Thucydides Research Papers - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

It was the rise of Athens and the fear that this instilled in Sparta that made war inevitable.” (Thucydides, 431 BCE, cited in Allison, 2017, p. 27). Ancient Athenian historian Thucydides died towards the end of the Peloponnesian War (431-404 BCE), a conflict that spread across the majority of Ancient Greece. Thucydides spent his last years documenting the brutal battle, in what would later become a classic known as The History of the Peloponnesian War, from which the above quote originates. From the vast pool of possible contributing factors leading to the Peloponnesian War, Thucydides was able to shine a light on one of particular pertinence – the impact of a rising power. This is to say that when a ruling power perceives itself to be threatened by a rising power, war is the most likely outcome (Allison, 2017). Nearly 2400 years later, Thucydides’ analysis can still be applied. In the last five centuries there have been sixteen examples of a rising power threatening to supersede a ruling power, with twelve of those instances resulting in war. The continuation of this trend resulted in the creation of the term ‘Thucydides trap’, the phenomenon of outbreak of war that occurs when a rising power threatens to displace an established power. The falling of the Soviet Union in 1991 supposedly marked ‘The End of History’, in which western liberal democracy ‘wins’ and becomes the final form of government, with the USA as the global hegemon (Fukuyama, 1992). Spending more on its military than the next seven countries combined (SIPRI, 2018), the USA sat at the top comfortably for two decades without fear of being knocked from its perch. However, in 2014 the IMF reported that China had overtaken the USA in becoming the world’s largest economy, a record the USA had held since 1872 (IMF 2014, cited in Financial Times, 2014). Alongside this, China achieved other significant milestones: largest automaker, largest middle class, most billionaires, fastest supercomputer, largest solar power capacity, and the highest investment in artificial intelligence (Allison, 2018). China continues to grow, and with a higher population than both the USA and Europe combined, it is on track to become a global force to be reckoned with. Thus, the question remains: can China rise peacefully, or will they fall into Thucydides Trap once again?