The Thucydides Trap

There has been much talk recently about the “Thucydides Trap”.  China’s President Xi Jinping is reported to have warned Donald Trump during his recent trip to Beijing that China and America were heading straight for the “Thucydides Trap.”

So what is it? It is a term coined by the diplomatic historian Graham Alison in his book “Destined for War.” Allison uses Thucydides’ history of the disastrous Peloponnesian War between Sparta (the established power) and Athens (the rising power) to argue that when one power becomes to challenge the hegemony of an existing power then war is inevitable.

It is not quite. In the 1920s the American military was drawing up plans for a war against Britain. The plan was called War Red. The plan involved a major land invasion across the border into Canada and a naval attack on British colonies in the Caribbean.

Britain had a counter-attack plan, but its plan was not as comprehensive. Fairly early on it realised that its war-ravaged economy could not win a war against the rising American industrial giant. There were other important factors. These included the two countries’ shared experience of World War I. There was also the fact that a 300-year-old shared cultural experience and perspective outweighed the competitive aspects of the relationship. The British increasingly saw themselves as the Greeks to America’s Rome, as Harold Macmillan later put it.

“War Plan Red was one of the rare cases where strategic rivalry did not culminate in war. Alison gives 12 examples of how countries became victims of the Thucydides Trap. They include the Crusades, the Franco-Prussian War, World War One and World War Two. War Red is listed—along with three others—as the exceptions that prove the rule.

Cultural links ensured that War Red did not become a disastrous reality. But China and America lack the deep cultural, linguistic and historical ties that softened the transfer of power from Britain to the United States.

Ebola

Ebola is a terrible disease. It attacks your internal organs. You bleed from the inside out. Death is painful and quick.

In much of Africa it is customary to wash the bodies of corpses before burial. The practice can be fatal as the disease is spread through contact with infected bodily fluids. They remain contagious long after death.

In the last outbreak, 2014-2016, 11,300 people died. The epidemic was contained to West Africa because Britain and America flooded the region with health workers and soldiers. The UK committed more than $500 million to fight the epidemic. America sent 3,000 people to fight the disease.

It worked. The doctors and nurses won. Not only that but systems were put in place to effectively detect and fight any further outbreaks. Then came Trump in America and Boris Johnson in Britain. Aid budgets were slashed.  Three thousand staff were cut from America’s Centre for Disease Control. The biggest axe fell on the departments involved in fighting overseas epidemics. The situation was almost as bad in Britain.

The epidemic fighting network that was established a decade ago was badly weakened. Especially hard hit were the surveillance systems which are designed to detect the first signs of the disease, contain it and treat it. Britain has so far committed only $30 million to fighting the latest outbreak. America has made promises but little has materialised. Oxfam says that coordination meetings now produce “blank stares” when money is requested.