Be Ready to Fight
Proceedings Magazine - July 2018
By Captain Kevin Eyer, U.S. Navy
(Retired)
In May 2017, Graham Allison wrote Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides’s Trap (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt). This book fleshed out ideas that Professor Allison had first articulated in his 24 September 2015 Atlantic article, “The Thucydides Trap: Are the U.S. and China Headed for War?†The gist of Professor Allison’s work is this: Thucydides, in his History of the Peloponnesian War , describes the dangerous situation that results when a rising power challenges the established power—as Athens challenged Sparta in ancient Greece or as Germany did Britain a century ago. Professor Allison concluded: “In 12 of 16 cases over the past 500 years, the result was war. When the parties avoided war, it required huge, painful adjustments in attitudes and actions on the part not just of the challenger but also the challenged.â€
https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/2018-07/be-ready-fight
