The inevitable US war with China

Thucydides predicted it.

He said states go to war because of fear, self interest, and honor.  

It is a prediction, not destiny.

Thucydides is a Greek historian writing 2,500 years ago who tried to make sense of the great conflict between Sparta and Greece. He observed war between Sparta and Athens was caused because the incumbent great power of the region, Sparta, watched a new rival grow in strength and prosperity. It frightened Sparta. Athens, for its part, wanted to be treated with the respect that its new and growing wealth and power entitled it, so they were not inclined to act defer to Sparta. Their interests were in conflict. Their reputations and status with other states were at stake, and with those reputations hanged the question of which state might get allies if they were ever to go to war. Honor was not just a matter of self respect; it was a matter of survival.

They go to war, a disaster for each of them.

Graham Allison is a former dean at the JFK School of Government where I am visiting just now. He wrote a book titled The Thucydides Trap which explored whether the USA and China were analogous to the situation of Sparta and Athens. (He said it was, and that indeed a rivalry between an existing power and a rising one happened frequently in world history, and most of the time it resulted in war.)

The United States is the established incumbent great power, with a big military, big economy, and big worldwide influence. For two generations, the US has been the great force In the world. China is the rising power. We see China building a navy, making loans for development projects in Africa and around Asia, building out a belt and road program of infrastructure that connected it with Eurasia and Africa, acting more and more like a great power. Thirty years ago it was a populous but poor country. Now they have an economy that on a purchasing power basis is the size of the United States' and growing quickly.

The centennial of World War One brings up a bad and dangerous history. Great Britain was the great power incumbent throughout the Nineteenth Century, with colonies around the world and the world's great navy. Germany was the rising European power, and had surpassed Britain in manufacturing capacity. Germany wanted a navy that reflected its economic and scientific power. It was not inevitable that Germany and Britain would go to war, but Germany frightened Britain and Germany wanted to be treated as a great power. The politicians and foreign policy experts at the time reassured themselves that the rivalry was serious but that war would not result because, after all, there was substantial trade between the two countries. They were too interdependent to go to war with one another.

Reasonable people were confident war could not actually happen, until it did, suddenly.

Is war with China inevitable? No. But people who have studied history see patterns. Sparta and Athens fit a pattern. The UK and Germany fit a pattern. The US and China fit a pattern.

This could end badly. I don’t expect it, but no one ever expects it.