Avoiding Thucydides' Trap
Thucydides is remembered as one of the primary historians that recorded the Peloponnesian War in Classical Greece between Athens and Sparta. The period at the end of the 5th Century BC represented what was in many respects the biggest internal conflict Greece had during antiquity. The account that Thucydides makes is frequently seen through a particular orientation. It isn't just a historical record as much as it is a political polemic on international relations.
A great deal of argument is put towards how the war broke out in the first place. Now Thucydides isn't exactly an unbiased source as he had been exiled from Athens in the early stages of the conflict. To say he carried a little bit of a grudge from that experience would be putting it mildly.
But even taking that into account it has generally held up that the generic theory for the cause of the war was that Athens started to behave in a little bit of a reckless way given it was the primary power. Trying to defend its position it didn't take Sparta's emergence as a new power that was seriously threatening it sufficiently seriously. This led to an inevitable clash between the two.
What has now been referred to by many foreign analysts as the Thucydides trap refers to this scenario where a change in power dynamic, where one state is seeing its relative importance to climb and another one emerging is inherently dangerous.
History is filled with examples and in most cases it ends up resulting in war. Thucydides' own version says that this is almost an inevitability, he is in many respects a determinist, it hasn't been taken as being an absolute must. It's just very likely.
At the core of this situation is that changing power dynamics combined with hubris help exacerbate instability. The dominant power doesn't like to believe that it's being threatened or that its ability to actually accomplish something internationally might be being diminished. From that standpoint it tends to become more common for the policy makers in that state to take risks that they might not normally take. Or out of spite try and prove that they're still the primary decision makers.
Whenever there's changes in the status quo in the international arena it always has the potential to be dangerous simply because the moving parts are typically unpredictable. No government can control everything the way that they like to think they can. Too often responses aren't necessarily the ones that you expect. At least when you have a specific state in a position of greater power it can usually have more coercive ability.
The scenario of change however undermines what most like to believe was a situation that was going to be permanent. This can be even more the case when you're dealing with a great power that likes to believe that it had developed a means of ensuring that its own influence was what was carried out is then challenged. The belief that when they ask for something will always happen. If something doesn't happen the way that they expect it to they can frequently respond.
It's been suggested by more than a few people that we’re in a scenario at the moment that carries many of the dangers of this situation that Thucydides is credited with describing. The changing power dynamic within the world at the moment has led to more surprises in the last few years than most would have expected.
One particular example is Graham Allison's recent book on this subject; the focus of which is on the United States and China specifically.
It might be worth a bit of a different view however.
There's a couple unique situations with this one that arguably makes the situation even worse. The unusual component of a single new power is not the same, it's not a single country that's challenging the US. It's a new form of multiple polarity where there's multiple smaller countries capable of exerting influences at specific regional locations.
Russia is not a global power. But it is capable of being a problem within Eastern Europe. Iran can harass the Middle East. It would be worth trying to avoid expanding these problems worse than they have to be.
This isn't simply a question of US capability. Too many of their foreign policy establishment believe that the post Cold War liberal consensus would continue indefinitely. US influence would be the dominant force. As that has continued to be challenged they have adapted or believe that it was worth rethinking whether their worldview was correct. They like to try and form solutions through a common prism. That was the way during the 1990s.
Like Athens, there is a component of being stubborn and thinking that the status quo that benefited them will continue. There is a natural tendency to not want to think that one’s influence may be altered from what it used to be. It is the biggest lesson that the ‘History of the Peloponnesian War’ tries to teach that ignoring a changing dynamic is more dangerous.
The historical lesson of wishing things to remain the same is one of dire warnings. Learning to deal with changes in circumstances is a skill too many of the current foreign policy elite need to learn. Managing change rather than trying to force yourself is typically the means to avoid conflict, if the few counter examples are an indication.