Destined For War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides's Trap?—A Critical Examination of Historical Patterns Leading to War Between Great Powers

China and the United States are heading toward a war neither wants. The reason is Thucydides’s Trap: when a rising power threatens to displace a ruling one in the field of international relations, violence is the likeliest result. Over the past five hundred years, these conditions have occurred sixteen times; war broke out in twelve.

At the time of publication, an unstoppable China approached an immovable America, and both Xi Jinping and Donald Trump promised to make their countries “great again,” the seventeenth case was looking grim―it still is. A trade conflict, cyberattack, Korean crisis, or accident at sea could easily spark a major war.

In Destined for War, eminent Harvard scholar Graham Allison masterfully blends world history and current events to explain the timeless machinery of Thucydides’s Trap―and to explore the painful steps that might prevent disaster today.

SHORT-LISTED FOR THE 2018 LIONEL GELBER PRIZE
NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY: FINANCIAL TIMES * THE TIMES (LONDON)* AMAZON

“Allison is one of the keenest observers of international affairs around.” ― President Joe Biden

“[A] must-read book in both Washington and Beijing.” ― Boston Globe