
The Thucydides Trap: Are the U.S. And China Headed for War? - bambax
http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/09/united-states-china-war-thucydides-trap/406756/?single_page=true
======
lordnacho
One thing I think might be interesting is how the history of economic thought
affects the war/peace calculus.

For much of history, people thought of wealth as a sort of zero-sum (or near)
game. If one country gets richer, another will get poorer. If Athens get rich,
Sparta gets poor. If Britain has colonies, France and Germany need colonies.
Everyone wants to be an exporter and hoard gold.

The economic thought about this started to change around the time of David
Ricardo (comparative advantage overturning mercantilism), but I would not be
surprised if mainstream politicians took some time to understand this idea.

These days it's pretty clear the US and China benefit from mutual trade, and
anything upsetting that would require quite some compensation.

Aside from economics, there's also the fact that we've seen massive global
wars already, and we have weapons that could make the world unliveable for
generations. Particularly if you look at Chinese history, there's an enormous
amount of bloodshed. The party leadership will understand this.

~~~
exelius
I think that you're right -- the Chinese administration is ruthless, but also
pragmatic. I think when they look at the USA, they see a country at war with
itself. There's no need to destroy us since we do such a good job of it
ourselves.

Also, the USA has a pretty huge advantage geographically over every other
country in the world: our borders consist of oceans we can easily defend with
our navy and allied countries who are strong both militarily and economically.
We also have access to all of the factors of production of an army (steel,
oil, etc.) domestically and the industry necessary to process them.
Geographically, we're very protected as well: attack from the north and you
have 2000 miles of Canadian tundra too extreme to march an army across that
can be littered with radar and anti-aircraft stations. Attack from the south
and you have to cross rugged, mountainous terrain in Mexico. Even against a
weakened USA, victory would be very difficult.

War against the US is therefore pointless from the Chinese perspective: a war
of the scale a US-China war would likely just rekindle the machinery of
American industry while inflicting heavy losses on China. The Chinese
government (and people) have a long-term mindset: war would be an impatient
choice because China's dominance is all but assured anyway.

I don't think American politicians are as pragmatic; and I expect our war
hawks to turn their attention to China (likely when China eventually tries to
retake Taiwan). From a realpolitik point of view, I actually think that a
major war with China is probably the best chance the US has to maintain global
dominance over the next 50 years. But that war would need to happen soon,
while the US still has a clear technological advantage over China -- in 10
years that advantage will be all but gone.

It's looking like the US plans to use Japan as its proxy for fighting China.
Japan recently authorized its military to operate in defense of its allies; a
first step into removing the post-WWII restrictions placed on the Japanese
military. They plan to continue that process; with US support. China sees this
as unacceptable -- and is ramping up its military as a result. I think we'll
see a China-Japan war in the South China Sea before we see a China-US war. But
I think we'll also see China engage in the type of limited incursions /
occupations like the Russians did in Georgia and Ukraine, and they won't stop
until someone starts fighting back.

~~~
ende
China's development is already beginning to slow. It is not headed towards
global dominance, it was merely catching up with the rest of the developed
world. China will likely continue to enjoy a modernizing economy and growing
middle class, but in terms of growth it looks to be headed the same way as
Japan.

~~~
exelius
I would agree with you except for the fact that the Chinese economy will be
large enough to support a military equalling or surpassing that of the US.
That's basically what the article is saying: economic ascendancy often results
in a military build-up, and when it does, conflict often follows. China is
spending heavily on their military to exert their will, and given current
trends will be able to overtake the US on military spending in the next decade
or two. Whether that results in conflict is largely up to the US, in my mind.

Also, post-WWII Japan was more or less a vassal state of the US, so we kept
their military ambitions in check. We don't have any US military bases in
China, so we can't do that there.

~~~
ende
Again, it remains to be seen whether the Chinese economy meets the
expectations of earlier forecasts. I think a more realistic view is that the
Chinese economy assumes a role in the region comparable to Germany's in
Europe.

