Does the Thucydides Trap really exist?

　 Influenced by the writings of Professor Graham Allison of Harvard University in the United States, the concept of the "Thucydides Trap" has become familiar to the international relations community. In his 2017 book Destined for War, Allison said: "The Thucydides Trap refers to the inevitable chaos that naturally arises when a rising power threatens to replace an existing dominant power. This interpretation derives from the ancient Greek historian Thucydides' explanation of the causes of war in his History of the Peloponnesian War, namely that "the real cause of the inevitable war was the growth of Athenian power and the consequent fear of Sparta." As for the specific explanation of the Thucydides Trap, Allison argues that this has nothing to do with the motives of the dominant or rising powers, but from the structural pressures generated by the competition for the leadership of the international order, "which occurred between Athens and Sparta in the 5th century BC, also between Germany and Britain a century ago, and even more between the United States and the Soviet Union in the 1950s and 1960s, which almost led to the war between the two." Conflicts of interest and strategic competition between dominant and rising powers are not uncommon, but the controversial concept is "trap": was the peloponnesian war really due to some "trap"?

　　The outbreak of the Peloponnesian War

　　Not from a "trap"

　　If the Peloponnesian War broke out because of a "trap," who was the architect of that trap? Is it Athens or Sparta? If it were Athens, we could speculate that Athens wanted to provoke a war that would destroy Sparta's hegemony in the Peloponnese. If it were Sparta, we might as well speculate that Sparta wanted to provoke a preventive war and crush the other before Athens gained an overwhelming advantage. Theoretically, both of these assumptions are possible.

　　Athens was the side of rising relative power, and its own security was guaranteed. The timing was on the side of the Athenians, so why didn't it continue to wait for the balance of power to change in a direction more favorable to itself? Judging from the situation at that time, Athens and Sparta were generally in a state of basic equilibrium, and neither of them had the absolute certainty of defeating the other. Moreover, by examining Athenian foreign policy before the outbreak of war, it can be seen that it has a strong defensive color, including the construction of walls, the demand for the expulsion of Corinthian officials from Potidaea, which is very close to Corinthian enemies, and the promulgation of the Megara embargo. Simply put, in the face of growing discontent among the allies, Athens' priority at the time was to prevent them from falling to the Peloponnesian League, led by Sparta, rather than expanding outward.

　　As an ally of the Peloponnesian League, Sparta had a strong army and might want to preemptively attack Athens. However, a closer look at the specific disputes that led to the outbreak of war shows that Sparta was largely dragged down by its allies. Sparta did not initially intervene in the dispute between the city-states of Cosilla and Corinth, nor in the dispute between Athens and Portidaea, in which athens and Corinthia were the protagonists. The Allies painted Sparta with a picture of Athenian oppression and expansion, influencing the specific actions of the Spartans. From this point of view, the growth of Athenian power and the challenges that could be brought to Sparta were indeed a fundamental cause of the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War. But these disputes were not "traps" designed by Sparta, nor were they designed by Collins. Whether it was Sparta or Athens, there were both main war factions and main peace factions. Before the war was about to break out, Sparta proposed that the war could be avoided as long as Athens lifted the embargo on Megara. However, at the instigation of Pericles, war broke out.

　　Although Allison and many scholars have used the phrase "the real cause of war" when discussing Thucydides' arguments, in fact Thucydides did not necessarily think that "war is inevitable" in his discussion. For example, in He Yuanguo's translation of the History of the Peloponnesian War, there is no use of the term "inevitable", only the discussion of "the real reason for the outbreak of war". From Thucydides' account of the entire history of the Peloponnesian War, he emphasizes that the real reason for the war was Sparta's fear of the growth of Athenian power, which distinguished it from the reasons discussed by others. This does not lead to the conclusion that war is "inevitable".

　　To sum up, the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War was not caused by a "trap" designed by anyone. The root cause of the war was a change in the balance of power between the two sides, and the direct cause was the conflict of interests between the ancient Greek city-states.

