Book Review: Graham Allison's "Destined for War"

While many books covering China these days are focused on the future of the international system, Graham Allison's Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides's Trap? goes a step further in a lucid and down-to-earth examination of the issue in its utilization of the conceptual framework of Thucydides's Trap. This concept highlights the increasingly conflictual dynamics between a rising power (the Greek city-state of Athens being the earliest example) and an established (but possibly declining) power (with Sparta being the earliest example). Allison concisely explains these high-stress Thucydidean dynamics in which even "ordinary flashpoints of foreign affairs...can trigger large-scale conflict" between the two powers during a time when the balance of power seems to be in flux and the established power fears what the ascendance of the rising power means for their interests (p. 29).

After an introduction of one of the cornerstone concepts in international relations, Allison provides a detailed study of the first case of Thucydides's Trap in the devastating war between Athens and Sparta. It is not until later chapters that Allison addresses the more contemporary case of a potential Thucydides's Trap in the maneuverings of China (a rising power) and the United States (an established power). Raising the stakes in a potential conflict between China and the United States are the size of the populations involved in both countries (and in countries around the world who are allies or foes to these powers), the size of their respective economies, the speed of China's economic rise, the scale of worldwide trade (especially the traffic in shipping lanes in the disputed South China Sea) and the fact that militarized conflicts these days involve cyber-warfare and nuclear weapons (as an incredibly destructive last resort).

Allison illustrates these higher stakes in a series of (frighteningly realistic) potential small spats that manage to escalate to hot war when the cost for both sides engaging in diplomacy or otherwise backing out increases concurrently with the need to de-escalate even as the time to de-escalate decreases as each side makes its move. Some of the more worryingly realistic examples Allison highlights relates to a collapse of the regime of Chinese ally North Korea, a Taiwanese move for independence from the mainland, and a trade spat (i.e. the labeling of China as currency-manipulators, economic sanctions, cyber-warfare, etc.) in the light of a bombastic Trump administration. While not naming the hypothetical presidential administration that an escalating trade war between China and the U.S., Allison probably is alluding to Trump's campaign rhetoric of promising to label China a currency manipulator and demanding a reduction in the trade deficit in his larger fight against the international economic establishment.

While these hypothetical scenarios of how China and the U.S. might enter into a potentially world-ending conflict seem frighteningly mundane at the outset, Allison reassures readers that there are ways to avoid the Thucydides's Trap that makes war more likely between two countries. Among some of the more salient proscriptions are accommodation and a renegotiation of the relationship between the two powers. While accommodation is a bitter, nasty word in today's politics (implying total submission to another's desires), this option proves much more realistic because it entails not submission to each other's national interests in totality, but the reaching of a compromise that preserves both powers' interests. Details within such a potential compromise include recognizing the other's respective spheres of influence (i.e. the Western hemisphere versus the contentious South China Sea region) and even arms reductions talks similar to those negotiated between the former Soviet Union and the U.S. Further cementing this relationship, in Allison's eyes, should be the four "mega-threats" of "nuclear Armageddon, nuclear anarchy, global terrorism...and climate change" (p. 228) that are the most likely to prove the most severe threat to each country's very existence (let alone interests).

While 4 out 16 cases of the Thucydides Trap in the last 500 years not ending in a war don't seem like terribly good odds (especially because of domestic pressures adding fuel to the fire), Allison's core message of the book is that war is not unavoidable. If both sides can negotiate pacts that give advantages to both parties while reducing the size of the other's nuclear arsenals (potential domestic political costs for both leaders be damned) and recognizing the greater threats to humanity out there, I believe that we have a chance. However, it does not look good when the publics and leaders of both sides are ratcheting up their rhetoric.


Works Cited:

Allison, Graham T. (2017). Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides's Trap? (1st ed.). Houghton Mifflin Harcourt: New York.