Military ascendency is not just a simple product of economic ascendency
however. Geography plays a large role, as well as military history and
institutional knowledge. For example, one does not simply build a blue water
navy. China is practically starting from scratch when it comes to naval
tradition, and when combined with geography will likely never pose a serious
challenge to US naval primacy in the Pacific - regardless of comparative
economic might. Even at the height of its power the USSR never posed a serious
threat to that primacy. Bounded to its own regional theatre, the Chinese
military will likely continue to be structured around anti-area access denial
strategies.

However, increasing economic co-dependence is likely to make this entire topic
moot. Call me an optimist but I predict the extent of US-China naval
engagement 20 years from now to consist of joint security exercises and
disaster relief missions.

------
rwmj
I think nuclear weapons are the wildcard here. They make it difficult to
extrapolate from wars in the last 500 years to wars in the future.

In 1914-18, although the outcome was quite a lot more terrible than what
everyone expected going in, it wasn't as if Europe ended up as a radioactive
wasteland for hundreds of years.

~~~
smt88
I don't know if "wildcard" is the right word. Nuclear weapons were developed
with the explicit purpose of preventing wars as terrible as the World Wars.
With the help of economic sanctions, they've succeeded so far.

~~~
caf
This is revisionist thinking, applying current knowledge to the motivations of
those 75 years ago.

Nuclear weapons were developed because they could be. More specifically, it
was feared that Germany was already researching them.

During the Manhattan Project and for the next several years after Hiroshima
and Nagasaki they were thought of as just another weapon of war, different
perhaps in scale but not in essential character (certainly by the US Army
brass, anyway). It wasn't until later in the Cold War that the deterrent value
of nuclear weapons was emphasised.

~~~
douche
It did take quite some time for the full power and destructiveness of atomic
weapons, let alone the later fusion bombs, to be appreciated. At one point, it
was a serious idea to fire atomic shells from the standard 155mm field
howitzers. Or, for even greater insanity, from over-sized crew-served
bazookas.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_artillery](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_artillery)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Davy_Crockett_(nuclear_device)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Davy_Crockett_\(nuclear_device\))

~~~
dragonwriter
This wasn't because the power of nukes was unappreciated, it was because
Soviet conventional superiority in the European theater was seen as an
existential threat to Western Europe for which the cost of using that kind of
nukes was acceptable in order to mitigate.

------
hajile
The biggest takeaway from their chart is that culture clash leads to war and
bigger, more powerful countries have more noticeable wars. In addition, their
chart of things that didn't result in war is mostly inaccurate.

Japan vs USSR was never actually a real idea because Japan didn't have an
army. USSR knew the actual battle would be against the USA.

USA vs UK never existed because there wasn't a culture clash (and their focus
of power was a bit different).

UK, Germany, and France don't clash today because their cultures are closer
than they've ever been and because they perceive a shared foreign threat in
Asia.

Thus we're left with the only war that never happened being USA vs USSR -- a
war that didn't happen due to self-preservation.

It seems most probable that USA vs China fits into the same category as USA vs
USSR where self-preservation will keep war from actually happening. I don't
think any reasonable person trusts a losing government to NOT use weapons of
mass destruction -- especially when the first one to use them wins. It's
easier to get forgiveness than permission (that happens when you're the last
superpower standing).

~~~
caf
There certainly _was_ USA/UK friction in the aftermath of WWI. The Washington
Naval Treaty was written to stop an incipient naval arms race, in which the
USA and UK were two of the major competitors.

~~~
norea-armozel
Wasn't there battle plans for invasion of Canada and vice versa around the
same time? I thought it was something that could have easily occurred if
Germany didn't spark WW2.

~~~
douche
There are generally battle plans developed for any conceivable conflict. I
would not be terribly surprised if the Pentagon has war plans on file for an
invasion of Canada today.

That was also in the heyday of the Prussian General Staff school, which
emphasized the whole concept of war plans, with things like mobilization
timetables, logistics and troop movements choreographed like chess openings.

------
pjc50
Can we deal with the war with Russia first? You know, the one with the Russian
proxy forces in eastern Ukraine and the other one in Syria with the US proxy
forces attacking a Russian ally?

The future is probably more of this sort of deniable medium-intensity
conflict.

