A historical analogy from Ancient Greece has become the go-to maxim for understanding the rivalry between the US and China. Asia’s classical thinkers may offer a better alternative. When China’s ...

U.S. Power, Not International Law, Determines Whether the Strait of Hormuz Is Open Western analysts and leaders who accept the PRC’s propaganda misunderstand reality. For some time, it has been ...

At the high-stakes summit with President Donald Trump last month in Beijing, President Xi Jinping reached for an esoteric phrase to frame the state of China-U.S. relations—the “Thucydides Trap.” “Can ...

U.S. President Donald Trump participates in a welcome ceremony with President Xi Jinping of the People’s Republic of China at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, China, May 14, 2026. Credit: ...

The Thucydides Trap assumes nations have no control over their actions, and has been refuted by world history. Yet fear of it in popular imagination can have real geopolitical impact. Back in 2018, I ...

His title derives from two passages in the first book of the ancient Greek historian Thucydides (460-400/395? B.C.), author of "The Peloponnesian War." Thucydides, on these two occasions, felt that ...

During Donald Trump’s embarrassing trip to China, China’s Secretary General Xi Jinping made a speech, in which he said, “We must not be caught in the Thucydides Trap”. It’s notable in that it places ...

The end of the Cold War was supposed to deliver a long peace. For a while, that was working, until it wasn’t. We might now be entering another period when the breakdown of a world order leads to war.

Tim Rood and Phil Coughlin on Xi Jinping’s reference to the Thucydides trap in a meeting with Donald Trump In explaining Xi Jinping’s allusion to the Thucydides trap, Kate Lamb refers to Thucydides’ ...

"The world has come to a new crossroads. Can China and the United States transcend the so-called 'Thucydides Trap' and forge a new paradigm for major-power relations?" Thucydides has been surprisingly ...

When Xi Jinping greeted Donald Trump at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, he opened with a question that sounded almost philosophical: can China and the United States “transcend the so-called ...