The ‘Thucydides Trap’, having infiltrated both Australasia and China from its incubation in the USA, now appears to have turned up in the UK, with a piece in the Independent (not sure if it’s just on the webpage, or… Actually, is there anything else?) entitled ‘The Next World War Will Be In The South China Sea. Ask Thucydides’. It’s our old friend, Graham Allison’s analysis of the confrontation of the hegemonic power and the rising power, with added apocalyptic noises about the imminence of nuclear war (whereas the role of the nuclear deterrent in reducing the impact of the supposed dynamic of Great Power rivalry is something many critics have put forward as an objection to Allison’s transhistorical claims) and some especially amusing asides. “And as has happened in international summitry since the time of Pericles, sweet talk, fraternal visitations and hearty dinners proceeded in tandem with steely military build-ups on both sides.” Yes, Thucydides is full of that sort of thing.
I live in hope that someone will ask me, or someone else from the classical side, to write a piece on why this is a dubious reading of Thucydides; I do have a draft that I’ve been meaning to finish at some point… In the meantime, I thought it might be helpful to post links to the various things I’ve written on this in the last couple of years, in one easy-to-access post…
The Thucydides Trap (October 2012)
The Tao of Thucydides (April 2014)
The Real Thucydides Trap (May 2014)
Who Laid the Thucydides Trap? (August 2015)
Stuck in the Middle (September 2015)
Absence of Evidence (October 2015)
Sphinx 
Somebody, ask Neville to write this article!!
Hi Neville. Interesting post, as ever. Since I was one of your many students nearly a decade ago, I embarked on a political science track (international security studies, to be more specific) after my many years abroad. With the benefit of an ancient history base (and being reasonable well versed in Thucydides), I find it incredible how often modern scholars invoke Thucydides to make general, sweeping statements relating to universal truths about the international system, or in support of using the Peloponnesian War as an example of a particular truth (and Rome and Carthage for that matter). It tells me a few things about the reception of Thucydides and its enduring importance to modern politics, history, and academia, but also how much the text is misleading appropriated by (leading) scholars. Only the other day, I was reading a very interesting paper on macrosecuritiizations, and the classical world was invoked as a comparative example of the Cold War. Examples abound in ISS, which would be OK, but the example is presented without the historical analysis any student in AH would be required to give. I’ve often thought of using some elements of Thucydides myself in my work on securitisation theory, but given what I said above, I wouldn’t want to make a pig’s ear of it!
As you may have gathered, I’ve been working on the reception of T over the last few years, inevitably with a lot of focus on the IR tradition. There are some very good, well-informed, subtle, historicised readings of T by IR scholars – but an enormous amount of crass, unthinking and reductionist evocation…
I’m not really familiar with Graham Allison’s work on this particular subject or when it dates from. But I would be interested to know whether, for example, Aaron Friedberg in his fairly recent ‘rise of China’ book invokes T. and, if so, how. I tend to disagree w Friedberg’s general views on China (though haven’t read the book), but I don’t know whether he abuses/misappropriates T. or not. It’s possible I’ve mentioned Friedberg here before (I don’t come here v. often), in which case apologies.
I would also make the point that whatever staff member of the Independent chose the headline “The Next World War Will Be [presumably shd read: Will Begin] in the South South China Sea” should be, well, fired. It’s a silly headline. It’s silly because it assumes there will be another world war. While another major-power war is not impossible, the chances of one occurring in the near to medium term — say, the next 50 to 100 years — are, imo, very, very, very low. (To err on the side of caution, I’m not willing to prognosticate much beyond a century.) The reasons for the statement are several, and of course not everyone would agree. But as someone w a background in IR and IR theory (though not really a practicing IR scholar), that is my view. Fwiw.
Thanks for this. I don’t know Friedberg’s views in detail either; he has referenced Thucydides in passing, in relation to great power rivalry (see e.g. http://nationalinterest.org/greatdebate/hegemony-chinese-characteristics-5513), but not in much detail. To be honest I’d be surprised, from what I have read, if he actually develops this as anything more than the conventional ritual evocation of Thucydides in IR.
The discussion in the Independent – like a whole series of op ed and comment pieces over the last couple of years – is, I think, almost entirely drawn from Allison’s work and his successful publicity machine. I’m not sure the headline writer is quite as culpable as you suggest, because both the article, and the discussions from Allison that lie behind it, do come very close to saying that US-China rivalry will lead to war if serious efforts are not made to head this off; it’s not a big step to saying that it will lead to war, because we don’t expect much success in efforts to head it off, and/or because the rivalry is too fierce. Personally I’m with you, on the grounds that Allison’s model seems to play down drastically both the impact of nuclear deterrence and the degree to which the economies of great powers are vastly more integrated and interdependent than was the case in most of the 16 case studies he considers (12 of which led to war…).
Allison’s model seems to play down drastically both the impact of nuclear deterrence and the degree to which the economies of great powers are vastly more integrated and interdependent than was the case in most of the 16 case studies he considers (12 of which led to war…).
Presumably Allison’s model also ignores, among other things, the line of thought most prominently associated with John Mueller (Retreat from Doomsday: The Obsolescence of Major War, 1989, and a string of subsequent writings). Not everyone agrees with Mueller, of course, but simply ignoring his argument I don’t think will do.
Of course there are a lot of IR people besides Allison who have written about rising powers vs. dominant ones. Friedberg’s first book, The Weary Titan, is about the transition involving decline of Britain relative to U.S. at end of 19th cent./ beginning of 20th. But the rising-vs.-hegemonic-powers stuff is not a branch of the IR literature that I know v. well. (And we’re getting pretty far afield from Thucydides, so I’ll leave it there.)
I was always more convinced by J. Mearcheimer’s arguments about deterrence and, in particular, increased (though still limited) proliferation rather than Mueller (though advocating more nuclear states is seldom popular). Having said that, I think Mearcheimer is becoming a little dated now, particularly with question marks of Iran and N. Korea. As for Allison, I like much of his style, but I don’t find much of his work overly convincing, though it’s increasingly in vogue; the concept of global zero has received increased traction over the last few years.