If one needed modern-day evidence of the conflict between ruling and rising powers, they could have found it in January's worldwide threat report, delivered to the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence by the Director of National Intelligence. Dan Coats and the leaders of the IC made clear that China is - hands down - the largest national security threat to the United States.
The Cipher Brief talked with Allison, who returned from China a few months ago, where he had meetings with Chinese officials about the current state of affairs, the U.S.-China trajectory and whether the two countries are any closer to the destined war Allison referred to in his book. It might not make you feel better to hear that Allison says the U.S. and China are right on script.
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Allison: I was in China for 10 days in December and have been back and forth in conversations with people both in Beijing and in Washington since. My short summary is that if Thucydides were watching, he would say both the rising power and the ruling power are right on script, seemingly determined to show which could better embody the traits of the rising and the ruling partners and heading towards what he would suggest, may be the grandest collision of all times.
The Cipher Brief: You mentioned in your book that there may be escape routes that could help avoid this collision. Two years later, have you seen any potential escape routes?
Allison: The search that I've been on since I sent the book to the publishers is for what should have been the last part of the book. In the final chapter, I confess that I don't know, and I've been searching for paths to escape Thucydides Trap ever since. Let's first just take a second to make sure we understand what the problem is.
Basically, China is a rising power. Anybody who doesn't get that is blind. The U.S. is a ruling power. Anybody who doesn't get that is suffering some form of delusion. There's a rivalry: being a rising and ruling power. That dynamic, Thucydides wrote about in classical Greece 2,500 years ago, and in my book, I look at the last 500 years of history. We find 16 times in which a rising power threatens to displace a major ruling power. And 12 of those cases in war, and four of them in no war.
The message of the book is not that war between a rising China and ruling U.S. is inevitable. I believe it is not inevitable. But it is that business as usual, diplomacy as usual, statecraft as usual, is likely to produce history as usual. The reason why the Thucydidean dynamic is the best way to clarify what's actually happening in this relationship now, is that Thucydides offers quite a sophisticated analysis of this dynamic. Which the dynamic has first the layer of reality. China really is rising, encroaching on what had been traditional American prerogatives and positions. The U.S. really is feeling pressured by China.
Take for example Huawei today. Huawei is the largest supplier of telecommunications equipment in the world. Well, excuse me, that's our domain. We're supposed to own that. But Huawei has risen into that space, and that's uncomfortable for the U.S. That’s the first reality.
Secondly, there are perceptions and misperceptions, especially misperceptions on both sides, because if I know China's a rising power threatening to displace the U.S., everything they do and everything I see, looks like that. So, you get a confirmation bias throughout.
Graham Allison, Founding Dean, Harvard Kennedy School
"What I think we're seeing today, is that in every dimension, the ruling power will see in the rising power's activity, evidence that it's trying to take our place. And we won't like that."
From the Chinese perspective, they will see in Americans, complaining about intellectual theft by Huawei or their CFO signing a piece of paper that was not correct about whatever transfers they may have made to Iran or whatever, they will see that as attempt to hold down their technological champion in this space. And there'll be a little bit of truth in some of these things, and there'll be a lot of misperceptions.
Finally, there's a layer of politics, in which within each country, as within Sparta and Athens, if anybody seems to be slightly sympathetic to the rival, they will look soft, and so there'd be a competition to be tougher than thou. You can see this in the Washington scene today, where Democrats who had never expressed any concern about the trade problem with China are warning that Trump may reach an agreement with China that's too soft. Go figure.
The Cipher Brief: Let's talk about your trip to China. How are your Chinese colleagues seeing this? What's the perspective from there?
Allison: Obviously, China's a big country with a lot of different people and a lot of different views. I had the good fortune to talk to many of the people at the top of Chinese government and listen to them especially. I think certainly for the government people, and for the well-informed people in the think tanks and university surroundings, first they wake up to the fact that the Americans have awakened to see China as what the Trump administration's official documents now call a strategic rival, or adversary, or strategic adversary, or even enemy.
