During their high-stakes meeting in Beijing this week, Chinese President Xi Jinping reportedly asked US President Donald Trump if the two countries could overcome the “Thucydides trap”.

This phrase, popularised by contemporary US political scientist Graham Allison in the early 2010s, is used to describe how two countries can drift toward war when an existing superpower feels anxious about an emerging one. Allison had China and the US in mind specifically.

It takes its name from Athenian historian and general Thucydides, who wrote the History of the Peloponnesian War, about the 27-year war between Athens and Sparta that broke out in 431 BCE.

But what did Thucydides really say on this? And what do Athens and Sparta have to do with the current state of US–China relations?

The implication in the term “Thucydides trap” is that the established superpower manages the rising power badly and feels obliged to go to war when that’s not necessarily the only option.

It is based on a quote from Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War (book one, chapter 23). He said:

The growth of the power of Athens, and the alarm which this inspired in Lacedaemon [Sparta], made war inevitable.

The growth of the power of Athens, and the alarm which this inspired in Lacedaemon [Sparta], made war inevitable.

In other words,........

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