Advertisement
Advertisement
Illustration: Craig Stephens
Opinion
Nicholas Ross Smith
Nicholas Ross Smith

US and China at war? Why Thucydides Trap or Cold War analogies are deeply unhelpful

  • The emergence of new technologies, including in nuclear weaponry, and cyberspace has changed international relations and rendered the analogies meaningless
  • Instead, treating the Sino-American relationship as a complex but unique relationship would enable a more positive focus and downsize the negativity dominating discourse

Recently, the Financial Times ran an article with the headline “The US and China are already at war. But which kind?” The author, Gillian Tett, bases many of her assertions on one of the most popular historical analogies employed by Sino-American doomsayers: Graham Allison’s Thucydides Trap.

The Thucydides Trap is a historical analogy used to warn against the potential for imminent conflict between the United States and China. It draws insights from the Peloponnesian war where, it is alleged, Sparta pre-emptively attacked Athens because it feared Athens’ rise.

Allison argues that the US could fall into the same trap with how it views (and responds to) China’s rise.

Allison’s work has easily become the most influential international relations work over the past decade (he coined the term in the Financial Times in 2012). However, just because it is influential does not make it useful.

Of course, drawing lessons from history can be a worthwhile exercise and the Peloponnesian war, as told by the Athenian general, Thucydides, offers a basic parable about the pitfalls of zero-sum thinking – and also that short-term victories can be overshadowed by long-term reverses.

A woman in Beijing sits near a screen showing China and US flags as she listens to a speech by Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi at the Lanting Forum on February 22, on getting US-China relations back on track. Doomsayers who warn of imminent conflict between the two countries often refer to the Thucydides Trap. Photo: AP

The problem, however, with looking so far back into the past to provide an analytical lens for the present is that to make it work, one must cut significant corners and engage in reductivism. Yet the individuals, units, systems, ideologies and psychologies of the time and space of one era are different from those of others.

The differences between our era and the Peloponnesian war era are astronomical. Although the political, ideological and systemic differences alone are enough to invalidate any practical use of the analogy, the technological differences are undoubtedly the greatest hurdle to making any meaningful comparison.

Technology is, traditionally, an often-overlooked aspect of international relations. But technological advancements have continually changed the nature of diplomacy, trade and war.

For instance, Iver B. Neumann argues that a crude form of diplomacy first emerged in prehistoric times due to technological developments during the Stone Age – such as new weapons. This enabled bands of hunter-gatherers to cooperate in big game hunting activities.

23:20

Talking Post: Kevin Rudd unpacks the risk of war between China and the US with Yonden Lhatoo

Talking Post: Kevin Rudd unpacks the risk of war between China and the US with Yonden Lhatoo

The impact of nuclear weapons is one advancement that makes the Peloponnesian war analogy particularly useless. Nuclear weapons have been a game-changer so far for international relations as they have made the costs of conflict between two nuclear weapons-capable states much higher – although the threat of a worst-case scenario (nuclear war) remains a scary possibility.

No credible analysis of the Sino-American relationship can ignore the role of nuclear weapons in the security situation.

But even the other popular historical analogy used in analysing the state of Sino-American relationships, the Cold War, is not very helpful. Even though the Cold War was fairly recent and occurred at a time of nuclear weapon capabilities, the US and China find themselves in circumstances very different from those of the US and the Soviet Union in the early post-World War II era.

China is not Soviet Russia – that’s why it’s threatening to the US

The basic Cold War components – such as a clear bipolar distribution of power and both sides having universalist guiding ideologies – are not present now. There is also significant trade and financial interdependence in the Sino-American relationship (even since the pandemic and trade war), and multilateralism is much stronger and embedded in the current international system.

Furthermore, the very nature of international relations has evolved significantly, especially with the digital revolution and the emergence of cyberspace as a core realm of human affairs. Cyberspace is arguably the biggest game changer of international relations, especially diplomacy, since the invention of the telegraph.

To Trett’s credit, she acknowledges that technological change has meant that war has also changed, and because of this, the Thucydides Trap has not yet sparked traditional war, but other kinds of war – such as cyberwar.

02:44

US, Britain and EU accuse China of sponsoring massive Microsoft email server hack

US, Britain and EU accuse China of sponsoring massive Microsoft email server hack

However, while cyberspace is akin to the “wild west” of international relations as it is not mediated by the presence of nuclear weapons, economic interdependence, multilateralism, and agreed norms, it is also a place which is far less state-centric and involves many different kinds of actors (most notably, giant private internet platforms). States are not as important and not as powerful in cyberspace.

Ultimately, that notion that history repeats has very little basis in, well, history.

But the constant use of historical analogies in this way has additional negative by-products. The Cold War analogy helps instil a simplistic Manichaean (and arguably neoconservative) world view of an emerging contest between the good “West” against the evil “Chinese”.

And the Thucydides Trap analogy presents a bleak future where seemingly little can be done to pacify relations, despite the significant amount of interaction and cooperation that still exists in the Sino-American relationship.

02:04

China joins coordinated move to release oil reserves and lower global oil prices

China joins coordinated move to release oil reserves and lower global oil prices

More insidiously, these analogies have filtered through to the diplomatic language of China and the US. Chinese President Xi Jinping, as well as a plethora of Chinese foreign affairs ministry officials, regularly cite the Thucydides Trap and the potential of a new cold war.

Although US President Joe Biden has yet to publicly mention the Thucydides Trap, he has also spoken of the threat of a new cold war. While key people from both sides are generally using these examples as outcomes that should be avoided, their citation of these analogies lends them even more credence.

However, rather than offering analytical frameworks for policymakers, the pertinent lesson from history is how wrong commentators, think-tankers, policymakers and intelligence personnel often are when predicting outcomes in international relations.

Therefore, eschewing reliance on historical analogies and treating the Sino-American relationship as a complex but unique relationship at a unique time and space in history is badly needed. Doing so would also enable the more positive aspects of the relationship to be the focus, while downsizing the negative aspects which overwhelmingly dominate current discourses.

Nicholas Ross Smith is an adjunct fellow at the University of Canterbury, New Zealand

11