The “Thucydides Trap” occurs when a rising nation-state—for the Greek historian Thucydides, it was Athens—must eventually have a violent confrontation with the existing dominant nation-state—Sparta in his time. It is a zero-sum game where there can be only one dominant nation-state as the eventual winner, and it is usually assumed that the rising nation-state will outdo the dominant nation-state resolved only by military conflict.
The United States and China are today’s Sparta and Athens. For several decades, their geopolitical relationship has been fundamentally based on collaboration and healthy competition, raising the bar for both countries. Now, it is turning into discordant competition, trade restrictions, and embargoes.
A global chess game is unfolding between the US, China, and others—predominantly militaristic Russia and Iran—creating an Eastern Bloc with China in primacy. The US and its Western Bloc—the European countries—counter with trade, energy, and technology restrictions.
China is in a technological and resource-driven Cold War with the United States, and both are vying for influence over India, the Asia-Pacific, and elsewhere. A war for global technical innovation and resource allocation is emerging.
Economic Warfare
There is nothing new about economic warfare. Athens tried it in the fifth century BC, precipitating a war with Sparta that shattered Athens’s Golden Age. The lesson learned should be that the “Trap” only brings ruin. But this lesson is never learned. After World War I, it was believed that economic sanctions and other forms of “economic warfare” would be more powerful than military action. It was attempted to impede Japan’s conquest of Manchuria, Mussolini’s attack on Ethiopia, and the onset of World War II. All failed miserably. It’s time to learn these lessons before another epic failure.
Economic sanctions on Russia after their invasion of Ukraine created inconvenience but little else. The world is interconnected, and, in the case of Russia, China moved to fill the breach. Current talk of attempting to strangle technology, energy, and resource access is naïve and foolish. These are essential global markets that cannot be contained. Today, one only needs to look to China’s technological advancement as an example of the failure of containment.
Sanctions and economic strangulation fail. History teaches us that these failures lead to conflict—it is time to learn the lesson now and avoid what is otherwise inevitable.
Is Conflict Inevitable?
The US and China have deep mutual dependence and benefit significantly from interaction through trade, entrepreneurship, and intellectual and innovative engagement. This “cross-border” world has been active and mutually beneficial for over 25 years, developing experience and skills in both countries. It is not a zero-sum game, even though leaders in China and the United States act as though both economies are not interdependent. The reality is that this interdependence benefits businesses, local economies, and the consumers of both nations.
It was a zero-sum game in the time of Athens and Sparta (and all the other “rising power” conflicts). During the Cold War, there was no trade between the United States and the Soviet Union. While we may have had mutually assured destruction, we had no mutually assured prosperity. Today, it’s a different world.
Mutually Assured Prosperity
Supply chains, large consumer markets, and resources are interconnected in today’s global economy. There is no bright line or Iron Curtain anymore. Only the rhetoric of those days survives. Reality is very different.
We now live in a world where the benefits are mutual and additive. Thinking of trade or any cross-border engagement as a zero-sum game is wrong. It is not a single resource or piece of land that two countries are trying to possess simultaneously, where one has to be the loser. That is anachronistic thinking that leads to conflict, stifles innovation and creativity, and destroys value.
Losing Faith
The US no longer believes expanding economic relations with China will create common interests and international stability. The dominant view now is that China is waging an economic assault against the United States, stealing technology and intellectual property, launching cyber-attacks, and seeking to “seize the commanding heights of the digital economy.”
The first big step was the US government banning Huawei; sanctions followed, and access to American advanced computer chips was denied – all in the hope that the US would maintain as large a lead as possible in critical technologies and restrain China’s ability to develop artificial intelligence and other technologies.
China is pushing back and refuses to be contained. Significantly, the latest “Sputnik moment” came with developments from DeepSeek and other Chinese companies related to artificial intelligence. Unsurprisingly, US sanctions and restrictions are not working. China is gearing up for new rounds of economic warfare, denying access to the Chinese market and banning rare earth materials. It’s a downward spiral where “national security” and “dual use,” which means consumer and military applications, can be applied to any product. Examples of TikTok and electric cars and batteries as potentially militarized are absurd yet implemented.
An integrated global economy is fragmenting, and tensions and military threats are rising.
Global Impact
Value in today’s world is not generated by physically possessing an object, whether land or trade routes. It is created by intellect, innovation, and creativity, where two parties can simultaneously occupy the same space and add value to each other. Collegial work between the US and China is the best example of this.
