The so-called Thucydides Lure has turn into a staple of overseas coverage commentary over the previous decade or so, repeatedly invoked to border the escalating rivalry between the USA and China.
Coined by political scientist Graham Allison — first in a 2012 Monetary Occasions article and later developed in his 2017 guide “Destined for War” — the phrase refers to a line from the traditional 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 look, this gives a compelling and conveniently packaged analogy: Rising powers provoke anxiousness in established ones, resulting in battle. In right this moment’s context, the implication appears clear – China’s rise is certain to impress a collision with the USA, simply as Athens as soon as did with Sparta.
However this framing dangers flattening the complexity of Thucydides’ work and distorting its deeper philosophical message. Thucydides wasn’t articulating a deterministic regulation of geopolitics. He was writing a tragedy.
Historical past repeats as tragedy?
Thucydides fought within the Peloponnesian Battle on the Athenian aspect. His world was steeped within the sensibilities of Greek tragedy, and his historic narrative carries that imprint all through. His work isn’t a treatise on structural inevitability however an exploration of how human frailty, political misjudgment and ethical decay can mix to unleash disaster.
That tragic sensibility issues. The place fashionable analysts usually seek for predictive patterns and system-level explanations, Thucydides drew consideration to the function of selection, notion and emotion. His historical past is stuffed with the corrosive results of worry, the seductions of ambition, the failures of management and the tragic unraveling of judgment. This can be a examine in hubris and nemesis, not structural determinism.
A lot of that is misplaced when the phrase “Thucydides Trap” is elevated right into a sort of quasi-law of worldwide politics. It turns into shorthand for inevitability: energy rises, worry responds, conflict follows.
However Thucydides himself was extra concerned about why worry takes maintain, how ambition twists judgment and the way leaders — trapped in a narrowing hall of dangerous choices — persuade themselves that conflict is the one viable path left. His narrative exhibits how battle usually arises not from necessity, however from misreading, miscalculation and passions unmoored from motive.
Even Allison, to his credit score, by no means claimed the “trap” was inescapable. His core argument was that conflict is probably going however not inevitable when a rising energy challenges a dominant one. Actually, a lot of Allison’s writing serves as a warning to interrupt from the sample, to not resign oneself to it.
Conventional Russian picket dolls depict China’s President Xi Jinping and U.S. President Donald Trump.
AP Picture/Dmitri Lovetsky
In that sense, the “Thucydides Trap” has been misused by commentators and policymakers alike. Some deal with it as affirmation that conflict is baked into the construction of energy transitions — an excuse to lift protection budgets or to speak powerful with Beijing — when in actual fact it ought to impress reflection and restraint.
To learn Thucydides rigorously is to see that the Peloponnesian Battle was not solely a few shifting steadiness of energy. It was additionally about pleasure, misjudgment and the failure to steer correctly.
Contemplate his well-known remark, “Ignorance is bold and knowledge reserved.” This isn’t a structural perception — it’s a human one. It’s aimed squarely at those that mistake impulse for technique and swagger for energy. 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 occurs when energy turns into unaccountable and justice is solid apart.
Seen on this mild, the true lesson of Thucydides isn’t that conflict is preordained, however that it turns into extra doubtless when nations permit worry to cloud motive, when leaders mistake posturing for prudence and when strategic choices are pushed by insecurity fairly than readability.
Thucydides reminds us how simply notion curdles into misperception — and the way harmful it’s when leaders, satisfied of their very own advantage or necessity, cease listening to anybody who disagrees.
It ain’t essentially so.
Dan Kitwood/Getty Photographs
The actual classes of Thucydides
In right this moment’s context, invoking the Thucydides Lure as a justification for confrontation with China could do extra hurt than good. It reinforces the notion that battle is already on the rails and can’t be stopped. But when there’s a lesson in “The History of the Peloponnesian War,” it’s not that conflict is inevitable however that it turns into doubtless when the house for prudence and reflection collapses beneath the load of worry and pleasure. Thucydides presents not a idea of worldwide politics, however a warning — an admonition to leaders who, gripped by their very own narratives, drive their nations over a cliff.
Avoiding that destiny requires higher judgment. And above all, it calls for the humility to acknowledge that the longer term isn’t decided by structural pressures alone, however by the alternatives individuals make.
This text is a part of a sequence explaining overseas coverage phrases generally used, however hardly ever defined.
