“What made war inevitable was the growth of Athenian power and the fear which this caused in Sparta.”

The Peloponnesian War, Thucydides

A Thucydides Trap is when a rising power threatens the hegemony of an established power. When such a challenge arises war becomes the most likely outcome. The idea was posited by Graham T. Allison in his 2017 book, Destined for War and was based upon a remark made by the Athenian historian, Thucydides on the cause of the Peloponnesian War where Athens challenged Spartan power.

We are discussing this term more and more now mostly due to its revival by independent journalist Tim Pool and Allison’s book. While the term could be universal, it has been created and thus far used specifically with reference to the challenge Communist China poses to the United States of America. I’ll cover the term in general first then will look at the specifics of China vs. America later.

Who coined the term Thucydides trap?

The term Thucydides Trap was coined not by Thucydides himself, but by American political scientist Graham T. Allison in his book Destined for War in 2017. This makes the term quite recent and moreover, very specific in that it was coined as part of a thesis that China will threaten American supremacy and this will lead to war.

In this book he defines the trap as being where one great power threatens to displace another and thus makes war inevitable. He got the notion from the ancient Greek general and writer, Thucydides who, while an Athenian, wrote the best coverage of the Peloponnesian war we have. 

Thucydides specifically states that war was always going to happen when Athenian power impinged on the supremacy of the Spartans. His example is very specific to one war, and has been extrapolated by Allison to cover all situations where a single superpower is challenged.

Is the term ‘Thucydides Trap’ accurate?

It strikes me that a more accurate term might be “The Thucydides Consequence.” A trap is something which is laid intentionally to ensnare or trip up someone or something. This implies either the rising party or the dominant party lays a trap it hopes the other triggers.

It would seem better to say that war is a natural result of a challenge to one power’s supremacy by another. This is especially the case when two powers are competing over the same resources and area. The rise of Genghis Khan was bad news for Russia and China, but it had no real impact on France – it was more concerned with the threat of the Angevins/Plantagenets who were banished to their cash cow occupied territory of England. 

While war may be a natural consequence of a rising power challenging an established power, it is not inevitable. There have been examples where a challenger has risen up and not gone to war. Now, America was born of war, but it was not a growing power at the time. That came later and when America did rise to power in the world, the number one power in the world, Britain, did not go to war with it. Instead, due to common language and traditions, the two became unequal allies. America’s rise did not cause Britain’s decline.

What triggers the Thucydides Trap?

Each historical situation is going to be different. However, the setting is specific – there is one, established power and then a second one grows to challenge it. This implies that there are not two equal powers who grow into one another as say the Roman and Persian empires did or perhaps how the Soviet Union and America grew into superpowers at the same time. 

Nor does it cover situations where perhaps a group becomes a power out of almost nothing. The Arabs of the 6th and early 7th century fell into three groups – peaceful traders based around Petra, border guard tribes to protect the Romans and the Persians, and unregulated marauders in the undeveloped Hijaz. As the Romans and Persians were ground down due to plague and war, the Arabs sprung up, decimating the Persians and conquering half the Christian world. Later on they would develop the trappings of power and a religion, but they were definitely not a rising power per se.

Instead its a specific situation where there is a direct challenge to the acknowledged regional or global hegemony of one state by another. This challenge might not be explicit, but might be felt by the superpower who feels such a growth in influence, wealth, and ability cannot be left to itself.

That being said, the war can be triggered by both sides. While most powers prefer to have an excuse that their war is defensive – as in started by the opponent, a Thucydides trap war can be provoked by both sides. The superpower may seek to put down the challenger before it gets too strong or the challenger may feel confident enough to bring the hegemon down.

Athens vs. Sparta – the original Thucydides Trap

Athens and Sparta rose to power over time in Greece. While Athens may be older than Sparta, which seems to be Doric in nature, it was the latter who were most powerful at the time of the war. Prior to this conflict the two states had been allies of sorts against a common enemy – the Persians. 

During the war the Spartans acquitted themselves well and were able to gain some kind of hegemonic power over the Greek states as a result. After the war, Athens began to develop its own, rival power base. Rather than seeking to be a land power, Athens became a naval power and turned the Aegean islands into the Delian League of allied states, and it sought power further afield in places such as Sicily and Egypt. 

Trust between the two states slowly broke down over a number of flashpoints, such as:

• Athens building a defensive wall
• Spartan paranoia about Greece helping its helots during a rebellion
• Athens turning Megara into an ally, bringing Athenian influence into the Isthmus of Corinth.

However, Sparta and the Peloponnese did not go to war at once. When Samos rebelled against Athenian control, the Spartans did not support the rebels after the Peloponnesian league voted against it.

