Destined For War: Can America And China Escape ... -

The "trap" refers to the dangerous structural stress that occurs when a (China) threatens to displace a ruling power (the United States).

: Both nations suffer from "extreme superiority complexes," viewing themselves as exceptional and peerless. Book Summary: Destined for War by Graham Allison Destined for War: Can America and China Escape ...

In his influential 2017 book, Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides’s Trap? , Harvard scholar Graham Allison warns that the United States and China are on a collision course. While he stresses that , he argues that historical structural forces make it much more likely than most leaders acknowledge. The Core Concept: Thucydides’s Trap The "trap" refers to the dangerous structural stress

: All-out war could be sparked by "ordinary flashpoints" or accidents that would normally be manageable, such as a trade conflict, cyberattack, or a crisis in Taiwan or the South China Sea. , Harvard scholar Graham Allison warns that the

: Allison’s team identified 16 cases over the last 500 years where a rising power challenged a ruling one; 12 of these resulted in war .

Allison suggests several factors make this seventeenth case particularly dangerous:

: Named after the ancient Greek historian Thucydides, who observed that the Peloponnesian War was caused by "the rise of Athens and the fear that this instilled in Sparta".