between the United States and China coupled with the growing sense that Beijing aspires to replace the United States at the apex of global power, has led many scholars to join Allison and argue that conflict between these two powers may also be inevitable.

However, beginning with the industrial era, not all hegemonic challenges have led to war, even among rising powers eager to overthrow the existing established orders. During the nineteenth century, Great Britain faced fundamental challenges from a rising, democratic United States bent on reforming a world dominated by great power aristocracies. From 1815-1900, the United States was one of the fastest developing nations in the world--a continental-sized nation with vast resources, a rapidly growing population, and the champion of an economic and political model that by century's end positioned it as the world's leading economy and democratic inspiration. However, despite numerous diplomatic confrontations throughout the century, the two nations remained at peace.

The reason is that the United States chose not to threaten the key source of Britain's hegemony, its naval and financial dominance of the world. The United States would only emerge as a challenger to the British during the twentieth century, after the rise of Germany forced the United States to build a "navy second to none" while World War I left Great Britain heavily indebted to American financiers, alarming London of America's growing influence. While the nations remained rivals, the potential for confrontation was muted by the economic upheaval of the Great Depression and the revived German threat under Adolf Hitler. Eventually, the United States would surpass Great Britain on the high seas during World War II and become the dominant power in the new postwar world.

Under the leadership of Chancellor Otto von Bismarck, Germany also managed to rise to power without triggering a war with Great Britain, though power transition theory would have suggested such a war inevitable. Following the wars of German Unification, which culminated with Prussia's shocking victory over France in 1871, Bismarck moved aggressively to establish the German Empire as the dominant power on the European continent, fundamentally reshaping the balance of power system first established by the Congress of Vienna after Napoleon's defeat in 1815. Yet he did so while also deferring to Britain's global leadership, arguing in 1889 that the Pax Britannica represented "the greatest force for peace in the world." Rather, Bismarck planned Germany to become the most powerful "second-tier" state, a decision that instead put it on a collision course with the United States. While Britain watched...