There has been a big sea change in Washington over the last two years. If you look at the consensus and conventional wisdom about Washington, the Chinese have now noticed that and expressed some degree of alarm. They're trying to understand how deep that is. Secondly, they read with care Vice President Mike Pence's speech at The Hudson Institute, in which he laid out, in effect, what he says is the Trump administration’s strategy for some version of Cold War 2.0, in which the U.S. will now be fighting back on all fronts, except with bombs and bullets. Pence argued that this was a cold war that China had been waging against the U.S. for the last couple of decades, but Americans simply hadn't noticed.
Third, they like the metaphor of ‘peaceful rise’ in which, I say to them candidly, I think what you mean by that is you rise, and the U.S. peacefully adapts and accommodates to whatever that means. They don't agree with that definition of peaceful rise, but if you look at their faces, they understand.
Graham Allison, Founding Dean, Harvard Kennedy School
"I think as one of the people who reports directly to Xi, whom I talk to regularly when I go there, said to me, "Look Graham, there's no debate in Beijing anymore about this Thucydides and rivalry analysis of the relationship. That's over. We've got it. The only question is how to escape Thucydides trap."
I think they're seriously interested in whether there are some avenues of escape. In my search so far, I haven't found any one of the options for escape that I'm now so comfortable with that I would say, "That's it." But I have identified nine, what I call potential or possible, avenues of escape. The one that I am currently most enamored with is the concept that of a strategic rivalry, which I had never heard of before
It’s rivalrous on one hand and partnering on the other. Since I'm not a great student of Chinese history, I’ve been doing a deep dive into Chinese history to studying this particular idea.
It is similar to a concept I wrote about, which President John F. Kennedy suggested after the Cuban Missile Crisis, when he called for "a world safe for diversity," by which he meant the existence of both an American democracy and an evil Soviet Union. He felt that he had just gone through the experience of having a one in three chance of killing several hundred million people in a nuclear war. He had adapted his ambitions on not giving up his convictions as a dedicated cold warrior, not believing that the Soviet Union was an evil empire, but nonetheless, concluding that he had to live with it for now, and compete with it in other arenas. For example, showing which society could better deliver what citizens want.
That's again an idea, which, if you combine that with the idea of a strategic rivalry, or if you look in the world of business, where often times, two firms, let's take Apple and Samsung, will be ruthless competitors in selling smart phones. Samsung is now the number one producer of smart phones. They've overtaken Apple in that space. Samsung is also the biggest supplier to Apple for its phones. How can you both be a partner and a ruthless competitor?
Diplomacy, that sounds like a contradiction, but in the real world, that's called life. Maybe from life, and from these historical examples, we could give some content to a strategic concept like strategic rivalry or a world safe for diversity, that would be the centerpiece of a new form of great power relations. That's where I am right now.
Whenever I give a talk and ask for imaginative and creative ideas about escaping Thucydides Trap, I do it because I don't think that within the conventional wisdom of the national security establishment or folks whose minds were pretty much shaped by the Cold War, like me, that we're likely to be as inventive, or as imaginative, as some people looking beyond that space. Younger people could make a significant contribution, or creative people, and then as I say, I'm searching the historical record, and the record of activity in other arenas, like, for example, businesses, for clues.
If any of your listeners have great clues, I would say this is an opportunity. There's a white board there. Write on it.
The Cipher Brief: You've talked us through a fascinating concept with strategic rivalry. I think if I've listened to you correctly and really digested what you said about how president Kennedy thought through this when it came to Russia and the Cuban Missile Crisis, there was a choice there, which is do we escalate, or do we live with the pain to a certain level?
Many would say the U.S. is now at that point with China. Does the U.S. escalate, or if not now, what is that trigger point when the pain becomes too much for the U.S. to bare? In other words, when the economic impact of intellectual property theft, for example, really begins to show itself to the average working American, is that the pain that becomes too much for the U.S. not to escalate? In other words, how do you keep a strategic rivalry a rivalry, and not let it become something worse, like a war?
