In relations between China and the United States today, relevant
background conditions include geography, culture and history. The most
pertinent background conditions,
however, are Thucydides’s Trap and the syndromes of rising and ruling
powers that China and the United States display in full. Thucydides’s
Trap is the severe structural stress caused when a rising power
threatens to displace a ruling one. Most contests that fit this pattern
have ended badly. Over the past five hundred years, a major rising power
has threatened to displace a ruling power sixteen times. In twelve of
those, the result was war. Can Beijing and Washington escape the
Thucydides Trap?
