![]() It is about the impact of a rising China on the U.S. Our research finds that 12 of these rivalries ended in war and four did not - not a comforting ratio for the 21st-century’s most important geopolitical contest. ![]() The catastrophic outcome of their competition necessitated a new category of violent conflict: world war. ![]() In the most infamous example, an industrial Germany rattled Britain’s established position at the top of the pecking order a century ago. Reviewing the record of the past five hundred years, the Thucydides’s Trap Project I direct at Harvard has found 16 cases in which a major nation’s rise has disrupted the position of a dominant state. That primal insight describes a perilous historical pattern. Writing about a war that devastated the two leading city-states of classical Greece two and a half millennia ago, he explained: “It was the rise of Athens and the fear that this instilled in Sparta that made war inevitable.” China and the United States are currently on a collision course for war - unless both parties take difficult and painful actions to avert it.Īs a rapidly ascending China challenges America’s accustomed predominance, these two nations risk falling into a deadly trap first identified by the ancient Greek historian Thucydides. When a rising power threatens to displace a ruling power, alarm bells should sound: danger ahead. What is this book’s Big Idea? In a phrase, Thucydides’s Trap. Yet many Americans are still in denial about what China’s transformation from agrarian backwater to “the biggest player in the history of the world” means for the United States. Two centuries ago, Napoleon warned, “Let China sleep when she wakes, she will shake the world.” Today China has awakened, and the world is beginning to shake. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |