The farther backward you can look, the farther forward you can see
- Winston Churchill –
Historian Graham Allison, director of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University School of Education, issued his warnings about the “Thucydides trap”, which summarizes as follows: “When a rapidly rising power becomes a rival for the dominant power, problems arise.
In eleven of the fifteen cases in which this happened in the last 500 years the result was war”.
For the Greek historian Thucydides (460–395 BC), this structural imbalance was the primary cause of the war between Athens and Sparta in ancient Greece.
To forget about the past is an unforgivable mistake, not to consider that there is a red line beyond which one is “emotionally authorized” to act is a crazy and illogical behavior.
Under current conditions of contrast between the US and China, the only real alternative is negotiation, to prevent the ongoing economic conflict from turning into military.
But both nations seem to forget about the past and the risks related to the Thucydides trap and, provocation after provocation, the contenders are fast approaching the red line; in these conditions an ordinary event of criticality, not an extraordinary or unexpected event, can trigger a conflict, even on a large scale.
Western civilization is culturally distant from the Chinese one and misunderstandings can easily arise about the key aspects that separate Confucian societies from Western societies in terms of identity, freedom, democracy, society, individualism and future design.
This can only fuel the diffidence and sharpen the contrasts making it unacceptable to be overwhelmed by an opponent with values are totally different from their own.
Under these conditions, a future conflict seems inevitable unless one of the two contenders withdraws, which to date does not seem plausible.
Mediation for an agreement would presuppose a common identity of views, very difficult to find because the interlocutors are separated by profound cultural differences, and therefore the spaces to avoid a conflict are further reduced.
If no one gives in, Thucydides will be right again and it would be enough to look at the past to understand it now, remembering that hope is not a strategy.
