Author Topic: The Thucydides Trap  (Read 2825 times)

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The Thucydides Trap
« on: June 19, 2015, 04:34:14 PM »

Thucydides Trap

Thucydides Trap* is where a rising power causes fear in an established power which escalates toward war.

Thucydides wrote: "What made war inevitable was the growth of Athenian power and the fear which this caused in Sparta." (extracted from wikipedia)

*The phrase was coined by Graham Tillett Allison, Jr., an American political scientist

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Re: The Thucydides Trap
« Reply #1 on: June 19, 2015, 04:36:17 PM »

Thucydides (c. 460 – c. 400 BC) was an Athenian historian, political philosopher and general. His History of the Peloponnesian War recounts the 5th century BC war between Sparta and Athens to the year 411 BC. Thucydides has been dubbed the father of "scientific history" because of his strict standards of evidence-gathering and analysis of cause and effect without reference to intervention by the gods, as outlined in his introduction to his work.



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Re: The Thucydides Trap
« Reply #2 on: June 19, 2015, 04:37:30 PM »

He has also been called the father of the school of political realism, which views the political behavior of individuals and the subsequent outcome of relations between states as ultimately mediated by and constructed upon the emotions of fear and self-interest. His text is still studied at both universities and advanced military colleges worldwide. The Melian dialogue remains a seminal work of international relations theory while Pericles' Funeral Oration is widely studied in political theory, history, and the classics.

More generally, Thucydides showed an interest in developing an understanding of human nature to explain behaviour in such crises as plague, massacres, as in that of the Melians, and civil war. (wikipedia)

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Re: The Thucydides Trap
« Reply #3 on: June 19, 2015, 05:29:11 PM »

August 21, 2012

Thucydides’s trap has been sprung in the Pacific

By Graham Allison

China and America are the Athens and Sparta of today, says Graham Allison

China’s increasingly aggressive posture towards the South China Sea and the Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea is less important in itself than as a sign of things to come. For six decades after the second world war, an American “Pax Pacifica” has provided the security and economic framework within which Asian countries have produced the most rapid economic growth in history. However, having emerged as a great power that will overtake the US in the next decade to become the largest economy in the world, it is not surprising that China will demand revisions to the rules established by others.

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Re: The Thucydides Trap
« Reply #4 on: June 19, 2015, 05:30:36 PM »

The defining question about global order in the decades ahead will be: can China and the US escape Thucydides’s trap? The historian’s metaphor reminds us of the dangers two parties face when a rising power rivals a ruling power – as Athens did in 5th century BC and Germany did at the end of the 19th century. Most such challenges have ended in war. Peaceful cases required huge adjustments in the attitudes and actions of the governments and the societies of both countries involved.

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Re: The Thucydides Trap
« Reply #5 on: June 19, 2015, 05:31:04 PM »

Classical Athens was the centre of civilisation. Philosophy, history, drama, architecture, democracy – all beyond anything previously imagined. This dramatic rise shocked Sparta, the established land power on the Peloponnese. Fear compelled its leaders to respond. Threat and counter-threat produced competition, then confrontation and finally conflict. At the end of 30 years of war, both states had been destroyed.

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Re: The Thucydides Trap
« Reply #6 on: June 19, 2015, 05:34:57 PM »

Thucydides wrote of these events: “It was the rise of Athens and the fear that this inspired in Sparta that made war inevitable.” Note the two crucial variables: rise and fear.

The rapid emergence of any new power disturbs the status quo. In the 21st century, as Harvard University’s Commission on American National Interests has observed about China, “a diva of such proportions cannot enter the stage without effect”.

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Re: The Thucydides Trap
« Reply #7 on: June 19, 2015, 05:35:30 PM »

Never has a nation moved so far, so fast, up the international rankings on all dimensions of power. In a generation, a state whose gross domestic product was smaller than Spain’s has become the second-largest economy in the world.

If we were betting on the basis of history, the answer to the question about Thucydides’s trap appears obvious. In 11 of 15 cases since 1500 where a rising power emerged to challenge a ruling power, war occurred. Think about Germany after unification as it overtook Britain as Europe’s largest economy. In 1914 and in 1939, its aggression and the UK’s response produced world wars.

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Re: The Thucydides Trap
« Reply #8 on: June 19, 2015, 05:35:55 PM »

Uncomfortable as China’s rise is for the US, there is nothing unnatural about an increasingly powerful China demanding more say and greater sway in relations among nations. Americans, particularly those who lecture Chinese about being “more like us”, should reflect on our own history.

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Re: The Thucydides Trap
« Reply #9 on: June 19, 2015, 05:36:51 PM »

As the US emerged as the dominant power in the western hemisphere in about 1890, how did it behave? Future president Theodore Roosevelt personified a nation supremely confident that the next 100 years would be an American century. In the years before the first world war the US liberated Cuba, threatened Britain and Germany with war to force them to accept US positions on disputes in Venezuela and Canada, backed an insurrection that split Columbia to create a new state of Panama – which immediately gave the US concessions to build the Panama Canal – and attempted to overthrow the government of Mexico, which was supported by the UK and financed by London bankers. In the half century that followed, US military forces intervened in “our hemisphere” on more than 30 separate occasions to settle economic or territorial disputes on terms favourable to Americans, or oust leaders we judged unacceptable.

