The Thucydides Trap refers to the idea that when a rising power threatens to displace an established one, the result is often war. The concept originated with Herman Wouk, the novelist and World War II veteran, who used it in his Admiral Raymond A. Spruance lecture, delivered on April 16, 1980, at the U.S. Naval War College. Wouk compared the U.S.–Soviet Cold War to the "cold war" that developed between Athens and Sparta once they had defeated Persia, their common enemy, remarking:And more than two millennia later we seem still trapped in Thucydides' world. None of the ways in which those quarrelsome Greeks behaved is suited to these dread times of nuclear menace; yet we still behave in those ways, and can find no other.
How do we break out of this Thucydidean trap, which now threatens to strangle, if not to destroy, our world? Decades later, the term was popularized by American political scientist Graham Allison to describe an apparent tendency towards war when an emerging power threatens to displace an existing great power as a regional or international hegemon. The term became widely used in 2015, being primarily applied to analysis of China–United States relations.
Supporting the thesis, Allison led a study at Harvard University's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs which found that, among a sample of 16 historical instances of an emerging power rivaling a ruling power, 12 ended in war. That study, however, has come under considerable criticism, and scholarly opinion on the value of the Thucydides Trap concept—particularly as it relates to a potential military conflict between the United States and China—remains divided.
Origin
The expression was inspired by the ancient Athenian historian and military commander Thucydides (died ), used first in a speech by Herman Wouk in 1980, and then revived by the American political scientist Graham Allison around 2011. Wouk described the trap as a precedent for the 20th-century Cold War: You remember that Athens and Sparta were the two great adversaries, the 'superpowers' of the Greek world; that they had allied themselves to fight off and defeat a common enemy, Persia; and that after the victory their alliance fell apart in a cold war.Wouk lamented the recurrence of superpower rivalry, particularly in the nuclear age, but concluded that he found hope in two sources. First, he pointed backward in time from Thucydides to the Biblical age, and specifically to Isaiah's prophecy: And they will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks, nation shall not lift up its sword against nation, nor will they learn war anymore.Second, Wouk pointed to the valor displayed by American and allied soldiers, such as Admiral Spruance, the namesake of his lecture, Jonathan Netanyahu, the leader of the Entebbe raid, and Walter "Butch" Williams, a Vietnam veteran and winner of five Distinguished Service Crosses, who perished in a carrier accident:In their deaths, I find embodied at once the sadness at the historic trap we are in, and the hope that mankind, which produced such courageous, noble, and clear-seeing spirits, will yet find its way to the light that was in them, and that burns for us.Seizing on an observation by Thucydides in his History of the Peloponnesian War that "it was the rise of Athens and the fear that this instilled in Sparta that made war inevitable" (or, in the translation by Richard Crawley, "The growth of the power of Athens, and the alarm which this inspired in Lacedaemon, made war inevitable"), Allison used the term to describe a tendency towards war when a rising power (such as Athens) challenges the status of a ruling power (such as Sparta). Allison expanded on this idea in his 2017 book Destined for War, in which he argued that "China and the US are currently on a collision course for war". Though Allison argues in Destined for War that war between a "ruling power" and "rising power" is not inevitable, war may be very difficult to avoid and requires extensive and intensive diplomatic attention and exertion in the case of a "Thucydides trap".
Definition For Wouk, the trap is that pending the fulfillment of Isaiah's prophesy, superpowers will continue to take up arms against each other, leaving the United States to depend on those who "stand in the breach" and "serve." Despite the sadness of this predicament, Wouk believed that the United States was fortunate in that "[t]here are hundreds of Spruances in this country. And there are hundreds of young Netanyahus in Israel, and in America there are thousands of Butch Williamses."
For Allison, the term describes the theory that when a great power's position as hegemon is threatened by an emerging power, there is a significant likelihood of war between the two powers. In Allison's words:
To advance his thesis, Allison led a case study by Harvard University's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs which found that among 16 historical instances of an emerging power rivaling a ruling power, 12 ended in war. The cases included in Allison's original study are listed in the following table:
+ Thucydides Trap case file Case number Period Ruling power Rising power Result1 Late 15th century Portugal Spain 2 First half of 16th century France Spain 3 16th and 17th centuries Spain Ottoman Empire 4 First half of 17th century Sweden 5 Mid-to-late 17th century Dutch Republic England 6 Late 17th to mid-18th centuries France Great Britain 7 Late 18th and early 19th centuries United Kingdom France 8 Mid-19th century France and United Kingdom Russia 9 France Germany 10 Late 19th and early 20th centuries China and Russia Japan 11 Early 20th century United Kingdom United States 12 United Kingdom (supported by France, Russia) Germany 13 Mid-20th century Soviet Union, France, and United Kingdom 14 United States Japan 15 1940s–1980s Soviet Union 16 1990s–present United Kingdom and France Germany
Influence The term and arguments surrounding it have had influence in international media (including Chinese state media) and among American and Chinese politicians.