The real challenge came when neutral Corcyra rebelled against its colonial masters in Corinth. Unlike with the Samos rebellion, the Athenians signed a defensive pact with Corcyra and helped defeat the Corinthian fleet at the Battle of Sybota. This was followed up by Athens issuing dictats to the Corinthian colony of Potidaea – this naturally raised the ire of the Corinthians who had led the vote against war with Athens during the Samos rebellion.

This in turn led to other violations by Athens and Corinth called an assembly of the Peloponnesian league. Until this point Sparta had done nothing, but they were provoked by the Corinthians who threatened to leave Sparta without allies, and Athens who boasted of their power, into declaring war with Athens.

The war played out over many decades and eventually led to a Spartan victory. Their hegemony did not last long – Sparta was a mostly inward looking society and not one built to control far afield or expand. It suffered setbacks and began to decline into obscurity. Athens fared a little better when it got its democracy back, but was outdone by the Thebans and then controlled by the Macedonians and Romans. When the Greek world again had some kind of power, under the Byzantines, their power base lay in the city of Constantinople.

What other examples of the Thucydides Trap have there been?

Allison does cite other examples of The Thucydides Trap to bolster his argument. These include the lead up to World War I, the War of the Spanish Succession, and the Thirty Years War. My knowledge of the latter two conflicts are close to zero but involve European geopolitics around the balance of power between France and the Habsburgs of Spain and Austria.

Let’s quickly look at the build up to World War I. It is a big one and a deep one with many complexities that are rarely discussed. However, in simple terms the dominant power of the time was the British Empire. This empire had grown out of a desire to trade but soon moved into colonisation, conquest, and the usual trappings of empire. 

During the 19th century the German people, who should be natural allies to the English based on our ancient origins in Germania and Scandinavia, unified for the first time. Until then there had been various tribes which sometimes coalesced into larger groups, then the Holy Roman Empire – a patchwork of independent states which grew out of French occupation under Charlemagne.

Well, during the late 18th century the Prussians in modern day Poland, developed their power and slowly began the unification process. It was this strength which helped the British defeat Napoleon, but by the end of the 19th century the Brits were worried that the Germans would not be content to be unified, but would want an empire too – by then the majority of the world, that which could be conquered, was already in European hands.

The Germans were able to get places such as Kenya and Uganda, but any further expansion of power meant conquering European held lands. This led to a complicated network of anti-German and pro-German alliances were Britain allied with its long-term rival, France. War became inevitable and would sow the seeds for a greater conflict and the fall of the British empire.

Will the two powers be equal in strengths?

No. Something we need to take away from the Peloponnesian War when making a comparison with a looming Sino-American war is that Sparta and Athens were very different powers. Sparta was a dual monarchy leading a democratic Peloponnesian League while Athens was a democracy leading the undemocratic Delian League.

That, however, is not the key difference between the two – that was their forms of fighting and power. Sparta were, at the time and until the rise of Thebes, the undisputed land force in the region. No one could rival them – after all, it only took 300 of them to hold off the Persians for so long at Thermopylae. The Athenians on the other hand were the unrivalled naval power in the region.

We should not expect the two powers involved in a Thucydides Trap style war to be equal in terms of power, diplomacy, cache, or strengths/weaknesses. As proved by the Athens-Sparta war, two powers can be quite different and still vie for power. If Athens had been on an island rather than in Attica, the war may have been very different.

Why is Thucydides Trap being invoked now?

This segment will date this article, but it is topical and relevant. Since perhaps the late 1980s or early 1990s, the rise of Communist China (as opposed to free, democratic and legitimate China in Taiwan) has presented the west, and especially the world’s only superpower, America, with a problem.

The term has come to my attention, as noted above, because of the videos of Tim Pool. He’s a highly respected independent journalist who does his best to be as objective as possible. He clearly sees the rising tensions between Communist China and America through this prism. 

Is Communist China seeking to oust America from power? Quite possibly. We know for sure that the Communist leaders want revenge for their humiliations in the 19th century. They still hurt that the Europeans could sail so far and put old Imperial China on its knees with superior technology. 

Yet the West, while founding and developing cities like Macau, Hong Kong, Shanghai, and Qingdao, did not conquer China – the Japanese did that later on. That being said, the British did get 19th century China addicted to opium in order to open up the tea trade – later moving tea production to India to better control it.

Is China seeking to spring the Thucydides Trap?

Currently, we have an imbalance of intent. The west has its arms open to China and is promoting relatively free trade with the Chinese mainland at the expense of the legitimate government in Taiwan. It’s pure economics. While a repressive, evil regime, the Communist Party control massive economics.

