Sphinx

There is one crucial question about Graham Allison’s ‘Thucydides’s Trap’ model of power transition and the confrontation of rising and ruling powers* that has not yet, so far as I’m aware, been asked: what sort of trap did Thucydides have in mind? Mouse? Elephant? Bear? Rat? Lobster? Honey? Because clearly this must affect how we imagine the process of being captured and the possibility, if any, of escape – and indeed the likelihood of realising that one is in a trap in the first place, before it’s too late. A basic starting assumption for such an analysis is that the idea must be based on ancient Greek hunting technology, and so, in the absence of any comment on the subject from Thucydides himself – we can safely assume his familiarity, as an Athenian aristocrat, with the basic techniques – we turn to a comparable figure in the next generation, Xenophon, and his treatise Cynegeticus, or Hunting with Dogs.

This short but comprehensive survey presents a range of techniques and technologies, suitable for different prey. For hares: nets, carefully specified. For hinds: caltrops.** For wild boar, nets and caltrops. Relevant here is the elaborate set-up to be used when a boar declines to emerge from its hiding place, which does seem to merit the label ‘trap’:

So take the hound and tie her up with the others at a good distance from the lair, and have the nets put up in the convenient anchorages, hanging the meshes on forked branches of trees. Out of the net itself make a long projecting bosom, putting sticks inside to prop it up on both sides, so that the light of day may penetrate as much as possible into the bosom through the meshes, in order that the interior may be as light as possible when the boar rushes at it. Fasten the (lower) rope to a strong tree, not to a bush, since the bushes give way at the bare stem. Wherever there is a gap between a net and the ground, fill in the places that afford no anchorage with wood, in order that the boar may rush into the net, and not slip out. (10.7)

The other relevant model is found in Xenophon’s brief discussion of the capture, in foreign parts, of “lions, leopards, lynxes, panthers, bears and all similar wild beasts”. These may (most unsportingly) be poisoned by adding aconite (wolfsbane) to their favourite food and scattering this around their territory, but a more sophisticated and trap-like approach is also described:

Sometimes the hunters dig large, round, deep holes, leaving a pillar of earth in the middle. They tie up a goat and put it on the pillar in the evening, and pile wood round the hole without leaving an entrance, so that the animals cannot see what lies in front. On hearing the bleating in the night, the beasts run round the barrier, and finding no opening, jump over and are caught. (11.4)

So, what sort of trap did Thucydides have in mind for the dynamics of the Athens-Sparta rivalry, that now arguably characterises the US-China relationship – the tangle of concealed nets, so the furious animal is trapped in a structural path determinacy before it realises what is happening, or the pit, where it is the insatiable appetite for power (i.e. goat) that leads to its downfall?

The answer is of course: neither. Thucydides never refers to a ‘trap’ of any sort; he simply emphasises the longer-term structural factors that underpinned the Spartans’ eventual decision that they needed to resist Athenian expansion, and the Athenians’ disregard for the concerns of other powers. Giving this a snazzy alliterative nickname works for marketing purposes, clearly, but in other respects it seems a bit odd; doesn’t the existence of a trap imply that someone has laid it deliberately (history, maybe?), and isn’t it generally the case that a trap traps one animal at a time?

It’s not that I necessarily have a better analogy to propose – the Thucydides Tango, perhaps, in which the movements of each partner constrain and provoke those of the other, neither able to break out of their close embrace until the music stops playing or one collapses from exhaustion…

*Newcomers to this blog won’t know that I have written about Allison’s idea here many, many times – and have also had to do this in two different pieces for publication just in the last week – so don’t feel like doing it yet again. For background info, put Thucydides Trap in the search box on the right, and you’ll get more than enough…

**The bastard. At the expense of massive anachronism, I find Xenophon’s attitude towards spiky things that are intended to hobble but not otherwise harm the quarry, so the hunters can catch up and enjoy despatching it, basically distasteful.