The Thucydides Trap: Vital lessons from ancient Greece for China and the US … or a load of old claptrap?

• The “Thucydides Trap” refers to a concept coined by Graham Allison that suggests rising powers provoke anxiety in established ones, leading to conflict. However, this framing risks oversimplifying Thucydides’ work and distorting its deeper philosophical message.
• Thucydides’ “History of the Peloponnesian War” is not a treatise on structural inevitability, but an exploration of how human frailty, political misjudgment, and moral decay can combine to unleash catastrophe. His work highlights the role of choice, perception, and emotion in shaping historical events.
• The “Thucydides Trap” has been misused by commentators and policymakers as a justification for confrontation with China, reinforcing the notion that conflict is inevitable. However, Thucydides’ work actually warns against the dangers of fear, pride, and misperception leading to war.
• Thucydides’ famous observation “Ignorance is bold and knowledge reserved” highlights the importance of humility and prudence in leadership, while his formulation “The strong do what they will and the weak suffer what they must” serves as a tragic lament on the consequences of unchecked power and injustice.
• The real lesson of Thucydides is that war becomes more likely when nations allow fear to cloud reason, leaders mistake posturing for prudence, and strategic decisions are driven by insecurity rather than clarity. Avoiding this fate requires better judgment, humility, and a recognition that the future is shaped by human choices, not structural pressures alone.

The so-called Thucydides Trap has become a staple of foreign policy commentary over the past decade or so, regularly invoked to frame the escalating rivalry between the United States and China.

Coined by political scientist Graham Allison — first in a 2012 Financial Times article and later developed in his 2017 book “Destined for War” — the phrase refers to a line from the ancient Greek historian Thucydides, who wrote in his “History of the Peloponnesian War,” “It was the rise of Athens and the fear that this instilled in Sparta that made war inevitable.”

At first glance, this provides a compelling and conveniently packaged analogy: Rising powers provoke anxiety in established ones, leading to conflict. In today’s context, the implication seems clear – China’s rise is bound to provoke a collision with the United States, just as Athens once did with Sparta.

But this framing risks flattening the complexity of Thucydides’ work and distorting its deeper philosophical message. Thucydides wasn’t articulating a deterministic law of geopolitics. He was writing a tragedy.

History repeats as tragedy?

Thucydides fought in the Peloponnesian War on the Athenian side. His world was steeped in the sensibilities of Greek tragedy, and his historical narrative carries that imprint throughout. His work is not a treatise on structural inevitability but an exploration of how human frailty, political misjudgment and moral decay can combine to unleash catastrophe.

That tragic sensibility matters. Where modern analysts often search for predictive patterns and system-level explanations, Thucydides drew attention to the role of choice, perception and emotion. His history is filled with the corrosive effects of fear, the seductions of ambition, the failures of leadership and the tragic unraveling of judgment. This is a study in hubris and nemesis, not structural determinism.

Much of this is lost when the phrase “Thucydides Trap” is elevated into a kind of quasi-law of international politics. It becomes shorthand for inevitability: power rises, fear responds, war follows.

But Thucydides himself was more interested in why fear takes hold, how ambition twists judgment and how leaders — trapped in a narrowing corridor of bad options — convince themselves that war is the only viable path left. His narrative shows how conflict often arises not from necessity, but from misreading, miscalculation and passions unmoored from reason.

Even Allison, to his credit, never claimed the “trap” was inescapable. His core argument was that war is likely but not inevitable when a rising power challenges a dominant one. In fact, much of Allison’s writing serves as a warning to break from the pattern, not to resign oneself to it.

In that sense, the “Thucydides Trap” has been misused by commentators and policymakers alike. Some treat it as confirmation that war is baked into the structure of power transitions — an excuse to raise defense budgets or to talk tough with Beijing — when in fact it ought to provoke reflection and restraint.

To read Thucydides carefully is to see that the Peloponnesian War was not solely about a shifting balance of power. It was also about pride, misjudgment and the failure to lead wisely.

Consider his famous observation, “Ignorance is bold and knowledge reserved.” This isn’t a structural insight — it’s a human one. It’s aimed squarely at those who mistake impulse for strategy and swagger for strength. Or take his chilling formulation, “The strong do what they will and the weak suffer what they must.” That’s not an endorsement of realpolitik. It’s a tragic lament on what happens when power becomes unaccountable and justice is cast aside.

Seen in this light, the real lesson of Thucydides is not that war is preordained, but that it becomes more likely when nations allow fear to cloud reason, when leaders mistake posturing for prudence and when strategic decisions are driven by insecurity rather than clarity.

Thucydides reminds us how easily perception curdles into misperception — and how dangerous it is when leaders, convinced of their own virtue or necessity, stop listening to anyone who disagrees.

The real lessons of Thucydides

In today’s context, invoking the Thucydides Trap as a justification for confrontation with China may do more harm than good. It reinforces the notion that conflict is already on the rails and cannot be stopped. But if there is a lesson in “The History of the Peloponnesian War,” it is not that war is inevitable but that it becomes likely when the space for prudence and reflection collapses under the weight of fear and pride. Thucydides offers not a theory of international politics, but a warning — an admonition to leaders who, gripped by their own narratives, drive their nations over a cliff.

Avoiding that fate requires better judgment. And above all, it demands the humility to recognize that the future is not determined by structural pressures alone, but by the choices people make.

This article is part of a series explaining foreign policy terms commonly used, but rarely explained.

Andrew Latham does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

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