In the first 100 days of his second term, U.S. President Donald Trump has shown a willingness to lean on airpower when his ...

In 2014, the eminent political scientist Graham Allison wrote an influential book called “Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides’s Trap?” The subtitle referred to a famous ...

The so-called Thucydides Trap has become a staple of foreign policy commentary over the past decade or so, regularly invoked to frame the escalating rivalry between the United States and China. Coined ...

Much of this is lost when the phrase “Thucydides Trap” is elevated into a kind of quasi-law of international politics. It becomes shorthand for inevitability: power rises, fear responds ...