Hello, welcome to visit Shanghai Forum
Thank you very much for such a generous introduction andlet me say, what an honour it is for me to be here today and add mycongratulations to those of the other guests to the organisations here at Fudanand KFAS for putting on such a spectacular event. This time yesterday, I was inMassachusetts for Harvard’s Commencement Ceremony where I was hosting my ownprofessor at Harvard from 50 years ago, Henry Kissinger, who was there tocelebrate the graduation of his granddaughter, Sophie, who was graduatingyesterday. Henry is actually going to turn 95 on Sunday so we had an earlycelebration of a birthday but to our colleagues here at Fudan University, letme bring you welcome from Harvard University and from Henry Kissinger.
My main reason for being here is not just to be able tohave an opportunity to be able to participate, though I’m honoured to do that,but I’ve come to learn, and let me be explicit what I’m hoping to learn about.Actually, I think it picks up just the question President Park raised. What I’mtrying to learn about is how the US and China can escape Thucydides trap. That’ssomething I’ve been trying to learn about for the past year and watching thesetectonic changes just as were referred to, I’m hoping we will hear some moreideas over the next two days.
To put it in the terms of the theme of the conference,“Asia’sResponsibilities in a World of Change”, the question is how can we Americans,Chinese, other Asians, think about ways in which the two most powerful statesin the world, in an era in which their relationship will increasingly bestressful, and even dangerous, how can they nonetheless relate to each other tosustain an international order that has been the foundation for the past sevendecades on the basis of which once seen, or enabled, all of the Asian miraclesthat we are all so thrilled by. So again, how specifically can Americangovernment, American thought leaders, Chinese governments, Chinese thoughtleaders, other Asian participants, operationally help us escape Thucydidestrap?
I’m hoping not just to share that part a little bit, butto hear some thoughts from other people, and actually over the next couple ofdays to hear more.
What I’m going to do in my presentation is give you justan introduction to this book, in the hope that it’ll encourage you to come togrips with the arguments in the book in a way that will stimulate you to thinkmore about how the US and China can escape the Thucydides trap in this changingera.
Basically, I’m going to do three things. First, I’m going to introduceyou, or I think for many of you, reintroduce you to a great thinker. Second, I’mgoing to present a big idea and third, I’m going to pose a most consequentialquestion. So, let me start. Since we are here in China, here is President XiJinping and a statement he made at Davos in January 2017. As he says, majorpowers should respect each other’s core interest, and then here’s the phrase Iwant to stop on for a second, and build a new model of relations, or what’ssometimes called the new form, or new type of great power relations, featuringnon-conflict, non-confrontation, mutual respect, and win-win cooperation. Aslong as we maintain communication and treat each other with sincerity, Thucydidestrap can be avoided.
I like that statement very much. I like that idea of anew form of great powers relations. I like the extension of that to what’s nowbeen a conversation about a new mode of international relations and I’m veryinterested to understand more how this has now evolved to the term thatPresident Xi Jinping uses, the community with a shared future for mankind. Butall of these, I believe, are forms of attempting to conceptualise the question,how can we escape Thucydides trap. Indeed, as one of the folks, one of thepeople who works directly for Xi Jinping, told me in a conversation in Beijingin December, he said, “Graham, why do you think Xi Jinping keep stalking abouta new form of great power relations? And he says it’s because we understand theold form is the form of relations that got countries before us into Thucydidestrap and then in catastrophic conflicts, so we’ve got to invent a new form”.Then I say, “Good, I believe that’s a good banner, now what we need is someimagination about the content, or about how to operationalise this”.
So first who’s the great thinker I wanted to introduceyou to? I understand we are here in China but it’s not President Xi Jinping,even though I think he’s a serious thinker too. It’s a fellow named Thucydides.Now for those of you here who are scholars, you’ll be familiar with Thucydides.For the students, you may not be, so let me make sure you know how to pronouncehis name, which our Chairman pronounced very carefully. So this fellow’s nameis Thucydides, let’s see if we can do it in unison, one, two, three,Thucydides. One more time, Thucydides, ok. So if nothing else, you can go backand tell your classmate I met today a great thinker, and his name is Thucydides.So Thucydides was roughly a contemporary of Confucius. Confucius died just afew years Thucydides was born in Greece. Thucydides was the father and founderof history. Let me say it again, Thucydides founded history as a discipline. Hewrote a book, a famous book, called “The History of the Peloponnesian War”,about the conflict between the two great city states in classical Greece thatcaused the collapse of that civilization. So Thucydides wrote this book, whichyou can actually go to your Kindle, or your equivalent, and download for free.And I would suggest to all of you students and everybody else, but especiallystudents, go download to start with just book one of the history of thePeloponnesian War, so only a hundred pages long and read it, and if every otherpage doesn’t knock your socks off, check your pulse.
So, this is a serious thinker who has a big idea inalmost every page. In my book actually, for every chapter, I have an epigraphthat comes from Thucydides, just to remind you how many interesting andimportant ideas he had. So here’s a serious thinker, the founder and father of history,Thucydides.
