Thucydides’ Trap is a concept created by Graham T. Allison, which mirrors the tendency towards war when an emerging power threatens to replace the dominant power – as between Athens and Sparta.
Xi Jinping assures that this will not happen, explaining to the United States and its allies that China is not militaristic; which defends multiculturalism, free trade and the common good of humanity. However, the tension in the South China Sea is serious – and dangerous.
China’s “rejuvenation”; in other words, the internal growth and the international affirmation, turning the page to the “century of humiliation”, includes an undisguised ambition of conquest in everything that is island, atoll, and sandbar… disputed by Japan, Taiwan, Vietnam and the Philippines.
For her part, in her recent visits to Taipei and South Korea, Nancy Pelosi makes it clear that the United States will resort to arms to contain any Chinese advance that she considers illegitimate.
The security dilemma arises whenever one side takes so many steps to ensure its own security that, in fact, it threatens the security of others. And that red line is very thin right now. On the one hand, the United States behaves as if liberal democracy is a divine mission that gives it the right to patrol the Asia-Pacific to contain the Chinese satan.
I can imagine how this angers Xi Jinping – and rightly so. On the other hand, it is obvious that the “long march” carried out by China spreads to the four corners of the world a Marxist-Leninist alternative, with Chinese characteristics, that challenges liberal democracy. And that scares the West – rightly so.
All those who warn us about what history teaches us are even more right: in most cases where a civilizational clash pitted the emerging and dominant powers, war ends up breaking out.
But not always…
The greatest responsibility of Washington and Beijing is to make this moment one of those exceptions that we can celebrate, passing the rubicon in peace and prosperity.
*Director General of PLATAFORMA
