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."
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