What Is The Thucydides Trap and Why Did Xi Raise It With Trump?

When President Xi Jinping met US leader Donald Trump in Beijing on Thursday, he posed a big question: Can China and the US avoid the “Thucydides Trap”? It’s a phrase that sounds academic, but it goes to the heart of Beijing’s ambitions for their relationship.

The term was popularized by Harvard political scientist Graham Allison in the early 2010s, drawing on the ancient Greek historian Thucydides. His argument: when a rising power challenges an established one, conflict inevitably follows. Allison’s research found this pattern played out repeatedly across history and he used this framing as a lens to examine the US-China rivalry.