Destined For War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides's Trap?—A Critical Examination of Historical Patterns Leading to War Between Great Powers

NATIONAL BESTSELLER | NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR.
From an eminent international security scholar, an urgent examination of the geopolitical conditions that could produce a catastrophic conflict between the United States and China—and how it might be prevented.

China and the United States are heading toward a war neither wants. The reason is Thucydides’s Trap: when a rising power threatens to displace a ruling one in the field of international relations, violence is the likeliest result. Over the past five hundred years, these conditions have occurred sixteen times; war broke out in twelve.

At the time of publication, an unstoppable China approached an immovable America, and both Xi Jinping and Donald Trump promised to make their countries “great again,” the seventeenth case was looking grim—it still is. A trade conflict, cyberattack, Korean crisis, or accident at sea could easily spark a major war.

In Destined for War, eminent Harvard scholar Graham Allison masterfully blends world history and current events to explain the timeless machinery of Thucydides’s Trap—and to explore the painful steps that might prevent disaster today.

“Allison is one of the keenest observers of international affairs around.” — President Joe Biden

“[A] must-read book in both Washington and Beijing.” — Boston Globe

“[Full of] wide-ranging, erudite case studies that span human history . . . [A] fine book.”— New York Times Book Review

Drawing on case studies of conflicts from ancient Greece to the modern day, this essential work of foreign policy explores:

Thucydides’s Trap: The inescapable stress that occurs when a rising power challenges a ruling one—a dynamic that has led to war 12 out of 16 times in the last 500 years. Great Power Competition: How the ambitions of a rising China under Xi Jinping and a ruling America under Donald Trump fit the historical pattern of conflict, creating a collision course. Pathways to War: An analysis of potential triggers for conflict, from trade disputes and cyberattacks to accidents at sea, that could escalate into a war neither nation wants. Strategies for Peace: A sharp examination of the painful steps and difficult choices—for the U.S. and for China—that are required to avoid disaster and escape the trap.