Why China Weaponized the Thucydides Trap | The Heritage Foundation

Allison theorized that when a rising power challenges an established or declining power, the resulting competition renders war highly probable. Its applicability to contemporary China-U.S. relations, and the framing around established power responsibility, merit cross-examination. The Thucydides Trap is vulnerable to being warped to portray China as the victim. It reductively characterizes rising powers as reactive and strips them of agency. At the high-stakes summit with President Donald Trump last month in Beijing, President Xi Jinping reached for an esoteric phrase to frame the state of China-U.S. relations—the “Thucydides Trap.” “Can China and the U.S. transcend the so-called ‘Thucydides Trap’ and forge a new paradigm for major-power relations?” Xi asked in his opening remarks. The academic concept was pioneered by Harvard scholar Graham Allison, who popularized the phrase in a series of articles beginning in 2012 and a companion book released in 2017. Drawing on Greek historian Th

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