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The US Army War College Quarterly: Parameters 
Volume 47 
Number 2 Parameters Summer 2017 Article 13 
Summer 6-1-2017 
Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides's 
Trap? 
James C. MacDougall 
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James C. MacDougall, "Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides's Trap?," 
Parameters 47, no. 2 (2017), https://press.armywarcollege.edu/parameters/vol47/iss2/13 
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Review essay
Destined for War: Can America and 
China Escape Thucydides’s Trap?
James C. MacDougall
©2017 James C. MacDougall
Dr. James C. 
MacDougall, a Professor 
of  National Security 
Strategy at the National 
War College, has served 
as the chairman of  
the Department of  
National Security and 
Strategy at the US 
Army War College, the 
Deputy Director of  
the George C. Marshall 
European Center for 
Security Studies, and a 
faculty member at the 
National War College 
from 2007 until 2009.
Professor Graham Allison gazes into the future of  US-China relations in Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides’s Trap? only to find the best guide to the future is the 
past. Specifically based on Thucydides’s well-known observation that “It 
was the rise of  Athens and the fear that this inspired in Sparta that made 
war inevitable,” Allison has popularized the phrase “Thucydides’s Trap” 
to describe the dangerous historical dynamic that develops when a rising 
power threatens to displace an established ruling power.1 This dynamic 
was summarized aptly in an earlier article: “The rise of  a new power has 
been attended by uncertainty and anxieties. Often, though not always, 
violent conflict has followed. The rise in the economic and military 
power of  China, the world’s most populous country, will be a central 
question for Asia and for American foreign policy at the beginning of  a 
new century. ”2
In researching cases of rising powers challenging ruling powers over 
the last 500 years, Allison and the Thucydides Trap Project at Harvard 
University found 12 of 16 cases resulted in war. Avoiding Thucydides’s 
Trap thus equates to avoiding war. Based on this analysis, Allison 
concludes that “as far ahead as the eye can see, the defining question 
about global order is whether China and the United States can escape 
Thucydides’s Trap.”3
The high percentage of cases that resulted in war provide persuasive 
support to the overall argument that war between the United States and 
China may be more likely than generally considered. Yet a few cautionary 
notes on the data set and methodology are warranted.
First, while the principal result of the study (12 of 16 cases led to 
war) seems objective, decisions on what cases to include necessarily 
involve some subjective analysis. As such, the overall data supporting 
the general argument have evolved since the initial Thucydides’s Trap 
argument was presented. In 2012–14 the argument cited 11 of 15 cases 
leading to war.4 
1      For more on Professor Allison’s paraphrase of  Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War, ed. Robert 
B. Strassler, trans. Richard Crawley (New York: Free Press, 1996), bk. 1, ch. 23, line 6, see Destined 
for War, n. 2, 297.
2      Joseph S. Nye Jr., “As China Rises, Must Others Bow?,” Economist, June 25, 1999.
3      Graham T. Allison, Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides’s Trap?,” 
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2017),  xvii.
4      In a 2012 op-ed in the Financial Times, and subsequently in the New York Times, Professor 
Allison supported the general argument by noting that “In 11 of  15 cases since 1500 where a rising 
power emerged to challenge a ruling power, war occurred. ” Graham Allison, “Thucydides’s Trap 
Has Been Sprung in the Pacific,” Financial Times, August 21, 2012; and Graham T. Allison, “Obama 
and Xi Must Think Broadly to Avoid a Classic Trap,” New York Times, June 6, 2013.
Book Reviewed
Destined for War: Can 
America and China Escape 
Thucydides’s Trap?
By Graham Allison
114        Parameters 47(2) Summer 2017
In 2015 and subsequently, the data set 
was revised to include 12 of 16 cases that 
resulted in war.5 Later in 2015, a detailed 
argument presenting the Thucydides’s 
Trap metaphor appeared in the Atlantic. 
The 16 cases were identified in a table 
accompanying the article and included 
information on time period, ruling power, 
rising power, and result. 6
In Destined for War the data also 
include 12 of 16 cases leading to war, but a 
comparison between the table in the book 
(42) and the table from the 2015 Atlantic 
article shows one case from the 2015 data 
was dropped and another was added. In the 
event, they both resulted in “no war” so the 
overall numbers remain the same; but, such 
changes highlight the difficulties inherent 
to determining which cases to include. 
While 12 of 16 may have a scientific ring, the result may be less rigorous 
than it appears; certainly, it is subject to further analysis.7
Notwithstanding such questions about the aggregate data, the 
book’s use of the Thucydides’s Trap metaphor to alert the potential, 
indeed the seeming likelihood, that the current global shift in power 
could lead to war is its principal strength. The book’s conclusion, based 
on the available evidence, “when a rising power threatens to displace a 
ruling power, the resulting structural stress makes a violent clash the 
rule, not the exception,” is a powerful warning that should help focus 
the attention of both policymakers and scholars to the perils inherent in 
the uneven growth of power.8
Although a valuable lens through which to see the current shifting 
relationship between the United States and China, the text is somewhat 
less useful in prescribing policy or strategy responses that might be taken 
in pursuit of US objectives given the international context described. 
As an aid to statecraft, Allison says, “History shows that major ruling 
powers can manage relations with rivals, even those that threaten to 
overtake them, without triggering war. The record of those successes, 
as well as the failures, offers many lessons for statesmen today.”9 The 
challenge for strategists and policymakers, however, is to distinguish the 
5      In Professor Allison’s 2015 testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee, the 
data set was updated to include 12 of  16 cases which led to war. See Hearing on China, the US, and 
the Asia-Pacific, Before the Senate Armed Services Committee, 114th Cong (April 14, 2015) (statement, Dr. 
Graham T. Allison, Director of  Harvard’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs and 
the Douglas Dillon Professor of  Government at Harvard’s Kennedy School).
6      Graham Allison, “The Thucydides Trap: Are the U.S. and China Headed for War?,” Atlantic, 
September 24, 2015.
7      For example, a list on the Thucydides’s Trap Project website of  potential additional cases that 
may be included in a second phase of  the analysis includes 14 cases of  which 7 led to war and 7 did 
not. While none have yet been included in the overall data, the variance in the result highlights the 
importance of  decisions of  which cases to include and which not to include. See “Can America and 
China Escape Thucydides’s Trap?,” Belfer Center, Harvard Kenndey School, accessed July 18, 2017, 
http://www.belfercenter.org/thucydides-trap/methodology/thucydides-trap-potential 
-additional-cases.
8      Allison, Destined for War, xv.
9      Ibid., xvii.
Graham Allison, Destined for War: Can 
America and China Escape Thucydides’s 
Trap? (Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin 
Harcourt, 2017), 384 pages, $28.00
Review essay         115
historical lessons to avoid war, which vary widely and are in some cases 
mixed if not contradictory. Here former Presidential Historian Arthur 
Schlesinger’s lament “that the past is an enormous grab bag with a prize 
for everybody” would seem applicable.10
To illustrate how differing conclusions might be drawn, we might 
compare two cases from the Thucydides’s Trap analysis which had the 
same result of “no war.” In case number 11 regarding the British response 
to rising American power in the early twentieth century, Allison observes 
that Great Britain chose a strategy of ad hoc accommodation, deciding 
“to make a virtue of necessity and to yield to the Americans in every 
dispute with as much good grace as was permitted.”11In case number 15, a 
rising Soviet Union challenged the United States for several decades, but 
the end result was “no war.”12 In what Allison describes as the “greatest 
leap of strategic imagination in the history of America diplomacy,” a 
“comprehensive strategy for a form of combat never previously seen” 
was developed to conduct a cold war “by every means short of bombs 
and bullets.”13 The result, though not war, was that “the US and Soviet 
Union made systemic, sustained assaults against each other along every 
azimuth except one: direct military attacks.”14
For the statesman or strategist intent to avoid Thucydides’s Trap 
the above two examples offer starkly different historically-derived 
approaches: accommodation or cold war. The advice to “apply history” 
found in chapter 10, “Where Do We Go from Here?,” while sensible, 
still begs questions on which history and how it is to be applied.
