Thucydides' Trap
A powerful model to understand how major wars erupt
Hello readers,
Will the US and China go to war this decade?
This is one of the most important geopolitical questions of our times. Nobody knows the answer, but history offers some clues.
To understand the potential trajectory of the Sino-American conflict, it’d be helpful to look at the idea of Thucydides' Trap.
Thucydides, one of the earliest historians in the West, wrote about this when he saw Athens go to war with Sparta. He observed that it is the fear of a rising power and worries about its own decline that makes a ruling power paranoid.
In such delicate situations, even small disturbances often turn into major confrontations, and the resulting friction makes war inevitable.
Researchers at Harvard have identified 16 such cases in the last 500 years when a rising power clashed with a ruling power. Shockingly, the belligerents managed to avoid a full-scale war in only 4 of those cases!
So what exactly is this trap all about? What are the structural conditions that make war inevitable? In today’s piece, we’ll analyze a major historical confrontation to understand how this dynamic plays out: the epic clash between Athens and Sparta.
Sparta Vs Athens
Turn the clock back to 460 BC. The dominant power in the Greek world is Sparta- a state where citizens live an austere life (hence the word ‘spartan’) and kids are trained in warfare from a very early age. Sparta was the most powerful state, and its biggest threat was an internal rebellion by the slaves they kept, called the helots.
But there’s another rising state that’s posing a threat to Spartan dominance: Athens.
This is a bunch of very enterprising people who have laid the foundations for philosophy, drama, and many other tech inventions. They’ve started spreading their bold experiment of democracy to other states and building deeper alliances via maritime trade.
The rising strength and significance of Athens deeply concern the Spartans. They’re a conservative power who, unlike Athens, aren’t extending their ideas/influence on other states, as they’re more focused on containing a Helot rebellion.
The clash of powers results in a few battles (First Peloponnesian War), but this is quickly quelled when they decide to sign a treaty, resulting in 30 years of peace. But this truce doesn’t solve the underlying structural issues that are bound to erupt- and erupt they do in 435 BC.
The spark comes in the form of an attack by Corinth, a Spartan ally, on the neutral state of Corcyra. The latter immediately appealed to Athens for help, and the Athenians are in a bind.
Pericles, the leader of the Athens, faced a major dilemma.
If they let the attack happen, they’d be allowing Sparta to capture important areas and strengthen their naval position, which could ultimately be used to subdue them in the future. But if they decide to resist the invasion and attack, it’d be an outright breach of the treaty and imply a declaration of war against Sparta.
Both options were equally bad. It was Pericles’ zugzwang moment.
The sparks
In an attempt to strike a compromise, the Athenians decide to send a small, symbolic navy: not big enough to indicate that they intend to fight, but merely to show support and oppose Corinth’s move.
But in war, Murphy’s law takes hold all the time. Rather than coming across as a moderate action, the presence of an Athenian navy made things worse.
Seen as a hostile act, the face-off between Corcyra and Corinth turned into a major naval battle. Diplomatic ties had dragged the two dominant powers into a direct confrontation, and the sequence of events resulted in deepening suspicions on both ends. Moreover, it also resulted in a breakdown of diplomatic channels for brokering peace- a bad sign that portended total war.
The final straw came when Athens decided to sanction Megara, a Spartan ally that continued to trade with Corinth despite Athens’ trade embargo.
The sanction was aimed at crippling the Megaran economy. Even though the act was legal and perfectly within the bounds of the peace treaty, it was viewed as a major provocation and became one of the final straws that broke the camel’s back.
The hawks in the Spartan assembly had had enough and they pushed for a declaration of war against Athens. All attempts by the Spartan king, Archidamus II, to find a reasonable way out of this quandary went in vain when Corinth threatened to drop out of the alliance if Sparta didn’t declare war.
As a result, the Greek world was rocked by a bloody war that went on for decades, destroying hundreds of thousands of lives and completely bringing both states to their knees.
Lessons from the clash
3 factors contribute to wars in such situations: fear, interest, and honor.
Thucydides says “It was the rise of Athens and the fear that this instilled in Sparta that made war inevitable”. If there’s one key lesson from this historical episode, this is it.
Every time an incumbent faces a rising power that threatens to displace it, it instills a deep sense of fear in the ruling power. Moreover, echoes of an impending “decline” further stoke its paranoia, and it views every act of its opponent through a deeply suspicious lens, which further prepares the ground for the outbreak of war.
This is the fear that invaded the Spartan mind, and we can see parallels in the way the ruling American leaders think today. A rising China has filled them fear, suspicion and paranoia.
While acting in one’s national interest is obvious, it is crucial to note that many powers are unable to form a coherent view of what the nation needs and act in service of that goal.
This happens because the decisions it takes are often a compromise struck between rival political factions- and therefore, not the right decision that works to serve the grand strategy. This is what Pericles and Archidamus suffered from, as the hawks gained the upper hand, and they found no way to negotiate peacefully. If the US and China are to avoid a similar confrontation, it’d be critical for both presidents to rise above the clamour of warmongering and do what’s right for preventing it than giving in to the frenzy generated by raw politicking.
This brings us to the third factor- honor. The hawks bickered and savagely demanded a war because they firmly believed that backing down would result in a loss of face and be deemed dishonorable. Moreover, even the rising power tends to become increasingly hubristic and demands that it be treated with the honor and respect that it “rightfully deserves”. No wonder Athens decided to brashly sanction Sparta’s allies- such things can’t happen without powers being filled with a sense of arrogance.
Can a similar, crippling sanction trigger a full-scale war? If you don’t think so, it’d be good to remember that that was exactly why Japan decided to bomb Pearl Harbor.
So, will we witness an epic clash between the US and China?
It will all come down to how well the leaders on both sides learn from history, make conscious attempts to ward off these 3 deadly factors, and focus on what’s truly important to avoid sleepwalking into the Thucydides’ Trap.
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