Allison: If I knew the answer, I wouldn't be shy about saying it. That's absolutely the right question. In the Thucydidean story, and in the book, Destined for War, when I look at the 16 cases, most of those cases ended in war. It's not because either the rising power or the ruling power had reached this pain point in which they said, "Too much is too much. It's time for me to have a war."
That's not the case. What happens is instead, I'm getting more pain and more pain and more pain. I'm getting angrier and angrier and angrier and thinking this is too much. I just can't keep up with this, too much. In this dynamic, I'm vulnerable to some third-party action, which is totally unrelated to the competition between you and me, or even an accident.
The World War I case that I have in the book I think is the most instructive, where something as bizarre as the assassination of a second-level official, who didn't matter to any one of the major competitors, the Arch Duke becomes the spark that triggers a spiral of reactions that by the end of five weeks, has pulled Britain and Germany into a war that seemed inconceivable to either of them two months earlier. The important point if that in this dynamic, both parties are vulnerable to third party actions or accidents, that could drag them down a spiral to a place that neither of them want to go.
That's actually what happened in Thucydides story as well, between Athens and Sparta. That's the danger in trying to think about the U.S. and China. Something like what’s happening now with North Korea is a great candidate for such a third-party provocateur. Who could invent Kim Jong Un?
The Cipher Brief: I'm not feeling much better during this conversation so far. A lot smarter, but not much better about the future of this relationship. You mentioned, Professor, that there were nine potential avenues of escape. We talked about the one that was your favorite. What are some of the other potential avenues that could develop into a viable means to escape the path to conflict?
Allison: Well, if we look at the past, one of the cases of no war was the rise of the U.S. to rival and eventually surpass Britain, which occurred at the end of the 19th, beginning of the 20th, century. I have a good chapter in the book on what if China were just like us, but the us in this case is us at the beginning of the 20th century with Teddy Roosevelt. It's a delicious chapter, I think, because Teddy Roosevelt's one of my heroes, but America's behavior was outrageous, with respect to Britain. If China would behave like that today, I'm sure we would end up in a war.
What Britain did, facing a rising U.S. in the western hemisphere, and a rising Germany simultaneously, much closer to home, focused on Germany, and accommodated the US. Basically, what the Chinese would like is that option. They say, "Look, you have been the predominant power in Asia since World War II. We got that. You even provided stability for the region, which has enabled all of the Asian miracles. We appreciate that. That was then, this is now. We've risen. It's time for the tide to recede, and with it, you."
There's no reason why from a Chinese perspective, Americans' navy should be the arbiter of events in the South China Sea. As I say in the book, Chinese, oh, this is a PLA Navy guy, he said to me, "Look at your maps," he said. "China Sees China Seas. What's the name of this body of water, it's called the South China Sea. This other one—it's called East China Sea. That's your map. Why are they called the China Seas? That's our sea."
That's to us like you think of the Caribbean, or like Teddy Roosevelt did. That would be one option. Now that's not a favorite option for Americans.
Another option is a variant of the Cold War. The Cold War is another one of my four of the 16 cases that was no war. It was cold war, but it wasn't bombs and bullets. By war, I mean in the book, thousands of people killing each other, thousands of uniformed officials killing each other. In the Cold War, we ended up figuring out ways that compete on every dimension except bombs and bullets, and ultimately to constrain that competition. This is slightly like the rivalrous partners, but slightly different.
Graham Allison, Founding Dead, Harvard Kennedy School
"In the Cold War case, we remained determined on burying the evil empire, which we ultimately did. I worked for the Reagan Administration with enthusiasm for burying what I believed was, and I still believe was, an evil empire. To that end, we were prepared to have the competition reach the point nearly of war, as we did in the Cuban Missile Crisis, but eventually developed some constraints. That's another idea that could be explored."