~~~
kalms
I agree this is much more prudent, and China excels at playing a role more
confined to the shadows. For now at least.

In some sense, the US and EU has already accepted China's new found dominance
- and place - in the international community. Russia has a much bigger problem
accepting their current role, and are almost defiantly demanding respect;
putting their forces into situations that could (or probably will) escalate
into a full scale war. Personal opinion and all, but Russian foreign politics
is reminiscent of Lebensraum, and all that it entailed.

~~~
dmichulke
Well, as always it depends on "who started it".

There are people who say that the current regime in the Ukraine is a US puppet
installed via a coup. And up to today several unknowns persist (MH370, the
Maidan shootings, the Odessa fire..). Same holds for Syria.

In reality, IMO, there is never only one guilty, neither in politics, nor in
marriage, nor in war.

So I will refrain from blaming someone for all of it and I tend to disbelieve
people who "know that it's the other one's fault".

~~~
kalms
I wasn't blaming anyone. Merely observations.

(Although, are you seriously insinuating that MH370 were caused by the US?)

~~~
dmichulke
Well, you were judging Putin's foreign politics which is your absolute right
and I have no right whatsoever to tell you that you are wrong and in fact, I
can't. I just wanted to point out a flaw in your logic (which is, again, only
my opinion and not a fact per se).

Regarding MH370, I just checked an it was MH 17 ;)

Apart from that, there are many actors who could have done it. What I find
surprising is that obviously noone is interested in providing supporting
material for his side's theory. No satellite images, no radio tower comm,
weird versions of the Dutch report on the black boxes (one with a sentence
blaming Russia, the other one without that very sentence), it just appears so
much politics that it doesn't pass the smell test.

~~~
kalms
Actions speak loader than words.

Also, take a little time to analyze how the Russian media vs. the world
reacted to the incident.

------
steve19
There were so many proxy wars between the USA and the Soviets I would not
class that as a bloodless "no war" conflict.

I don't think there will be a war for the same reason Europe did not go to war
with in the past few decades ... it would be like shooting themselves in the
foot. there is little incentive for war when economies are so reliant on each
other.

~~~
arethuza
Niall Ferguson's _The War of the World: History 's Age of Hatred_, which looks
at the 20th century, starts by pointing out how comfortable and settled
everything looked at the start of the 20th century and as Keynes put it that
this state appeared "normal, certain and permanent".

For all we know the historians of the 21st century may look back at our time
in similar ways.

~~~
TeMPOraL
Let's hope not. For the first time ever we have something we need to protect -
our technological civilization, on its way to reshape the fundamentals of
human life. Ending aging and death, colonizing other worlds, really learning
something about ourselves and the universe - those things are now actually
reasonable concepts. It would be a real shame if we lose it over some stupid
issue like political bickering leading to a world war. Because if we halt now,
if we roll back to before the industrial revolution, we won't likely achieve
this level for several more millennia, as we've pretty much used up all easily
accessible, low-tech energy sources and materials. I really wish our leaders
would realize that for the first time in the whole history, humanity is
greater than the sum of its parts. However important your local issues seem to
you, they're not worth endangering the future.

~~~
tomchristie
"For the first time ever we have something we need to protect"

Humanity has always been worth protecting.

~~~
TeMPOraL
Yes. I didn't mean to devaluate human life. My point is, for most of the
history, societies have been replaceable, fungible. A tribe would die off to
be replaced by another one, with different language and maybe culture, but
otherwise the same. A civilization would fall, and next one would took the
place, replacing the lost works of art with something superficially different,
but generally the same. The world didn't change much with the centuries,
people had the same illnesses, same problems. Same capabilities and the same
perspectives. We were as far from the stars in 2000 BC as we were in 2000 AC.
You could restart a civilization any time, and it wouldn't be significantly
different.

