Oh Yeah, Thucydides, That Guy. Remember Him?

You'll have to go back to the fifth century B.C. when the Athenian, Thucydides, looked at Athens and Sparta and pondered whether an aggressive, rising power challenging a dominant power could ever have a peaceful outcome.

Graham Allison's book, "Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides Trap?" looks to the past for insights on our near future.

History, according to Allison, isn't encouraging. There have been sixteen of these occasions. Twelve of them resulted in wars. Twelve for sixteen or two for three is terrific in baseball but a lousy result in geopolitics. From Bloomberg:


For three-quarters of a century, the U.S. has been the dominant world power. China is now challenging that hegemony economically, politically and militarily. Both countries, with vastly different political systems, histories and values, believe in their own exceptionalism.

The two nations, Allison argues, are "currently on a collision course for war," which he says can be averted only if both demonstrate skill and "take difficult and painful actions to avert it."

I've known Allison for almost four decades. He's been sweeping in and out of government, serving five Republican and Democratic administrations from Washington and his perch at Harvard. He's a first-class academic with the instincts of a first-rate politician. He brings to the "Thucydides Trap" an impressive sweep of history and geopolitical and military knowledge. Unlike some academics, he writes interestingly.

Allison analyzes why so many rising powers ended up in wars with established ones, and why some didn't. The best contemporary examples are the German rise that led to World War I contrasted with the confrontation between the U.S. and the Soviet Union, which was kept from escalating into hot war for more than four decades.

...

The rise of China offers a classic Thucydides trap. In 1980, China's economy was only a tenth the size of the U.S. economy. By 2040, Allison reckons, it could be three times larger. China considers itself the most important power in Asia, irrespective of U.S. commitments and alliances with allies in the region. With President Donald Trump presiding over a White House hostile to international institutions, Chinese President Xi Jinping has at least a claim on the title of premier global leader.

Allison depicts plausible scenarios of how conflicts between these two superpowers could break out: disputes over Taiwan or the South China Sea, or an accidental provocation by a third party -- it was the assassination of an Austrian archduke by a Serbian terrorist that triggered World War I -- or, less likely, a quarrel related to economic competition.

...

Allison isn't a pessimist. He argues that with skillful statecraft and political sensitivity these two superpowers can avoid war.

Xi is a ruthless autocrat, but a smart one with a sense of history and China's customary patience.

In the U.S., by contrast, the current commander-in-chief shows little interest in history and is irrational, insecure and impulsive.

That's scary.

My take?  I doubt that China's economy will be three times larger than America's by 2040. For a host of reasons - geopolitical, demographic, environmental and ecological - I suspect China may be already close to her zenith.

This reminds me of a paper I read a couple of years ago written by three prominent Chinese academics in which they explored growth and the Chinese government's options for controlling it. They noted that the entrepreneurial class in China and India aspire to Western affluence as do the remainder of their populations. However, given the sheer size of those two countries' populations, there are not nearly enough resources on this planet to provide that standard of living.  The only solution to this paradox they foresaw was to create "islands of affluence" floating atop a sea of relative poverty. This would require iron fist policies to suppress social upheaval over inequality facilitated by the politbureau. That's a major destabilizing event and internal instability can result in external aggression. 

Factors such as these may actually increase the risk of conflict between major powers especially should the Chinese pursue a "lebensraum" policy through southeast Asia and Asia Pacific.