The United States has a very famous chauvinist media called "national interest." Many of the articles published on the website are written by high-level US strategic researchers, and they all stand on the narrow position of the United States and discuss how to deal with other countries. China is the most frequent topic on the National Interest website.
Last week, National Interest published an article by a celebrity. This man, named Professor Graham, was the famous Sino-American "Thucydides Trap" theorist.
By 2030, he said, China and the United States could be completely in the Thucydides Trap, and a random Spark could ignite a sino-AMERICAN war. Whoever can wipe out the military power of the other side is the final victor.
The so-called Thucydides Trap is said to date back to ancient Greece. What this means is that the rise of a new power will certainly threaten another great power that already occupies a dominant position, and the contradictions between the two will be irreconcilable, and the problem will eventually be solved through war.
In the eyes of Western strategic researchers, the Thucydides Trap is almost an inevitable law, whether in ancient Greece, Rome, medieval modern times or modern times, the rise of a new state is almost certainly accompanied by war. Almost all such wars took place between Britain and France, between Britain and Spain, between France and Germany, between Britain and Germany, between Japan and the United States, and they were fought so badly that they caused serious loss of life and property. Therefore, the US strategic research community believes that the rise of China will inevitably clash with the United States, so it is inevitable that the two countries will go to war. Given the sheer size and nuclear arsenals of both China and the United States, the outcome of this war could be very frustrating.
But China's rise has not been a matter of nearly a year or two. As early as the 1990s, the famous American strategist Huntington predicted in the book "The Rise of Great Powers" that China would grow into a great power with global influence. Nearly 30 years have passed since he wrote the book, and there has been no real armed conflict between China and the United States. So is the Thucydides Trap right or wrong?
Let's look at the wars we just talked about, and we can see the answer to this matter. The vast majority of wars between European countries broke out between colonial empires for spheres of influence and colonies. Simply put, it is the uneven division of the spoils, of which the performance of the First World War is the most significant. Perhaps the clearest articulation of this way of thinking is Hitler's Mein Kampf.
China was not a colonial empire, all it wanted was to defend its own legitimate territory, territorial waters and airspace. There is no interest in occupying other people's territories as colonies, nor in competing with the Western powers for the so-called sphere of influence. As a clear example, China has carried out a very wide range of economic, technical and trade cooperation activities in Africa, and has assisted in the construction of a large number of road and railway bridge facilities in Africa, but so far China has not regarded any african country as a target that it can empty left and right, let alone the intention of forcibly occupying other people's territory and resources.
China will resolutely use force in only one thing, and that is to defend its territorial and sovereign integrity, especially the Taiwan issue.
Therefore, when foreign researchers discuss the topic of what Thucydides Trap is, we have no need to participate at all, let alone follow each other's thinking. As a country that adheres to the line of peaceful development, we should not discuss how to use force to defeat the United States from the position of the world leader, which is not in the interests of the people of the world, and it is also not in the interests of China.