Expert who wrote about Thucydides trap reacts to Xi Jinping warning to Trump about U S and China

I'm joined now by Graham Allison, a professor of government at Harvard's Kennedy School. Professor, thank you so much for your time today. We appreciate it. So in his public comments yesterday, President Xi once again referenced a theory you popularized called the Thucydides Trap. Can you briefly explain that theory for our viewers and why the Chinese continue to bring it up? Thank you very much. It's a pleasure to be here. So Thucydides was the founder and father of history. He wrote a famous book about 2,000 years ago called The History of the Peloponnesian War. And in it, he explains that when a rapidly rising power, like Athens, he was writing about, threatens to displace and establish ruling power, that creates a dynamic that typically ends in war. I wrote a book about this called Destined for War, which I looked at the last 500 years. We've seen 16 instances, one sixth, in which a rapidly rising power threatened a major ruling power. Think, for example, the rise of Germany in the period after reunification prior to 1914 and the impact that this had on the British Empire. Twelve of these cases ended in war, four in no war. So war is not inevitable, but war is the natural outcome of the structural dynamic that occurs when a rapidly rising China, for example, threatens a colossal ruling U.S. on the other. And that's the challenge that's the underlying problem for the relationship between the U.S. and China, and why it's so important that the two leaders understand each other and understand how that dynamic could lead them to an outcome that would be catastrophic for both countries. And that's why I think that actually their meeting, even though there were fewer deliverables than most people expected, was significant and actually made a very good start on what is an effort to try to deal with the relationship, which is inherently dangerous. Yeah. And, Professor, all of that considered, then, should it be interpreted as a threat for the Chinese to invoke this, or would both sides have to act to avoid confrontation? The headline takeaway from the summit was their commitment jointly to try to construct a strategic stable relationship. That will require dealing with dozens of issues that could become hotspots or triggers or provocations that would lead them to an outcome that they don't want. Taiwan is one of the most dramatic, but what's happening in the Iran war is another case. And what's happening in the war in Ukraine is another case. So the fact that you have the leaders talking privately and candidly, as they've been doing in actually phone calls and letters in between, about the fact that they each understand that if there were a war between US and China, each has a nuclear arsenal that's capable of destroying the other. So if there was actually a full-scale war between US and China, we wouldn't be here. So that's their imperative, to try to prevent that. And by talking about the ways in which this could occur and expressing their joint commitment not to allow that to happen, they're reducing risks for all of us. And is there a risk of appeasement in all this? Because the differences between these two countries is more than just an economic rivalry. So is too much accommodation also a risk? Good question. Absolutely. So the reason why it's so complicated is you have two contradictory imperatives. On the one hand, a rapidly rising China that's seriously threatening to displace a major ruling US. That's the structural reality on the one hand that can't be denied. On the other hand, we live in a world in which if there were a war between the US and China, a full-scale war, each of the countries could end destroyed. So how can you both compete on the one hand and nonetheless cooperate and coordinate on the other in order to ensure that the competition doesn't get out of control? That's the challenge that they were dealing with. And while it seems like an impossible contradiction, it's actually a contradiction that we learned to live with in the Cold War, with the Soviet Union, where we reached a detente. Detente didn't mean giving up on the fact that we believed we were a good free world and that the evil empire was the evil empire. I worked for Ronald Reagan with enthusiasm on that undertaking. He didn't believe that by agreeing that we would have a detente and that we would have arms control agreements and we would have a stabilization of the relationship, that that meant giving up on the proposition that ultimately our society would prove a free society more successful than an authoritarian or totalitarian society. So I think it's the attempt to deal with this contradiction, which is complicated and which is painful, but it's nonetheless the challenge that the two leaders face. It is complicated. Great conversation. Professor Graham Allison, thank you so much for your insights today. We appreciate it. Thank you.