THUCYDIDES'S TRAP: Is it inevitable that the U.S. and China will go to war, or can the two nations continue to exist in an uneasy peace?

• Author: Fischer, Raymond L.
• Position: WORLDVIEW

FOUNDING dean of Harvard's Kennedy School and director of its Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Graham Allison authored three best-selling books--Lee Kuan Yew: The Grand Master's Insights on China, the United States, and the World; Nuclear Terrorism: The Ultimate Preventable Catastrophe; and Essence of Decision: Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis--before writing Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides's Trap?. Allison served as Assistant Secretary of Defense under presidents from Ronald Reagan to Barack Obama. Currently, he directs the Thucydides's Trap Project at Harvard.

Greek historian Thucydides created the trap metaphor to describe the perilous historical pattern in which a rising nation threatens to disrupt a dominant state. In Thucydides' time, it was the rise of Athens and the fear this instilled in Sparta that made the Peloponnesian War inevitable. In analyzing events of the past 500 years, the Thucydides's Trap Project found 16 cases in which a rising nation threatened an established state: 12 ended in war--a formidable ratio for the world's current "most important geopolitical contest" between the U.S. and China.

More than two centuries ago, France's Napoleon Bonaparte foresaw China's transformation from an "agrarian backwater" to an aggressive power determined to make that nation great again: "Let China sleep; when she wakes, she will shake the world." China has awakened. Never before has the world seen an acute shift in the global balance of power comparable to the rapid rise of China.

In the past, balance of power referenced mainly military power. However, the current balance is a combination of economic and military might, often termed geoeconomics. Trade, investment policies, sanctions, cyber attacks, and foreign aid all contribute to achieving geoeconomic goals. In conducting foreign policy primarily through economics, China is following Sun Tzu's maxim in The Art of War. "Ultimate excellence lies not in winning every batde, but in defeating the enemy without ever fighting."

During his Administration, Pres. Obama sought to pivot U.S. foreign policy from the Middle East to Asia to counter China's rise in the region. However, China "just kept growing at three times the U.S. rate." In the last 35 years, China's gross domestic product has risen from $300,000,000,000 to 11 trillion dollars; its trade with the outside world jumped from $40,000,000,000 to four trillion dollars.

Since the...