　　A study of the concept of the "Thucydides Trap"

　　Rough

　　It is common knowledge in international relations that there will be conflicts between the dominant and rising powers around leadership positions, thus bringing the relationship between the two sides into a tense and difficult stage. Therefore, the rising power can be said to face some kind of "risk" in the process of rising, which needs to be dealt with carefully and cautiously, but this "risk" is not a "trap" that is artificially designed and covered up. Neither Athens nor Sparta was certain of victory at the time of the war. Athens had a clear advantage in general in the first phase, but for fortuitous reasons a large-scale expedition to Sicily exhausted its national strength and led to the ultimate defeat. Sparta won because it didn't make the same mistake, but not because of some ingeniously designed "trap." The "trap" in international relations can be understood as deliberately inducing the other party and thus putting the other party in trouble, for example, Bismarck encouraged the French to expand their colonization after the Franco-Prussian War, which is a classic "trap".

　　From an doctrinal point of view, if there is a "Thucydides Trap", then the logic of its possible validity is only that a third party deliberately induces conflict between the dominant and rising powers, resulting in both sides losing and thus profiting from it. Before World War I, for example, France certainly wanted to provoke a conflict between Germany and Britain, because if the anglo-German friendship had continued, the Franco-Russian alliance might not have created an overwhelming advantage over Germany. But the deterioration in Anglo-German relations was essentially Germany's own strategic mistake of challenging Britain's naval superiority rather than the success of the "trap" designed by France. Of course, from a doctrinal point of view, the Thucydides Trap can remind the dominant and rising nations not to be calculated by third parties and caught in some avoidable lose-lose conflict.

　　Allison's research into the concept of the Thucydides Trap is actually very crude. As mentioned above, on the one hand, his use of the concept of "trap" is inaccurate – neither with the history of the Peloponnesian War nor with his own logic. Allison simply argues that the struggle between rising and dominant nations over leadership is a "trap." In fact, the exact understanding should be "risk" rather than "trap". On the other hand, Allison's research on the risks of possible strategic competition between rising and dominant powers is far inferior to the already largely mature Theory of Power Transition Theory and positional realism.

　　The study of the relationship between the dominant and rising powers in the theory of power transformation should be more reasonable and in-depth. The theory of power shifts first explains the reasons for the power shift (mainly industrialization and technological diffusion) between the dominant and rising powers, and shows that this shift in power may lead to conflict between the two sides, but only if the rising power is dissatisfied with the existing international order. In the time of the ancient Greek city-states, Athens became increasingly wealthy due to its control of maritime trade and the acceptance of tribute from its allies, as the main sources of wealth were commerce and agriculture. Athens controlled more city-states and could acquire more wealth, which naturally clashed fundamentally with Sparta's interests in the international order. However, after the Industrial Revolution, under an international order of free trade, the competition in the international order between the rising and dominant countries has been greatly weakened, for example, the United Kingdom and the United States can benefit from free trade. Therefore, the theory of power transformation does not believe that changes in relative power will necessarily lead to conflict, but the key lies in whether there are fundamental contradictions between the two sides around the existing international order. Moreover, given the existence of nuclear weapons, the possibility of large-scale war between the dominant and rising powers has largely disappeared.

　　In addition to the theory of power shifts, positional realism further illustrates the relationship between dominant and rising powers. Positional realism holds that a great power should first accurately understand where it is located, and then pursue a reasonable position. The positional interests associated with the international order actually include two aspects: the interests of rules and the interests of power. Rule interest refers to the rules for the allocation of international resources, while power interest refers to the right to speak and decide. Since entering the modern society, the rising countries are all rapidly industrializing countries, so the rules of free trade are basically beneficial to them, and there is no fundamental contradiction with the dominant country. The interests of power are secondary to the interests of the rules. Given the power base of the dominant country, the support of allies, and the development trend of the power transformation of both sides, there is no need for the rising power to become a contender for hegemony.

　　Overall, the Thucydides Trap is a crude concept. If it is any inspiration for academics, it is to emphasize the possible positional conflicts between rising and dominant countries, and the need to be vigilant against third parties creating "traps" and intensifying positional conflicts between rising and dominant countries in order to profit from them.

　　(The author is a researcher at the National Institute of Development and Strategic Studies, Chinese University, and a professor at the School of International Relations, Chinese Min University)

Source: China Social Science Network - China Social Science Daily Author: Song Wei