Destined for War: can America and China escape Thucydides’ Trap?

by Graham Allison

By 1900, there were twice as many Americans as Britons.21 The American economy surpassed Britain’s in 1870, and grew to twice its size by 1914.22 In 1880, Britain had accounted for 23 percent of global manufacturing output. By 1914, its market share had fallen to 13 percent as America’s rose to 32 percent.23

As Prime Minister Lord Salisbury wistfully reflected in 1902: “It is very sad, but I am afraid America is bound to forge ahead and nothing can restore the equality between us. If we had interfered in the Confederate Wars it was then possible for us to reduce the power of the United States to manageable proportions. But two such chances are not given to a nation in the course of its career.”37

British leaders’ skill in finding ways to satisfy even unreasonable American demands without sacrificing vital British national interests is a textbook example of well-executed diplomacy. By laying the foundation for what historians have called the Great Rapprochement, Britain helped to heal long-standing hostility between the two nations to the point that when war came in 1914, it could count on the US as an essential source of materiel and finance for its war effort.

Because Britain and the US shared a language and political culture, influential Britons could console themselves with the thought that although Britain was by most measures no longer number one, its values would remain dominant. They could dismiss those who argued that Britain faced a choice between conflict with the US and the elimination of their way of life and historic mission. Quite the opposite: many Englishmen embraced the thought that the “English-speaking peoples” would continue to rule the world. As future prime minister Harold Macmillan put it during World War II, “These Americans represent the new Roman Empire and we Britons, like the Greeks of old, must teach them how to make it go.”40

Students at Harvard are thus confounded when I make them read a chapter from the most popular economics textbook of the mid-twentieth century, Paul Samuelson’s Economics: An Introductory Analysis, published in 1964. It foresaw Soviet GNP overtaking that of the US by the mid-1980s.41

A third big idea built upon the second. It called for an unprecedented departure from America’s historic aversion to entangling alliances. While the US had the option of withdrawing to Fortress America, as it had done after World War I and in prior centuries, the Cold Warriors judged that this path was no longer viable in an increasingly interconnected world. America’s survival and well-being required building nothing less than a new international order.

But as my colleagues Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff remind us in their analysis of 350 financial crises over the past eight centuries, many previous generations have imagined that This Time Is Different.56 Reinhart and Rogoff side with Thucydides in reasoning that, as long as men are men, we can anticipate recurring patterns in human affairs.

Statesmen know that today’s arsenals include single nuclear bombs with more explosive power than all of the bombs that have been dropped in all the wars in history.

During the 2012 presidential campaign, Republican candidate Mitt Romney announced, “On day one of my presidency I will designate China a currency manipulator and take appropriate counteraction.”

China’s economy will be a full 50 percent larger than that of the US by 2023. By 2040 it could be nearly three times as large.2 That would mean a China with triple America’s resources to use in influencing outcomes in international relations.

We already know that the Chinese people are adept at democratic governance: 23 million who fled Mao have built a successful

democracy in Taiwan with a market-based economy that, were it an independent nation, would rank in the top third among UN member states.

North Korea’s sale of a nuclear weapon to the next mutation of al-Qaeda or Xinjiang terrorists, and the explosion of that device in New York City or Beijing, would fundamentally change our world.

In 1936, Hitler violated the Treaty of Versailles and threatened Europe by remilitarizing the Rhineland. Had Britain and France sent a division of troops to enforce the treaty — as Churchill advocated vigorously at the time — German troops would have retreated, the German generals (who had strongly opposed Hitler’s reckless move) could have overthrown him, and World War II might never have happened.

Defending America’s vital interests depends first on defining them. To prioritize everything is to prioritize nothing.

“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.”

Though deliberate crafting of strategy does not guarantee success, the absence of a coherent, sustainable strategy is a reliable route to failure.

Over the past decade, I have yet to meet a senior member of the US national security team who had so much as read the official national security strategies.

Honest observers in both societies are increasingly recognizing that neither “decadent” democracy nor “responsive” authoritarianism is fit for meeting the twenty-first century’s severest tests.

Lee identified an array of handicaps China will not easily change: the absence of the rule of law; excessive control from the center; cultural habits that limit imagination and creativity; a language “that shapes thinking through epigrams and 4,000 years of texts that suggest everything worth saying has already been said, and said better by earlier writers”; and an inability “to attract and assimilate talent from other societies in the world.”