This has allowed China to gather economic power within its borders – production of medicines, medical equipment, electrical technologies, consumer goods, and so on. It has developed a policy of loans for infrastructure to make African, Caribbean, and other countries – even the once proud Serbs, bend the knee to the communist government. Yet China is not loved or admired by anyone other than socialists and communists who want to control their fellow countrymen in the same way the communists do in China. 

The west did not see Chinese friendship for the falseness that it was – it was a Trojan horse and the CCP virus of 2020 exposed this for what it was. While Communist China was denying the existence of the virus, it was mopping up tons of medical supplies in Australia and elsewhere then sending them back to China by private charter planes.

This is the prelude. Now comes the moving of chess pieces and propaganda. In the modern world, each nation seeking war needs to present itself as the victim in order to get their people on board. The Communist Chinese government have been stoking xenophobia and grievances for decades, and this has advanced faster since Xi became president.

China is now moving to the testing stage, possibly the piss take stage, where it expands outside of its territory – establishing bases in Djibouti, building island bases in waters it has no right to control and which are technically owned by other nations in the region like the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei, and so on. It has then begun the old Russian tactic of running its military close to national waters and airspace – for a long time its run ships near Japan and recently sailed a fleet between Japanese islands and close to Taiwan.

How could the Sino-America Thucydides Trap play out?

The question here is whether China is a paper tiger or not and how will the west respond. Members of the Anglosphere are trade minded and less likely to put up with Chinese actions. We’re going to see a mixture of national, international, and local reactions to Chinese provocations.

I expect at the minimum to see the following:

• Building national manufacturing of key equipment, medicine, and medical clothing.
• Individual consumer choices moving away from “made in China.”
• Reduction in Chinese tourism.
• Greater scrutiny and a tightening of Chinese influence on Western institutions; especially in universities.
• A reaction against corporations such as Hollywood and the NBA who bend the knee to Communist Chinese wishes.
• Moving of manufacturing to other states such as Vietnam, Africa (Botswana?), and India.
• Strengthening of the defensive ring around China’s waters via Philippines, Taiwan, Japan and South Korea.
• Increased support for Tibetans, Xingjiang Muslims, and the free people of Hong Kong.
• Increased recognition of Taiwan.
• Changes or restructuring of international organizations to either separate from or purge Chinese influence – WHO being a prime example.

These are elements of a cold war phase between the free world and China. Unlike in other global conflicts, China does not have a network of allies or a great pattern of control. It’s built its power on loan enslavement, however the west can defeat this easily enough. If China is found guilty of gross violations relating to the CCP virus, other nations will quash any and all debts owed to China as reparations. 

The question remains what will happen in the South China sea and can Hong Kong/Taiwan be protected. The Communist Party are adamant that it controls all of these areas as part of China. Maybe Hong Kong and Taiwan are Chinese if they choose to be so, but they want to be part of a free, democratic China, not slaves to Communists. 

Will America and its allies destroy these Chinese bases or will they try to exert economic and diplomatic power over the communists to force them to destroy them themselves? Can the nations in the area work in concert with the west to ensure China butts out?

This may be difficult as the nations of the region are very different. Vietnam, for example, is itself a communist dictatorship although a much milder, more open one than north of the border. There is perhaps a greater chance for Vietnam to become more developed and democratic than Communist China at the moment. 

Let’s not also forget that we are in the 21st century and this means being in a digital war as well as in economic and physical wars. China has amped up its digital warfare during the CCP virus problem. It has hampered efforts to combat the virus in many countries such as Italy and Taiwan by disseminating fake news and more. Its aided by sympathising simpletons in the west too. If an online war against China is launched, we can expect to see its Great Firewall of China challenged in order to penetrate it with the truth.

Of course all of the above rests upon the west wanting to put the CCP down. As I’ve noted throughout this, there are many people in the west who hold similar values and wish to replicate the Communist Chinese party. This will hamper the effort to put the CCP down and free the Chinese people from their oppressors. Such divisions will be exploited to the maximum by the Communist party of China. Anyway, if we thought the fall of the Iron Curtain would usher in an era of peace, we were wrong.

Conclusions of the Thucydides Trap

The Thucydides Trap is an interesting notion and one that is worth exploring in some depth – hopefully you’ve enjoyed that. While it can be a universal principle applied to challenges to hegemonic power throughout history, it is specifically tied to the rise of Communist China as a rival to the United States specifically and the west in general (or at least the Anglosphere). We will have to see how the trap plays out and decide ourselves what our role in it will be. Personally, I won’t be buying Chinese goods any time soon or going there until the CCP falls. Freedom for Hong Kong!!