Articles

The article contributes to a debate about whether alliances lead to conflict or peace, going back to Thucydides’ Peloponnesian War and its applicability to the modern day. Graham Allison, seeking a structural argument and based on what he and many others view as the main cause of war for Thucydides, popularized the term “Thucydides’ trap” as “the natural, inevitable discombobulation that occurs when a rising power threatens to displace a ruling power.” Allison inferred Thucydides’ trap as a structural logic guiding great power competition, particularly the US-China rivalry. Trump’s…