The Doomed War|Introduction
Graham Allison, author of Doomed to War, is a renowned political scientist and international relations scholar at Harvard University, who served as a member of the Defense Policy Board from the Reagan administration to the Clinton administration. In 2010, he developed the concept of the Thucydides Trap, which has become a well-known doctrine. His book, Doomed to War, which analyzes U.S.-China relations in terms of the Thucydides Trap concept, was published in 2017 and has been a bestseller in recent years.
The concept of the Thucydides Trap revolves around two causes of war: the established power may move to stifle the challenger when the balance of power may change. At the same time, the challenger may not be willing to be subordinate and may try to change the rules of the game by challenging the established power. One of the earliest examples is the Peloponnesian War.
The rise of Athens and the lingering fear of Sparta made war inevitable.
The reasons for the outbreak of war are certainly not as simple as that, but in fact it is easy to understand that all kinds of disputes may be magnified under the influence of the emotions of the two parties.
But is it true that when a new power rises, war is bound to break out? Not really. In recent history, this book lists 16 cases in which rising powers challenged ruling powers in the past 500 years, 12 of which resulted in wars, but there were also four cases in which no wars broke out. These four include Britain and the United States in the first half of the twentieth century, and the United States and the Soviet Union, Japan and the Soviet Union, and Britain and Germany in the post-World War II era. The author spends a lot of time on each case study, so if you are interested in history, you may want to read it.
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How can we avoid war?
As an engineer by nature, when I was reading this book, I was thinking about "whether there is a way to find a way not to break out in war from history", so I paid special attention to the two cases of Britain and the United States, and the United States and the Soviet Union, which crossed the Pacific Ocean and the Atlantic Ocean, and which I feel are more similar to the relationship between the U.S. and China nowadays. To summarize briefly, the reason why the US and Britain did not go to war was that on one hand, Britain knew that it was powerless (no money) and chose to bow out gracefully, while the US, which was on the rise at that time, was quite generous, and the distance and similarity in language added a little bit of aesthetic appeal, and so the two sides did not have too violent a conflict after all. As for the U.S. and the Soviet Union, the consequences of the Second World War were still fresh in our minds, and both sides were unwilling to face the consequences of nuclear war, so in the end, both sides decided to disarm their nuclear weapons and return to normal life. In addition, even during the Cold War, the US and the Soviet Union still had direct communication channels, which was also one of the important reasons.
The Doomed War - After Reading
There are certainly some worrying aspects of the current U.S.-China relationship - cultural differences, lack of trust, and poor communication. Normally, a normal ruler of any country in the world would have his or her country's interests as the primary concern. China, as a rising power, wants to be respected more than the United States or the Soviet Union did when they were in the same position, because Chinese people love to save face. As for the United States, it can't easily cede its existing interests to others, not to mention the fact that the populist wave (which was particularly strong in the last few years) has made it necessary for the people in power to pay attention to their own country's face, even if they are very pragmatic. Under the current circumstances, how to gracefully navigate through the present and possible future disputes will test the wisdom of those in power in both countries.
The book actually does not give us an answer. After reading the book, we have learned a little bit more about history and read some speculations, but only time can tell us what the actual direction will be in the end.
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