Can the US and China avoid the “Thucydides Trap”?

During a meeting in Beijing with US President Donald Trump, Chinese President Xi Jinping reportedly remarked on tensions between the United States and China by asking: “Can China and the US overcome the so-called ‘Thucydides Trap’ and create a new model for relations between major powers?”

The Athenian general Thucydides was the first-hand chronicler of the 27-year hegemonic conflict between Athens and Sparta — the Peloponnesian Wars — fought between 431 and 404 BC. Considered the intellectual father of the “Realist” school in international relations, Thucydides argued that the underlying cause of the Peloponnesian Wars was the fear Sparta felt in response to the rise of Athens.

In the ancient Greek world, made up of hundreds of city-states, Sparta was the dominant land power, while the rise of Athens as a maritime empire was seen as a threat capable of overturning the status quo. Some American historians have used this rivalry first as a framework for understanding the competition between Prussia and Britain, then between the United States and the Soviet Union, and now between the US and China.

The term “Thucydides Trap” itself was first coined by Harvard political scientist Prof. Graham Allison. Drawing from a single sentence by Thucydides, Allison theorized competition between hegemonic powers — or “power transitions” — as the “Thucydides Trap.” One reason Allison’s views carry weight is that he has advised several US presidents and defense secretaries on defense policy.

Allison first brought the concept into wider public debate in a 2012 Financial Times article titled “Thucydides’s trap has been sprung in the Pacific,” subtitled: “Graham Allison says China and America are today’s Athens and Sparta.” In his 2017 book Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides’s Trap?, Allison argues that 12 of the 16 major power-transition cases over the past 500 years ended in war.

Chinese political scientists, however, often refer to it as the “so-called Thucydides Trap.” According to Allison, China’s rapid rise is creating structural conditions that could lead to a Sino-American war. Some American political scientists, meanwhile, argue that Allison has handed the Chinese Communist Party a powerful rhetorical tool against the US. In their view, the theory helps portray America as a malign power seeking to halt China’s economic rise.

In fact, Allison does not claim that the “Thucydides Trap” makes war inevitable in every case. He has also warned that unless Chinese and American leaders perform better than their predecessors in ancient Greece or early 20th-century Europe, they risk being remembered as the leaders responsible for a devastating war between the two countries.

Xi Jinping was already speaking about the “Thucydides Trap” in November 2013 during the “Understanding China” conference organized in Beijing by the 21st Century Council of the Los Angeles-based globalist Berggruen Institute. Referring to Sparta and Athens, Xi said: “We must all work together to avoid the Thucydides Trap — the destructive tensions that emerge between a rising power and established powers, or among established powers themselves.”

During a meeting with business leaders in Seattle on a September 2015 visit to the US, Xi stated that building a new model of major-country relations based on mutual respect and win-win cooperation with the United States was a priority of Chinese foreign policy. He continued:

“We must base our judgments firmly on facts so as not to become victims of rumors, paranoia, or self-imposed prejudice. There is no such thing as the so-called Thucydides Trap in the world. But if major countries repeatedly make strategic miscalculations, they may create such traps for themselves.”

In March 2024, Graham Allison also met Xi Jinping in Beijing. At the time, a discussion was held at the Center for China and Globalization (CCG) in Beijing on the book Escaping the Thucydides Trap: A Dialogue on China-US Relations with Graham Allison, published by the center’s president, Dr. Henry Huiyao Wang. During the event, Allison and Wang discussed what the United States and China would need to do to avoid falling into the “Thucydides Trap.”

Judging by the remarks quoted at the beginning of this article, Xi Jinping appears far more eager to avoid such a trap. The United States, however, is not defined by Trump alone. China hawks in both American political parties remain highly insistent that Washington adopt much tougher policies toward Beijing.