After the publication of Graham Allison’s book about the upcoming US war with China, the concept of the “Thucydides trap” was often used to describe the mechanism of competitive-decision tension between the current hegemon and its rising competitor. 2,400 years ago, the Greek historian Thucydides, the author of the famous History of the Peloponnesian War, expressed a view that resonates to this day in thinking about strategy. Thucydides argued that the real cause and essence of the Peloponnesian war was the rapid increase in the power of Athens and the fear that this aroused in Sparta, which had dominated in Greece thus far. This mechanism made the Peloponnesian war inevitable.
