IN November 2019, I wrote a piece on the rise of China based on the book of our Harvard Dean Graham Allison — Destined for War (2017, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt). The book described China's reappearance on the world stage as a superpower '...after an absence of more than two hundred years. It may be recalled that ancient China, the Middle Kingdom, was dominant in Asia for thousands of years before it was eclipsed by the West that began during the Age of Discovery in the early 16th century.'

Allison proposes that the impact of China's rise will cause '...discombobulation to the US and the international order.' He cited Thucydides, the Greek historian who first defined the concept of history in his History of the Peloponnesian War 2,500 years ago. In his book, he suggests that '[i]t was the rise of Athens and the fear that this installed in Sparta that made war inevitable.' Applying this to the current status of America confronted with the rise of China, Allison conceived the 'Thucydides Trap, a dangerous dynamic that occurs when a rising power threatens to displace a major ruling power.' In this case, China, the rising power, threatens to displace the ruling power, the United States. Will war ensue, as in Athens versus Sparta? Allison suggests that war is likely but not inevitable.