Graham Allison’s book, ‘Destined for War: Can American and China escape Thucydides’s Trap?

I have written my work, not as an essay to win the applause of the moment, but as a

possession for all time.

—Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War

Here we are on top of the world. We have arrived at this peak to stay there forever. There

is, of course, this thing called history. But history is something unpleasant that happens to

other people.

—Arnold Toynbee

The book depicts whether war can be averted when an aggressive rising nation (China in 21st century) threatens a dominant power (USA). He studied 16 such cases, twelve of those rivalries ended in war and four did not. Both USA and China believe in their exceptionalism and are probably on a collision course for war. USA hegemony will be challenged by China, as the UK's was threatened by an emerging Germany. UK-Germany rivalry resulted in World war one. This is in contrast to USA-Soviet rivalry where war was averted before the Soviet Union collapsed.

There are many plausible scenarios of how conflicts between these two superpowers could break out. Taiwan, North Korea. (Vietnam and India are regional conflicts,might not attract USA intervention).

Allison asks the most pertinent question, "Will the impending clash between these two great nations lead to war? Will Presidents Trump and Xi, or their successors, follow in the tragic footsteps of the leaders of Athens and Sparta or Britain and Germany? Or will they find a way to avoid war as effectively as Britain and the US did a century ago or the US and the Soviet Union did through four decades of Cold War?"

What is then the central idea expounded by Thucydides as mentioned by Allison- "when a rising power threatens to displace a ruling power, the resulting structural stress makes a violent clash the rule, not the exception. It happened between Athens and Sparta in the fifth century BCE, between Germany and Britain a century ago, and almost led to war between the Soviet Union and the United States in the 1950s and 1960s."

Racial Sinicisation- Han Power and Racial and Ethnic Domination in China

“Unlike the exterminationist logics of Nazi Germany, the segregationist logics of South African apartheid and the expulsionist logics of racial palestinianisation, the logic of Chinese racial domination involves assimilation by coercion and is akin to post-racial positions in its denial of any shred of raciality.”

Ian Law in Red Racisms: Racism in Communist and Post-Communist Contexts

China, like most other Communist regimes claimed to have ended racism by the mere fact of its triumph. Most of the communist governments denied any racism either towards outsiders or ethnic minorities within the country. Racism might not come as a surprise to someone who is familiar with the language of how minorities are treated in China. Few samples- , “modernising” minorities, “bringing “development”, ending “primitivism” and “feudal practices” or bringing “civilisation” like British did in India (we are grateful of course !!).

Ian Law has exposed this fallacy in his book "Red Racisms: Racism in Communist and Post-Communist Contexts". Following are my favorites from the book-

..Racial sinicisation is primarily driven by the use of migration as a tool of domination, patriotic ‘re-education’ and the use of military power.

.....Sinicisation involves the aggressive, state-led, promotion of Han culture, language and identity, and the concomitant dissolving of the culture, language and identity of non-Han groups and the social disappearing of those groups into the mass of the Chinese nation.

......The civilising mission of Russia and the Soviet Union particularly in relation to territories in its Eastern borderlands parallels China’s civilising mission in its Western borderlands.

..In scores of official policies and regulations, there is an open attitude of superiority and paternalism, which is sometimes officially recognised as ‘Han chauvinism’ (dà Hànzúzhuyì ˇ ) but which masks a reality that exists in countries all over the world – racism.

...........The sino-centric view of a superior central state and associated civilisation and culture provided a hierarchial world view within which core concepts of racial difference led to a logic of incorporation and assimilation of those other ‘barbarian peoples’ on the part of the Chinese civilisation state.

..Chinese nationalism has been shaped by successive imperialist, Republican and Communist regimes and comprises a mixture of ethnic Han identity and a culturalist pride. 

...A Han Chinese nation came into being with the imperial unification of the Qin-Han period, and with the development of political centralisation and cultural standardisation, such as the decision to designate one national language to be used for all official purposes. Despite internal divisions, alien conquests, elite culturalism, peasant particularism and movements of peoples this nation evolved and defined itself in terms of a common myth of origin and descent, common lifestyles, rituals, a political elite and an imperial bureaucracy.

.....At the heart of China’s first twentieth-century revolution, the Xinhai Revolution in 1911/12, were ideologies of racial hierarchy, race war and the need for racial domination by the Han. Initial uncertainty over how to address the identities and demands of non-Han Chinese was resolved through the vision of post-imperial China as a ‘Republic of Five Nationalities’ (wuzú gònghé ˇ ).

Something recently published on mass internment camps, here.