Not so now. The last three centuries gave us the means and capacity to
significantly improve the human condition. We started to ride on a self-
amplifying feedback loop and we can't give up or fall off until we stabilize
it, or we may never get on it again.

Humanity has always been worth protecting. Human lives has always been worth
protecting. But for the first time ever, we now have a civilization worth
protecting. All the problems it has, we have to fix. We can't afford to try
and start over.

~~~
ajuc
You significantly underestimate the last 20 000 years of progress. It's easy,
because progress was very slow, but it was still nessesary for the later
stages, and there's no reason to think it will take less time the next time
around.

Domestication and farming alone took tousands of years, if you restarted the
culture in year 0 - we wouldn't have to wait 1600 years for industrial
revolution, but more like 10 000 years.

~~~
TeMPOraL
It's true that what we have today was built directly on the last 20 000 years
of progress, but there is still a significant difference - those previous 20
000 years will live in the memories of survivors of the next great war, as
well as in any books that will last. Domestication, farming, basic health
care, etc. are things that can fit in one's mind. In the entire known history,
we've never really restarted from scratch.

Even from our times, a some of knowledge would probably survive - from the
ideas behind industrial revolution or modern medicine that can fit in one's
head, to knowledge of physics, chemistry and biology that is stored in books.
No matter how hard we try, we won't nuke every single book out of existence.

But then again, not that much knowledge will live, given our increased
dependence on volatile storage media. Even if a hard drive would survive a
century, we won't have anything to read it with.

The reason last 300 years were special is because our progress started to
depend on enormous and ever increasing amounts of power. We've used up most of
the sources that could be mined, and most renewables are not viable without
high-precision manufacturing. Solar power is out of the question; we could
start rebuilding hydro and wind power capacity but it will be a slow and very
painful process, without easy coal and petroleum to help build the
infrastructure. We simply may not have enough easy fuel left to restart the
technological civilization.

------
littlewing
'As Xi Jinping himself said during a visit to Seattle on Tuesday, “There is no
such thing as the so-called Thucydides Trap in the world. But should major
countries time and again make the mistakes of strategic miscalculation, they
might create such traps for themselves.”'

That's scary. What do you think he means by that, specifically? It seems like
a threat to me.

~~~
nikatwork
It's beautifully layered. In one sense he's saying that war is not inevitable
if we make the effort to get along. In another sense he's saying don't prod
the panda.

------
Derpdiherp
Perhaps it's irrelevant, but I wonder what effects the single child policy
will have in the next few decades to Chinas ascendancy. The ratio of adult
males to females is going to be very lopsided. Will the excess males join the
military to make up for the family life they cannot have? Will there be vast
emigration to search for wives?

It's impossible to say in my opinion, but it's interesting to think about.

~~~
bgibson
Asked a Chinese friend of mine about this once, she said the Chinese males
with means will either find Chinese wives, or will exploit a (comparatively)
strong yuan and "raid" neighboring Asian countries (Vietnam, Thailand,
Phillipines, etc) for wives.

------
gadders
Not sure if I agree with the article, but I'm always fascinated with how the
classics can relate to modern times.

I'm also old enough to remember 30 or so years ago when Japan was the rising
power that terrified everyone (watch the film Rising Sun). We all know how
that played out. I'm a Brit, but in matters like this I would never bet
against America.

------
csomar
But. If we look at the recent history (the last three wars), then the
probability drops (suddenly) to 0% for a new war to happen.

If we look at the last 7 wars, it is 42%. Not 0, but certainly not as high as
75% (12/16).

So maybe things are changing (and I guess they are). War now involves nuclear
weapons, which I think they are a great detractor from getting the countries
directly involved.

It might be the reason why they are resolving instead to proxy wars on
"innocent" countries.

------
ilaksh
Wars are largely for profit and supported by propaganda. To be safe we must
fight propaganda and unethical bankers.

Anyone advocating for mass murder forfeits their authority.