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Re: The Thucydides Trap
« Reply #10 on: June 19, 2015, 05:37:21 PM »

To recognise powerful structural factors is not to argue that leaders are prisoners of the iron laws of history. It is rather to help us appreciate the magnitude of the challenge. If leaders in China and the US perform no better than their predecessors in classical Greece, or Europe at the beginning of the 20th century, historians of the 21st century will cite Thucydides in explaining the catastrophe that follows. The fact that war would be devastating for both nations is relevant but not decisive. Recall the first world war, in which all the combatants lost what they treasured most.

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Re: The Thucydides Trap
« Reply #11 on: June 19, 2015, 05:37:48 PM »

In light of the risks of such an outcome, leaders in both China and the US must begin talking to each other much more candidly about likely confrontations and flash points. Even more difficult and painful, both must begin making substantial adjustments to accommodate the irreducible requirements of the other.

The writer is Director of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University

http://www.ft.com/

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Re: The Thucydides Trap
« Reply #12 on: June 19, 2015, 05:51:53 PM »

The Real Thucydides Trap

The popular expression only captures half of the true meaning of Thucydides’ work.

By Leon Whyte

Professor Graham Allison of the Harvard Kennedy School has popularized the phrase “Thucydides trap,” to explain the likelihood of conflict between a rising power and a currently dominant one. This is based on the famous quote from Thucydides: “It was the rise of Athens and the fear that this inspired in Sparta that made war inevitable.” This usage has even spread to Chinese President Xi Jinping who said “We all need to work together to avoid the Thucydides trap – destructive tensions between an emerging power and established powers … Our aim is to foster a new model of major country relations.” However, those like Graham Allison who talk about a Thucydides trap only capture half the meaning of the History of The Peloponnesian War. The true trap is countries going into, and continuing, war clouded by passions like fear, hubris and honor.

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Re: The Thucydides Trap
« Reply #13 on: June 19, 2015, 05:52:34 PM »

In Thucydides’ history, human emotion made conflict inevitable, and at several points where peace was possible, emotion propelled it forward. In the beginning, there is a set of speeches in Sparta debating the possibility of going to war with Athens. Archidamus, the Spartan king, tells the Spartan people not to underestimate the power of Athens and urged that Sparta “must not be hurried into deciding in a day’s brief space a question which concerns many lives and fortunes and many cities, and in which honor is deeply involved – but we must decide calmly.” However, Sthenelaidas, a Spartan ephor, advocated, “Vote, therefore, Spartans, for war, as the honor of Sparta demands.” The Spartans followed Sthenelaidas, which led to a war of honor and fear against the Athenians.

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Re: The Thucydides Trap
« Reply #14 on: June 19, 2015, 06:05:22 PM »

In the seventh year of the Peloponnesian War, at the battle of Pylos, the Athenians won a major victory over Sparta. Because of their loss, Sparta sent envoys to Athens offer a peace treaty. The Spartan envoys enjoined the Athenians to “treat their gains as precarious,” and advised that “if great enmities are ever to be really settled, we think it will be, not by the system of revenge and military success… but when the more fortunate combatant waives his privileges and, guided by gentler feelings, conquers his rival in generosity and accords peace on more moderate conditions than expected.” However, the Athenians, led by Cleon, who Thucydides described as the most violent man in Athens, accused the Spartans of not having right intentions, and made further demands on Sparta for a return of territories that Athens had previously ceded to Sparta before the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War, resulting in a continuation of the war.

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Re: The Thucydides Trap
« Reply #15 on: June 19, 2015, 06:05:49 PM »

If the United States and China fight a war, it will occur because of the same fear and honor that led the Spartans to start the Peloponnesian War, or the Athenians to continue it. Prominent Chinese scholar Ye Zicheng expressed this sense of honor when he wrote, “If China does not become a world power, the rejuvenation of the Chinese nation will be incomplete. Only when it becomes a world power can we say that the total rejuvenation of the Chinese nation has been achieved.” American exceptionalism, the conviction that the United States holds a unique place and role in human history, provides a counterpart to Chinese nationalism, and is widespread enough to be a central plank of the Republican Party’s platform.

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Re: The Thucydides Trap
« Reply #16 on: June 19, 2015, 06:06:54 PM »

This strong belief of a special place in the world can make a country sensitive to insult, intended or otherwise, such as in 1999 when NATO aircraft bombed the Chinese embassy in Belgrade during Operation Allied Force in Bosnia, killing three Chinese citizens. The United States claimed that the bombing was an accident, but few Chinese accepted this explanation, and more than 100,000 Chinese protested across the country, including attacking the American embassy and consulates. Contributing to the anti-American outrage was Chinese state media insisting the bombing was not an accident. Anti-Chinese sentiment is not as widespread or as vocal in the United States, but it is common for American politicians and pundits to portray the rise of China as a risk to America’s place in the world.

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Re: The Thucydides Trap
« Reply #17 on: June 19, 2015, 06:08:17 PM »

The best advice that Thucydides’ work offers is clear, do not let emotions such as hubris, fear and honor drag you into a hegemonic war, and if war does occur, do not let these same emotions cloud your judgment if there is a chance for peace. This is a hard lesson to learn, but unlike the mechanistic vision of Thucydides’ Trap it accounts for human agency and shows a path towards peaceful co-existence rather than letting passions lead the way.

Leon Whyte is a second year master candidate at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University as well as the Senior Editor for the Current Affairs section of the Fletcher Security Review. His research interests include transnational security and U.S. alliances in East Asia.

http://thediplomat.com/

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