A fundamental challenge arises for efforts to apply the Thucydides’s 
Trap methodology and data to strategy and policymaking. The study 
designates war as the dependent variable. Could dependent variables 
other than war be understood in the context of Thucydides’s Trap? In 
other words, could strategic objectives beyond avoiding war be addressed 
by the information and evidence presented in the study? Allison cites 
Clausewitz’s famous line: “War is an extension of international politics 
by other means.”15
In case 9, the rise of Germany in the mid-nineteenth century, the 
“war” result suggests France and Germany fell into Thucydides’s Trap. 
Yet, the Franco-Prussian War assisted in the attainment of Bismarck’s 
main strategic objective of unifying the German states around a strong 
Prussia. Is it possible that war could be a rational choice in pursuit of 
national objectives? The answer, according to the analysis in Destined 
for War, is no. Of the “Twelve Clues for Peace” offered in chapter 9, 
several point out, given the unprecedented nature of nuclear weapons, 
war between modern great powers is “madness” and “no longer a 
10      Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., “ ‘Lessons’ of  the Past: The Use and Misuse of  History in 
American Foreign Policy. By Ernest R.  May,” Journal of  American History 61, no. 2 (September 1974): 
443–44; doi:10.2307/1903961, cited in Yuen Foong Khong, Analogies at War: Korea, Munich, Dien Bien 
Phu, and the Vietnam Decisions of  1965 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992), 8.
11      Allison, Destined for War, 42; and Ernest R. May and Zhou Hong, “A Power Transition and Its 
Effects,” in Power and Restraint: A Shared Vision for the U.S.-China Relationship, ed. Richard Rosecrance 
and Gu Guoliang (New York: Public Affairs, 2009), 13, cited in Allison, Destined for War, 197.
12      Allison, Destined for War, 42.
13      Allison, Destined for War, 202–203.
14      Ibid., 203.
15      Ibid.
116        Parameters 47(2) Summer 2017
justifiable option.”16 Without doubt, this is an exceedingly sensible 
position. Yet, must we then discount historical analogies drawn from 
events in the prenuclear age?
To resolve the conundrums of the Thucydides’s Trap metaphor 
posed in the preceding two paragraphs, a couple of suggestions are 
offered. First, using a variety of different dependent variables to review 
the historical cases of a rising power challenging a ruling power could 
yield important knowledge. By identifying a nation’s strategic priority 
as the dependent variable, for example, insight could be collected into 
whether either power achieved its objectives. A possible observation 
would be that in x of y cases the rising power achieved its objectives, 
or alternatively, the ruling power achieved its objectives. How they did 
so would be the subject for further inquiry. Several variations on this 
approach might be useful.
A second approach might be to disaggregate the data and conduct 
detailed analyses of each case compared to the present using the 
structured methodology articulated by Richard Neustadt and Ernest 
May in their book, Thinking in Time: The Uses of History for Decision Makers 
and cited favorably in Destined for War.17By shifting the focus from the 
aggregate to the specific; identifying known, unknown, and presumed 
facts; and detailing both similarities and differences between the cases, 
the historical record would reveal a more comprehensive and nuanced 
picture that could provide important insights. Indeed, Allison previously 
used this approach to good effect, and it would complement the more 
general description of the cases included in Destined for War.18
Yaacov Vertzberger reflected “history does not contain an inherent 
truth which necessarily reveals itself to the scholar or practitioner. It 
maintains many faces when studied with great care and through the 
application of scientific methodology.”19 Seen in that light, Destined 
for War presents not inherent truth, but one face, an important face, 
revealing a dangerous historical dynamic reflected more prominently in 
description rather than prescription.
16      Ibid., 206–209.
17      Richard E. Neustadt and Ernest R. May, Thinking in Time: The Uses of  History for Decision-
Makers (New York: Free Press, 1986), 232–46, cited in Allison, Destined for War, n. 5, 337.
18      Graham Allison, “Just How Likely Is Another War? Assessing the Similarities and Differences 
between 1914 and 2014,” Atlantic, July 30, 2014. 
19      Yaacov Y. I. Vertzberger, “Foreign Policy Decisionmakers as Practical-Intuitive Historians: 
Applied History and Its Shortcomings,” International Studies Quarterly 30, no. 2 (June 1986), 244.


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