TEXT | CCG New Book Launch: Escaping Thucydides’s Trap

On Friday, March 22, 2024, CCG held a book launch event to release the English edition of the book "Escaping Thucydides’ Trap: Dialogue with Graham Allison on China-US Relations", published by Palgrave Macmillan, as well as its Chinese edition, published by CITIC Press Group. The book launch was followed by an engaging discussion featuring Henry Huiyao Wang, Founder & President of CCG, and Prof. Graham Allison.

"Escaping Thucydides’ Trap: Dialogue with Graham Allison on China-US Relations" presents a comprehensive collection of Allison’s views and writings on US-China relations from 2017 to 2022, covering a range of topics including the balance of power between the two sides, where the relationship is headed, and lessons from history on how conflict can be avoided. The book also includes an introduction and afterword by Dr. Henry Huiyao Wang, editor of this volume.

The following is a transcript of Prof. Allison's speech at the book launch.

Thank you very much. I think almost everything has been said. I'll try to be brief since you would be interested in the questions and discussion. But let me say a special word of thanks to Henry and CCG and the CITIC for bringing out what I think is a quite remarkable volume. Henry sent me a copy last week in Boston, and I opened it up to look through it. I think I had never quite figured out how you were gonna make this work. But I think you did, because by taking sharp questions and then reading through whatever I've written since Destined for War was published in 2017, and interviews and others, and getting short answers, pithy answers, I think you make a very lively read in just over 100 pages. So I'd say congratulations on the book. For those of you who might have a chance to look at it, I suspect you'll find it interesting. If there is a question that you're interested in. then in two pages or one page and a half, you'll get a short version of the answer. So what I thought I would do was introduce just a few ideas here.

That's actually Thucydides' big idea. So Thucydides, the founder and father of history, and someone for whom, those of you in the analytic community – if it's not part of your mental library, shame on you – you should meet him, download this book. It's called The History of the Peloponnesian War. It's actually the first-ever history book. It's chock-full of interesting ideas, but one of his big ideas was about what happened that created the Peloponnesian War. And the idea, as he says, was the very rapid rise of Athens, and the impact that had on Sparta, the ruling power at the time, that made the war almost inevitable.

So Thucydides' trap, in a phrase, is the dangerous dynamic that occurs when a rapidly rising power seriously threatens to displace a major ruling power. So the word again, a rapidly rising power seriously threatens to displace a major ruling power.

Note: The above text is the output of transcribing from an audio recording. It is posted as a reference for the discussion.

Click↙【read more】for Full Text