![]() ![]() Even Chinese President Xi Jinping has endorsed the concept arguing Washington must make room for Beijing. The idea of a Thucydides Trap, popularized by Harvard political scientist Graham Allison, holds that the danger of war will skyrocket as a surging China overtakes a sagging America. “The growth of the power of Athens, and the alarm which this inspired in Sparta, made war inevitable,” the ancient historian Thucydides wrote-a truism now invoked, ad nauseum, in explaining the U.S.-China rivalry. The outcome is a spiral of fear and hostility leading, almost inevitably, to conflict. Tensions multiply tests of strength ensue. An ascendant power, which chafes at the rules of the existing order, gains ground on an established power-the country that made those rules. Why do great powers fight great wars? The conventional answer is a story of rising challengers and declining hegemons.
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