So, what’s the big idea? The big idea is Thucydides trap.This is a term I coined back in 2010 or 11 when I started this study, to makevivid an insight that was given to us by Thucydides. That’s why it’s calledThucydides trap. So this was his idea. Thucydides trap is the dangerous dynamicthat occurs when a rising power threatens to displace a ruling power.Thucydides wrote about this in Classical Greece 2500 years ago, and saidfamously, this is probably the single most quoted line in Western internationalrelation studies, he wrote “it was the rise of Athens and the fear that instilledin Sparta that made the war inevitable”, actually by inevitable, he only meansvery likely. Not a hundred percent, but very likely.
Sparta had been a dominant state in Greece for a hundredyears. Athens was exploding in the period after the defeat of the Persians, atthe beginning of the fifth century BC, inventing everything. They invented drama,so Sophocles, Aristophanes. They’re inventing history, Thucydides. They’reinventing philosophy, Socrates and Plato. They’re inventing architecture, look atthe Parthenon, can you find a finer building than that anywhere in the worldtoday? They’re inventing democracy, Pericles. So all these things werehappening and the Spartans, as they look at these, are thinking,“Wait a minute,these people are going to upset the order that’s existed in Greece for ahundred years in which we’re at the top of the pyramid and everybody else takesits place beneath us.
”Think back to a hundred years ago, or a hundred and a few,and the rise of Germany and its impact on Britain. I have a good chapter in thebook on the road to 1914.Britain has been accustomed to being the dominant powerin the world for a hundred years. This was the empire on which it was said thesun never set. So this little island, nonetheless, had an empire that included India,and Canada, and South Africa, and Britain ruled the ways. That was the order,that had been a good order for a hundred years. But Germany, as it rose after itunified and especially after it industrialised, by 1900had overtaken Britain interms of GDP and by 1914was a quarter larger and was building a navy. Again, inThucydidian terms you could say the rise of Germany and the fear this incitedin Britain was a major structural cause of what became the most catastrophicwar until that point, what we know historically as World War I.
And again, I would say especially for Chinese, you cannotstudy WWI too much. If you haven’t read about it and thought about it, you’remissing a very important lesson in history. In that case, Germany did notconclude, we are bigger, we are stronger, a war with Britain would be a goodidea. No, nobody in Germany wanted a war with Britain. And Britain did notconclude, wait a minute, Germany’s getting so big, we need a war with Germany, nothey believed they didn’t need a war with Germany. They were trying to avoid awar with Germany but what happened? What happened was an accident, an external provocation.An archduke was assassinated in Sarajevo. One thing led to the other, theAustro-Hungarians felt they obliged to punish the Serbs, the Russians were afraidthe Austrians would overdo it, the Germans were backing the Austrians, theFrench were allied with the Russians, the British had become entangled with theFrench, and before the end, they were all in a war. A war in which everyonelost. If you jumped to 1918 when the war is over, and if you were given any oneof the leaders a chance for a do over, no one of them would’ve chosen what hechose. But they did and the war happened. So, this is a sterling lesson for allof us.
Today, the Thucydian dynamic is illustrated by the riseof China, which has over the past generation, risen further and faster and inmore dimensions than any nation ever in history and the impact that’s had onthe US and the impact you can particularly see in Washington today, as peoplewere awaking to discover as if had been hiding somewhere but mainly because theyhaven’t been looking, a huge China that is rivalling and indeed surpassing theUS in many dimensions.
So in the book I look at the past five hundred years of history,I find 16 cases in which a rising power threatens to displace a ruling power.12 of the cases end in war, 4of the cases did not war. So to say that warbetween US and China is inevitable would be wrong on the record, but to saythat the odds are bad for us, or the odds are against us, would be correct. SoThucydides trap and finally comes, the question, can the US and China escapeThucydides trap?
Here again, another line from the 19th Party Congress andPresident Xi Jinping, when talking further about this topic, he says, Socialismwith Chinese characteristics for the new era makes the following thing clear,major country diplomacy with Chinese characteristics aims to foster a new typeof international relations. New type of great power relations, new type ofinternational relations, and to build a community with a shared future formankind. So to the consequential question, which is the subtitle of my book,can America and China escape Thucydides trap?
In the book, I offer a very professorial no and yes. So no,if the US and China settle for business as usual, for diplomacy as usual, forstatecraft as usual, then we should expect history, as usual. And history asusual in this case could be a war, a catastrophic war that would crash all ourhopes and dreams, and all the hopes and dreams of everyone else in Asia andwould be judged afterwards to be dumb, stupid, insane. As crazy as WWI was,maybe even more so. So no, we cannot escape Thucydides trap if we settle forbusiness as usual.
But on the other hand, yes, only those who refuse to studyhistory are condemned to repeat it. So, there’s no obligation for President XiJinping or President Donald Trump or their successors to make the same mistakesthe Kaiser made. Or that Pericles made or that others made in the other cases.So, the objective for this book is not to be fatalistic, not to be pessimistic,but to try to remind us that we are facing serious, dangerous, structuralstress. That’s the condition we will find the US and China in, for as far as wecan see. And the question is, whether we can be inventive about the ways to escapeThucydides trap, I’m hopeful but I’m especially looking forward to hearing morefrom others about how we can escape Thucydides trap. So thank you.
(This article is edited based on the recording and has notbeen reviewed by the speaker.)
