Is War Between China and the US Inevitable?

by Graham Allison

TED Talk Podcast

     The first historian, Thucydides, described the Peloponnesian War between Athens and Sparta.  Sparta was a current power, Athens began to rise, and the fear of Athens led to war.  In history, when a current power was threatened by a rising power, 12 of 16 major cases led to war.  Graham Allison calls this pattern "Thucydides' Trap."  The real kicker is that, in most cases, the two powers don't want war.  A third party provokes them....the classic example being World War I, in which the world was enveloped by war because of the assassination of a single Austro-Hungarian.