The Thucydides Trap – the idea that a rising power and an established hegemon are destined for war – often frames China-US tensions and conflict as inevitable. Yet I believe the outcome is determined not by fate, but by choice.
Harvard professor Graham Allison, who popularised the term with his 2012 Financial Times article, agrees with me on the role of human agency. As he put it during an author reading event for my book, Escaping Thucydides’s Trap: Dialogue with Graham Allison on China-US Relation s, held last month on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference: “Structural forces account for 75-80 per cent of the outcome, but human agency shapes the rest.”