Watch All Shows Victor Davis Hanson Tony Kinnett Daily Signal Signal Sitdown

Watch All Shows Victor Davis Hanson Tony Kinnett Daily Signal Signal Sitdown

Home – China – Xi Warned US Not to Fall Into ‘Thucydides Trap.’ What’s That Mean?

Xi Warned US Not to Fall Into ‘Thucydides Trap.’ What’s That Mean?

Editor’s note: This is a lightly edited transcript of today’s video from Daily Signal Senior Contributor Victor Davis Hanson. Subscribe to our YouTube channel to see more of his videos.

Hello, this is Victor Davis Hanson for The Daily Signal.   

Recently at the U.S.-China Summit in Beijing, Premier Xi [Jinping] mentioned that he hoped that both parties, the United States and China, could avoid the Thucydides Trap.  

What did that mean? It refers to a book and an article by the well-known political scientist Graham Allison. 

In it, he presented a paradigm of international relations. Briefly, it was this: If you have an established power, like ancient Sparta, and it gets worried that there is an ascending power, a rising new neighborhood bully or something, the older power, the established power, will attack it, and there will be a war. 

He gave some examples from history. He called it the Thucydides Trap because the historian Thucydides, who was born about 460 BC and died somewhere around 400 or 395 BC, wrote a history of the Peloponnesian War.  

The Newsom Nightmare: Why California’s Elites Refuse to Face Reality

Trump’s Border Czar Has a Smart Surprise for Sanctuary Cities Trying to Hide Criminals

US Supreme Court Turns Down Virginia Gerrymander

At two key places in his first book or chapter, he said that there were various reasons to go to war, but probably the most likely, in his opinion—and he said this in two different places—was that Sparta was afraid of the dominance that was growing throughout the Greek world, and so it staged a preventive war by invading Attica, the country around Athens, in 431. 

He used this term that he created called a Thucydides Trap, and then he applied it to some incidents in history. Most importantly, Xi was referencing [Allison’s] book because in the book it said that the United States might do something rash or might prevent.  

With all due respect to Graham Allison, who is a very distinguished scholar, this is false. 

First of all, if you read Thucydides, Athens did not become ascendant in 431. It was responsible for the victory at Salamis. Athens and Sparta had partnered with each........

© The Daily Signal