US companies can sell world-beating technology, from Apple, Nvidia, or others, to the world’s second-largest market. The US and China are competitive and innovative, and consumers in both countries benefit from higher quality products, increasing performance standards, and lower costs. The United States would greatly benefit from China’s electric vehicles, solar panels, and open-source artificial intelligence programs like DeepSeek.
Compromising value harms each respective population. Products cost more, and quality and performance are lower. The opposite has been true for so long that the ripple effect of increasing conflict risks exponential harm not only to the United States and China but also to the global economy.
Policies and practices should reflect this reality, not an anachronistic “land grab” mentality.
Speaking of Land Grabs…Taiwan
Taiwan is a chilling warning. Intractable positions and aggressive maneuvers that ignore this new reality and sink into the “Trap” are at the heart of geopolitical and geoeconomic challenges. There would be no winners.
The status quo held for decades between China and the United States regarding Taiwan is deteriorating with constant saber-rattling. Undermining Taiwan’s independence would reverberate globally.
Taiwan is at the heart of global technology. TSMC produces most semiconductors, including the most advanced ones, and is at the heart of all devices, from smartphones to supercomputers to automobiles and all consumer devices. It is an economic and social trophy for China or the United States. If an aggressive China undermines democratic Taiwan’s government, it would be a societal disaster.
It’s Global Unification, Not Local
China’s central government appears singularly focused on achieving complete national unification. Over the last several decades, there has been a steady march, including Hong Kong, Macau, Tibet, and Xinjiang. Taiwan is now the final piece that, in the eyes of the Chinese, put aside the century of humiliation and complete “the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation.”
Reunification won’t matter if the Chinese people pay too high economic and social prices for this reunification. It won’t rejuvenate anything, especially the Chinese nation, if China becomes a pariah and the world’s supply chains and technological ecosystems are decimated.
It’s Not Zero-sum
While this reunification policy has been given lip service since 1949, China has never had the economic or military wherewithal to generate anything other than words. Increasingly, it has the resources to revise the long-standing “status quo” and be aggressive. Combined with the United States administration’s revisionist policy to let Taiwan stand independently, this vulnerability enables China’s aggression. Sabers are rattling, and the Taiwanese are worried.
While economic and diplomatic strategies may appear ineffective, the mutually assured destruction that prevented the Thucydides Trap between the United States and the Soviet Union from turning a Cold War into a hot war is the same here. Being militarily aggressive would be beyond foolish and self-destructive. Deterrence from economic and military disaster is not a Cold War-like zero-sum game.
Both countries benefit from Taiwan’s innovative engine and technological ecosystem. Geopolitical and geoeconomic interdependence among Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, the United States, and China can ensure that conflict is not inevitable.
Taiwan matters on many dimensions, perhaps most importantly, as an example of how all countries are better off with cooler heads, competitive and collaborative attitudes, and a more unrestricted exchange of ideas, technologies, and markets.
Globalization Works
Globalization and international trade are not things that governments dictate. Businesses create it. As we have witnessed in Silicon Valley, individuals come from all over the world to work together and form innovative companies. No government policy dictated that; it is the most effective form of global cooperation the world has ever seen. It is based on merit and value creation.
China has also displayed technological innovation and competitiveness. Technical universities and innovative clusters in Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, and Hangzhou have shown enormous progress with sometimes limited resources. Alibaba, Baidu, DeepSeek, and Tencent are only some examples of clusters of emerging world-beating technologies in artificial intelligence and integrated circuit design.
The combined benefits of global collaboration and competitiveness, not trade restraint, will only enhance the benefits for the United States and China.
People, Not Government
Our governments could learn a lesson or two here. “The will of the people” in both countries is to work together cooperatively. Anything less than that stifles each country’s potential economic growth and societal benefit.
The relationship between the US and China is closer because of interaction and interconnection despite their diverse backgrounds and cultural contexts. There may be tension and conflict, but it is a shared experience that cannot be denied and will lead to resolution—as all tensions and conflicts do among cooperative parties.
The Patriarchs
It is not trivial to say we are a “global family,” and, more importantly, China and the US are the patriarchs. China and the US can lead the world in many ways. This is not a time to be selfish and dysfunctional.
We are competing and collaborating and should be mostly free to do so, not “managed,” as current administrations propose. Managed strategic competition is a misguided policy because “managed” implies that the government is actively figuring out what should or should not be done. Governments do not do this well.
The government creates friction and potential conflict, the biggest reason we fall into the Thucydides Trap. If appropriate, oversight, sensible regulation, and enforceable trade agreements do not interfere with fair competition and collaboration. There is no “Trap” to avoid. The sooner China and the US realize this, the better off each country (and the world) will be.
