![]() ![]() The Greek historian’s metaphor reminds us of the attendant dangers when a rising power rivals a ruling power-as Athens challenged Sparta in ancient Greece, or as Germany did Britain a century ago. The defining question about global order for this generation is whether China and the United States can escape Thucydides’s Trap. A millennium in which Europe had been the political center of the world came to a crashing halt. When the war ended four years later, Europe lay in ruins: the kaiser gone, the Austro-Hungarian empire dissolved, the Russian tsar overthrown by the Bolsheviks, France bled for a generation, and England shorn of its youth and treasure. When we say that war is “inconceivable,” is this a statement about what is possible in the world-or only about what our limited minds can conceive? In 1914, few could imagine slaughter on a scale that demanded a new category: world war. In policy circles, this appears as unlikely as it would be unwise.Īnd yet 100 years on, World War I offers a sobering reminder of man’s capacity for folly. ![]() ![]() When Barack Obama meets this week with Xi Jinping during the Chinese president’s first state visit to America, one item probably won’t be on their agenda: the possibility that the United States and China could find themselves at war in the next decade. ![]()
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