There's bunch of others on the list. So, some of the people have been asking me, write them down and put them out for debate just because I've not been able to come to a comfortable conclusion with respect to any of them. So, I'll probably try to do that in the next couple of months.
The Cipher Brief: If you were to write a second book, what would the first chapter be today?
Allison: A good question. I would like to make sure I have a comfortable contribution to make before slogging through the writing of another book. I, fortunately, have the opportunity to offer my views, both in person and in memos but I think the place where Destined for War leaves off is the final chapter that begins with the question of how to escape Thucydides Trap? So I think if I were to write a book now, it would be about avoiding a U.S.-China war in which, one would explore first, what we're currently doing and I believe that's the Trump administration's attempt to create a version of a Cold War strategy or Cold War 2.0 but without the benefit of any of the core strategic thinking that went into the original Cold War and without appreciating the extreme differences between where the U.S. and China are in the world of 2018 and where the U.S. and the Soviet Union were in 1950, for example. In 1950, the U.S. had about half of the world's GDP. Half. And the Soviet Union was less than 10%. Today, the U.S. has about 14% of the world's GDP and China has about 15%. So, by purchasing power parity metrics, China today is a larger economy than the U.S. - China is also a backbone of the global economy. So, it was quite possible to talk about isolating the Soviet Union from international commerce. It's impossible to imagine isolating China from the global economy. Every one of our Asian partners has China as its major trading partner and every one of them, even our closest ally, Australia, has said to the US, "Don't make us choose between our economic relationship with China which is essential for our prosperity, and our security relationship with you which is important or essential for our security."
The fact is that there is no silver bullet path that you pick, and everything turns out rosy. I think this is going to be a very long, prolonged struggle. There is no question that China, as a government, has a conception of governance and of individual human rights and of life that is antithetical to our convictions about individuals having human rights and about a democratic political system and about a market economy in which the party does not give direction to everything. Is the U.S. going to be comfortable seeing that kind of governance and society succeed?
Western philosophical tenets have it that only a society based on individual liberties can ultimately flourish and prosper. We're seeing a test to that in China today, which has a different conception of the way things should be structured. So, could we have a rivalry back to this partnership in which we're partners on issues in which we share a vital interest, like avoiding a nuclear war, of which, we would each be the first victims. Or like climate, in which, if we each just keep doing what we're doing, we'll make an ecosphere that none of us can live in.
We have a lot of common and shared interests that we might focus on, so we're partners in one space, and rivals in another, to try to show that we can make a democracy and market economy work in ways that citizens want, and China is trying to see whether it can make its party-led authoritarian system work. I think I'd be prepared to take that risk because I remain persuaded by the conviction about inside every breast, is a heart yearning to be free. But I understand that life is complicated, and that technology keeps advancing and many things that I never thought I could imagine, have now happened, so is it conceivable that human beings are going to come to prefer some different form of governance than the ones that we think are appropriate, or is it conceivable after 270 years or whatever, we're going to have demonstrated that we can't keep a democracy that works? All of those are open questions.
The Cipher Brief: One final question: I'm sure that in your broader look at issues with China, you've had thoughts about how Chinese actions are impacting the private sector, particularly U.S. companies that are doing business in China. Do you have advice for those companies about how they should think about those relationships moving forward?
Allison: Well, there's another huge question. Expect things to get worse before they get worse. I think sadly, that Huawei looks like a canary in the coal mine. That should remind you that the tariff conflict is now bleeding into a general tech competition. My bet would be that they would end up finding a way to postpone a further increase in tariffs that Trump has said will happen on March 2nd if they don't reach some form of agreement. I think they'll reach an agreement to extend it further, but I think this struggle will go on right through the Trump administration and beyond.
Read also The Coming Chinese Storm by the CIA's former Deputy Director for Counterintelligence, Mark Kelton and The Urgency of Resetting Relations with China by Ambassador Joseph DeTrani.
This interview has been slightly edited for length and clarity.