After Allison revived the term in the early 2010s, only Chinese scholars pointed out that it had first been used by Wouk -- e.g., Executive Dean of the Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies at Renmin University of China Wang Wen connected the two usages in a 2016 article called "'Internal strength competition' will become the key to Sino-US competition:"In the 1980s, American writer Herman Wouk warned of the disastrous consequences of the Cold War between the US and the Soviet Union using the "Thucydides Trap" analogy. On August 22, 2012, Harvard University Professor Graham Allison, in the Financial Times, revived the historical metaphor of the "Thucydides Trap," reigniting anxieties among Western academics, particularly American researchers, about American decline and concerns about China's rise.A case study of the term by Alan Greeley Misenheimer published by the Institute for National Strategic Studies, the military research arm of the National Defense University, stated that it "has received global attention since entering the international relations lexicon". Foreign policy scholars Hal Brands and Michael Beckley have stated that the Thucydides Trap has "become canonical", a "truism now invoked, ad nauseam, in explaining U.S.–China rivalry". Furthermore, BBC diplomatic correspondent Jonathan Marcus has quipped that Allison's book expanding on the Thucydides Trap, Destined For War, "has become required reading for many policymakers, academics and journalists".
China–United States relations
The term is today primarily used and was revived by Allison in relation to a potential military conflict between the United States and the People's Republic of China. Chinese leader and CCP general secretary Xi Jinping referenced the term, cautioning that "We all need to work together to avoid the Thucydides trap." The term gained further influence in 2018 as a result of an increase in US-Chinese tensions after US President Donald Trump imposed tariffs on almost half of China's exports to the US, leading to a trade war.
Western scholars have noted that there are a number of pressing issues the two nations are at odds over that increase the likelihood of the two powers falling into the Thucydides trap, including the continued de facto independence of Taiwan supported by Western countries, China's digital policing and its use of cyber espionage, differing policies towards North Korea, China's increased naval presence in the Pacific and its claims over the South China Sea, and human rights issues in Xinjiang, Tibet, and Hong Kong. Some also point to the consolidation of power by Xi Jinping, the belief in an irreconcilable differences in values, and the trade deficit as further evidence the countries may be slipping into the Thucydides trap. Foreign Times, however, argues that Bejing believes China can escape the Thucydides Trap because the United States will weaken internally before a confrontation becomes inevitable."China Is Sabotaging the World That Enables Its Rise" Foreign Affairs (July 15, 2026)
Xi asked Trump during a May 2026 summit in China if their two nations could avoid the trap. During a state visit by Xi Jinping to the United States in September 2026 Xi again warned Trump about the risk of the Thucydides trap leading to military confrontation between USA and China."At Trump meeting, Xi Jinping lays out terms to avoid US-China military conflict" The Guardian (September 25, 2026)
Criticism China–United States relations A number of scholars have criticized the application of the Thucydides trap to US–China relations. Lawrence Freedman, writing in Prism, the National Defense University's journal of complex operations, has similarly argued that "China's main interest has always been its regional position, and if that is the case, then there are strong arguments for it to show patience, as its economic pull becomes progressively stronger." Hu Bo, a professor at Peking University's Institute of Ocean Research and one of China's foremost naval strategists, has also said that he does not believe the current balance of power between the United States and China supports the Thucydides hypothesis.
Scholars and journalists like Arthur Waldron and Ian Buruma contended in 2017 that China is still far too weak for such a conflict, pointing to China's "economic vulnerabilities", its aging population, an exodus of Chinese people out of China, domestic ecological problems, an inferior military relative to the United States, a weaker system of alliances than the United States, and a censorship regime that limits innovation. Foreign policy scholars Hal Brands and Michael Beckley have similarly argued in 2021 that the Thucydides Trap "fundamentally misdiagnoses where China now finds itself on its arc of development", contending that it is China—and not the United States—that faces impending stagnation. Relatedly, Harvard University political scientist Joseph S. Nye argued in 2017 that the primary concern is not the rise of China leading to a Thucydides trap, but rather domestic issues leading to a weakening of China in what he calls a Kindleberger Trap.