But senior administration officials like National Security Advisor H. The Trump White House is reportedly obsessed with Thucydides, thanks in good measure to Allison. Allison offers only a slightly more optimistic take (“War is more likely than not”) in analyzing China’s growing challenge to America’s dominating position globally.
The great historian merits this because his analysis of the causes of the ancient war between the Athenians and the Spartans provides the essential dilemma of Allison’s book: Can states avoid catastrophic war when a rising power begins to challenge a dominant state’s control? Thucydides’ pessimistic answer seems to be “No”: War was inevitable, we are told, when emergent power Athens contested Sparta’s supremacy 2,500 years ago. The ancient Greek historian of the Peloponnesian War, who lived almost 2,500 years ago, makes the title of Graham Allison’s prominent new volume, Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides’s Trap?
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