Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides's Trap

Dr. James C. MacDougall, a Professor of National Security Strategy at the National War College, has served as the chairman of the Department of National Security and Strategy at the US Army War College, the Deputy Director of the George C. Marshall European Center for Security Studies, and a faculty member at the National War College from 2007 until 2009. P Graham Allison gazes into the future of US-China relations in Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides’s Trap? only to find the best guide to the future is the past. Specifically based on Thucydides’s well-known observation that “It was the rise of Athens and the fear that this inspired in Sparta that made war inevitable,” Allison has popularized the phrase “Thucydides’s Trap” to describe the dangerous historical dynamic that develops when a rising power threatens to displace an established ruling power.1 This dynamic was summarized aptly in an earlier article: “The rise of a new power has been attended by uncertainty and anxieties. Often, though not always, violent conflict has followed. The rise in the economic and military power of China, the world’s most populous country, will be a central question for Asia and for American foreign policy at the beginning of a new century. ”2