Thucydides Trap
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A Thucydides Trap is a political scenario where when one great power threatens to displace another results in war.
References
2018
- (Wikipedia, 2018) ⇒ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graham_T._Allison#Thucydides_trap Retrieved:2018-4-12.
- In the book Destined for War, Allison uses the phrase the Thucydides Trap which, according to him, refers to the theory that "when one great power threatens to displace another, war is almost always the result".[1] Allison's term follows the ancient text History of the Peloponnesian War, in which Thucydides wrote, "What made war inevitable was the growth of Athenian power and the fear which this caused in Sparta."[2] The term appeared in a paid opinion advertisement in The New York Times on April 6, 2017, on the occasion of U.S. President Donald Trump's meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping, which stated, "Both major players in the region share a moral obligation to steer away from Thucydides's Trap."[3] Allison asserts that circumstances at the start of World War I (involving British fears about Germany), the War of the Spanish Succession, and the Thirty Years' War (involving French insecurity about the Habsburg empires of Spain and Austria) exhibit the trap.<