Oil and resources in general are still a big issue that could cause conflict.
We should conserve and recycle much better. Mandate 1- or 2- passenger
lightweight vehicles for individuals. Mandate telecommuting to some degree.
Need a massive development push to replace oil-based industrial processes with
bio-renewable-based processes.

Also can improve land and energy use.
[https://runvnc.github.io/tinyvillage](https://runvnc.github.io/tinyvillage)

------
Jdfmiller
Sounds like someone's read Ghost Fleet
[http://www.forbes.com/sites/williampentland/2015/07/15/ghost...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/williampentland/2015/07/15/ghost-
fleet-military-geeks-imagine-the-next-world-war/)

------
jqm
So, why do people want to fight in the first place? Is any natural inclination
all bad? If we level up in perspective from that of personal tragedy, is war
an important force of evolution and largely responsible for the place we are
at now?

I realize technology changes the equation. And human suffering and destruction
are never pleasant. So hopefully we are wise enough to find other ways and I
think we will eventually. But I think in order to do this, we have to honestly
admit that war has had an important role in human relations and development
and the some of the outcomes of war have been for the betterment of humanity.

------
thebakeshow
It is interesting to me that 3 of the 4 non-war outcomes were all within the
last 50 years.

------
pdkl95
War? Not while we depend on China for rare earth elements. (
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dih30mUexrA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dih30mUexrA)
)

edit: So I guess the people voting this down believe our failure to maintain a
local source of rare earths makes war with China _more_ likely? Our military
(and GDP) depends on these elements, and China likes the profit they make
selling them. These both make war much less likely.

~~~
hga
One reason is that "rare" earths aren't really that rare, what's rare is First
World countries that are willing to tolerate the mess of refining them, which
roughly entails boiling the ore in acid a thousand times. What was even rarer
was a willingness to sell them at a loss when the PRC was selling them
cheaply, before they established export quotas and the world market prices for
them reversed.

See e.g. this article from 2011 which looks accurate to me:
[http://fortune.com/2011/11/18/molycorps-1-billion-rare-
earth...](http://fortune.com/2011/11/18/molycorps-1-billion-rare-earth-
gamble/)

As far as I know, the PRC doesn't have a long term monopoly on anything but
the largest concentration of Han Chinese in the world, which is of course
rather worthwhile.

~~~
pdkl95
/sigh/ \- I suppose I shouldn't have assumed that I could skip over the
details of China's rare earth strategy.

Of course they aren't "rare"; I'm obviously referring to China's cornered
market on refinement. I also didn't claim anything about the future trends of
the rare earth market. We could (and should) rebuild domestic sources, but
that takes time and requires fighting regulation.

I'm simply saying that I find it extremely unlikely that we would go to war
with China when they are _de facto_ a necessary part of military and industry
supply chains. China wants the profit, and it would be stupid for us to start
a war when reopening domestic mining and refinement industries would be
cheaper.

~~~
hga
Except they didn't corner the market, aside from when they're willing to sell
them cheaper than anyone else. E.g. the company that _Fortune_ article focused
on, Molycorp, stumbled in various ways and for various reasons, including
lower prices because the PRC's initial restrictive actions were of course
followed by counteractions, including recycling.

On the company's web site, they say they're putting their US facility in
maintenance mode, ready to resume if market conditions warrant it, and are
fulfilling customer demand from the PRC and Estonia.

So, no, in terms of rare earths they aren't a necessary part of our military
and industrial supply chains. A trade embargo between us would hurt us both,
and it would be _devastating_ if they could interdict shipments from Taiwan,
Japan and South Korea (one of the reasons we maintain an expensive military,
although fab lines have to be exquisitely vulnerable), but otherwise at 0th
approximation it's hard to distinguish your argument from those made just
prior to The Great War AKA WWI.

I'd also note that if we even had a complete trade embargo between the US and
USSR I don't remember/remember reading of it. In 1980 Reagan campaigned on
lifting Carter's grotesque grain embargo to the USSR, one of many pinpricks he
made after they invaded Afghanistan and mightily embarrassed him.

