Asia’s answer to the Thucydides Trap

A historical analogy from Ancient Greece has become the go-to maxim for understanding the rivalry between the US and China. Asia’s classical thinkers may offer a better alternative.

When China’s President Xi Jinping welcomed US President Donald Trump to Beijing in May, he once again reached for a phrase he has invoked for years: the Thucydides Trap, popularised by Harvard political scientist Graham Allison in the early 2010s. Could the two powers, Xi asked, overcome this Greek conundrum and forge a new kind of relationship?

Xi was referring to the lessons Allison drew from Thucydides’ account of the fifth-century BC Peloponnesian War – that a deadly pattern of structural stress can emerge when a rising power challenges a dominant one. The war devastated Ancient Greece, and in analysing it, Thucydides offered one of history’s most enduring explanations for conflict: “It was the rise of Athens and the fear that this instilled in Sparta that made war inevitable.” The idea has since come to shape much of the debate around US-China relations.

The Thucydides Trap is a useful warning about how great-power rivalries can become dangerous, but the Chinese leader should look closer to home for solutions. The trap’s greatest risk is that countries begin to see conflict as inevitable, and that mutual suspicion becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Asia’s own strategic traditions offer a useful corrective – that the highest form of statecraft is not winning wars, but avoiding them altogether.

None of this is an argument for ignoring the very real tensions Beijing and Washington face over trade, technology and Taiwan. Nor does it mean that Thucydides was advocating war. By most accounts, he was less interested in glorifying conflict than in understanding how leaders convince themselves that war is the only path left.

Still, given the tensions between Washington and Beijing – and the consequences for the rest of the world – alternative ways of thinking deserve consideration.

Among Asia’s classical strategists, two texts stand out: The Art Of War, traditionally attributed to the Chinese military strategist Sun Tzu, and the Arthashastra, a treatise on governing a state, associated with Chanakya (also known as Kautilya). Often described as the Indian Machiavelli, he was an adviser to Chandragupta Maurya, the founder of India’s Mauryan Empire, which was formed around 321 BC and featured a sophisticated governance structure that spanned central and northern India as well as parts of modern-day Iran.

Historians continue to debate how accurately these figures have been portrayed, but there is no doubt that both texts have shaped strategic thinking across Asia for generations. The Art Of War may be a distillation of military thought from multiple authors, while the Arthashastra was likely compiled over centuries. Both schools advocated winning but approached victory through different philosophies.

Sun Tzu’s manual for war was, paradoxically, a guide to avoiding it. “The skilful leader subdues the enemy’s troops without any fighting,” the text advises, foreshadowing how the People’s Liberation Army deals with Taiwan today.

Meanwhile, the Arthashastra covers espionage, assassination and offensive military campaigns alongside diplomacy and governance. It also treated conflict as a last resort, noting that troops and wealth could be squandered in vain.

For Xi, Chanakya may ultimately be more useful than Thucydides because he is traditionally portrayed as advising an ambitious ruler seeking to expand his influence. That challenge was not unlike the one confronting Beijing now: How should an emerging state expand its influence without provoking a coalition against it? Chanakya’s counsel was diplomacy and alliance-building, qualities that can be in short supply in Beijing. 

Washington, too, should be wary of the Thucydidean frame. The US would do well to think less like Sparta and more like Sun Tzu, whose conclusion was that the most successful states are the ones that prevent conflict rather than inviting it. If only Trump had consulted the Arthashastra before starting his disastrous war of choice on Iran. 

Allison himself, in his analysis of Thucydides’ work, points to ways of avoiding war. He recommends the five Cs – caution, communication, constraints, compromise and cooperation – principles that strategists honed during the Cold War.

For the US and China, this means maintaining channels of communication, managing crises before they spiral, accepting uncomfortable compromises and cooperating where interests overlap. Climate change is one obvious place to start. So is preventing flashpoints such as Taiwan from becoming triggers for a wider conflict.

To be sure, Thucydides remains essential reading as Beijing and Washington navigate the most consequential geopolitical rivalry of the century. But if leaders become too attached to the idea that conflict between a rising and ruling power is inevitable, they risk helping to bring it about.

Asia’s strategic traditions remind us that the greatest victories are often the wars that never happen.

That’s a lesson both Xi and Trump would be wise to remember.