Thucydides Traps and Predation Strategies

On May 13, Presidents Donald Trump and Xi Jinping spoke at a bilateral meeting inaugurating their second summit in Beijing and their sixth meeting altogether. In his welcoming remarks, Xi grandly declared the world had come to a "new crossroads."

While conjuring crossroads and paradigms underscored the potential upside of summitry between the world's two greatest powers, it was the invocation of the Thucydides Trap that captured everyone’s attention.

According to Graham Allison of Harvard University, the American scholar who originated the thesis, states ensnared in the Thucydides Trap go to war in three out of every four encounters. For vigilant American national security observers and decision-makers, such odds make preparing for a potential war with an ascendant PRC an imperative.

Critics assert the thesis is overly deterministic and discounts the complexity of prevailing circumstances from too small a set of case studies. The critique, while fair, sidesteps the core of the Thucydides Trap.

As Thucydides observed, "it was the rise of Athens and the fear that this instilled in Sparta that made war inevitable.” [Emphasis added]

Fear, the raw emotion that spawns doubt as to the credibility of one's own deterrent, that feeds doubt as to whether one possesses the agency to arrest a suspected decline.

Fear that spawns uncertainty in which leaders eventually convince themselves they have "no choice" but to resort to war.

The United States, however, has decided on a one-directional course of action -- to bolster its deterrent and to defy decline by achieving victory in a potential war, albeit a Pyrrhic victory in a conflict that would be cataclysmic for the entire world.

In this regard, American leaders and policymakers may not realize that the historical record actually reveals rising powers, like China, are cautious, risk-averse, and conserve their accumulating power, opting for war only when they are assured of victory.

This observation comes from a scholar at Harvard's crosstown peer, Boston University.

In his book, Rising Titans, Falling Giants: How Great Powers Exploit Power Shifts, Professor Joshua R. Itzkowitz Shifrinson explains why some rising states challenge and prey upon declining great powers, while others seek to support and cooperate with declining states.

According to Shifrinson, "rising titans" will practice a "predation strategy" to minimize the possibility of war with a "falling giant".

As such, a predation strategy entails a calculus by which the rising power assesses the declining power's strategic value and military efficacy.

If a rising power has no use for a declining power, it will choose predatory measures.

If a rising power can deploy a declining power against other threats, it will choose supportive measures.

Accordingly, if the rising power chooses predatory measures, it will calibrate such measures based on the declining power's military capabilities. If capable, then it will choose limited measures, such as an arms race or asymmetric demands. If incapable, then it could choose extreme measures, such as diplomatic coercion or war.

Conversely, if the rising power chooses to support a declining power with a capable military, it will bolster the latter with diplomatic support or economic aid. If the declining power possesses an incapable military, the rising power will strengthen it with an alliance or extensive military assistance.

The resulting matrix encompasses four end states -- relegation, weakening, bolstering, and strengthening -- of which war is only one possible outcome.

Shifrinson substantiates his thesis by recounting the extensive archival evidence behind history's most improbable Thucydidean outcome -- the peaceful conclusion of the forty-five-year-old Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union.

During the final decade of the Cold War, American leaders implemented a predatory strategy whereby corresponding measures were enacted according to their estimate of the Soviet military.

Between 1983 and 1989, the Reagan Administration undertook an arms race and supported anticommunist insurgencies across the Third World in a bid to weaken the Soviet position, whose strength was evident in its well-resourced and massive armed forces and its position in Eastern Europe.

Between 1989 and 1990, the fall of the Berlin Wall and a wave of revolutions ended the Soviet domination of Eastern Europe. Sensing the opportunity to reshape the continental balance of power, the succeeding Bush 41 Administration acted assiduously to achieve not only German reunification under the government in Bonn, but also its continued membership in the NATO alliance, an indisputable act of relegation.

However, the Administration readily recognized an intact Soviet Union was strategically critical to maintain unified control of its massive nuclear arsenal. Accordingly, decision-makers acted cautiously, choosing those measures that simultaneously bolstered reformers and did not antagonize regime hardliners.

The final lowering of the Soviet flag on Christmas Day 1991 ended a world-historical struggle without a shot.

In sum, the careful assessment of the Soviet Union's strategic value and its military capabilities allowed decision-makers to shift back and forth between relegation, weakening, bolstering, and strengthening. And even relegation was executed peacefully.

Historical figures, ideological goals, and economic linkages can explain the outcome but only in part.

And without import for today unlike predation theory.

Consider the missed opportunity after September 11.

Russia had significant strategic value in the global war on terrorism, and if America had chosen joint bilateral cooperation against Islamic extremism, it may have cemented Russia as a partner and pursued different goals in the Middle East.

Instead, America embraced unilateralism and democratization and adapted its military forces to state-building operations in inhospitable terrain. Russia eventually became an avid opponent of American unilateralism, refurbished its conventional forces, and moved aggressively against Estonia, Georgia, and Ukraine. In the present day, Russia is now aligned with China in a relationship with "no limits."

According to Shifrinson, China will be a cautious and constrained riser and the United States retains a strong hand because its world-class military is capable of power projection globally.

Astute American leaders and policymakers would apply the predation theory lens to PRC initiatives and be alert to observable opportunities, not theoretical threats.

The United States and China are dominant in hemispheres separated by enormous oceans. Each power's strategic value to the other can be manifested in a bipolar division of labor; security in one hemisphere benefits security in the other.

Indeed, the more proper caveat may be what could be termed the Thucydides Temptation.

As Thucydides also observed during the Peloponnesian War, "the strong do what they can, and the weak suffer what they must."

America First, Russian neo-Eurasianism, and China's Second Centenary Goal are all predicated on national strength and its unapologetic exercise on behalf of the national interest; the corollary consists of spheres of influence in which lesser and weaker powers yield or suffer.

Yet, as recently observed by Yaroslav Trofimov, the chief foreign-affairs correspondent at The Wall Street Journal, the world’s great powers, be they rising titans or falling giants, repeatedly overestimate their power.

More pointedly, Trofimov reported, "now it seems that the weak aren’t as weak as many had believed. The strong can’t really do what they want, either."

Having succumbed to the temptation of doing what they can, the strong are now ensnared in costly quagmires.

Russia cannot defeat Ukraine, and America cannot subdue Iran; military might has not been decisive as technological proliferation has given determined populations the means to frustrate and thwart aggression. China might learn the same in Taiwan.

To date, America’s policy of strategic ambiguity on Taiwan has successfully deterred China from moving against the island militarily.

Nevertheless, future Chinese leadership may fear the country’s dire demographic trends create a “now or never” moment.

And in that fear would be a war that a predation strategy would have avoided.

R. Jordan Prescott is a private contractor working in defense and national security since 2002. He has been published in The American Conservative, The National Interest, Responsible Statecraft, Small Wars Journal, Modern War Institute, 19fortyfive, RealClearWorld, and RealClearDefense.

image: In this photo released by Taiwan's Coast Guard, a trooper watches over a Chinese navy vessel operating near the islet of Pengjia, north of Taiwan, on May 23, 2024. (AP)