What an Ancient Historian Says About the U.S.-China Clash

Are the U.S. and China doomed to battle? Or to put it another way, are they Sparta and Athens? That’s what’s meant when foreign affairs observers toss around the phrase “Thucydides Trap.” Thucydides (thoo-SID-i-deez) was a Greek historian in the 5th century B.C. who explained the Peloponnesian War of his day as an inevitable clash between Athens, a rising city-state, and the already established superpower, Sparta.

Not Thucydides. He was a historian trying to explain what had already happened rather than seeking to predict future events. The modern term was coined in 2012 by Graham Allison, a professor at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government. Allison argued that as China becomes stronger, it will threaten to displace U.S. influence, which could result in an unhealthy rivalry leading to armed conflict.