Can Arrogance Save the World from the Thucydides Trap?

Often unecesary wars have been explained as the folly of ideologues, but maybe a certain ideological arrogance is the key to peace.

By Lars Harhoff Andersen

In an influential 2012 article for the Financial Times, American Political scientist Graham T. Allison coined the term “Thucydides Trap”, referring to the tendency of rising powers to come into conflict with existing great powers.  Allison’s theory takes its name and inspiration from Thucydides’ explanation of the causes of the Peloponnesian war between Sparta and Athens around 400 BC. Thucydides argued that as Athens began to grow as a naval and economic power, it wanted the political order to reflect this growing power. At the same time, the previous great power – Sparta – saw that if they did not act, future dominance by Athens was inevitable. Thus, Sparta attacked and a decades long war broke out, that, though it was won by Sparta, ultimately led to both city-states being dominated by Macedon.

Allison argues that many wars between great powers are triggered by this mechanism. As nations become more powerful, they demand a larger role in the international system. At the same time, the veining power will have an incentive to strike against its ascending competitor before it comes to dominate them, as Sparta did in ancient Greece. Applying the theory to the current relationship between China and America, Allison warned that war between the countries was much more likely than commonly understood. While America was still recovering from the financial crisis, China was going full steam ahead with double-digit growth rates and was looking to become economically dominant relative to the US in a matter of a decade or two. Looking back to similar instances of growing powers in the past, the rise of new powers led to war in twelve out of sixteen cases.

Though Allison warns that the risk of war is grave under these dynamics, he does not find war to be inevitable. By looking at some of the cases where rivalry for power did not lead to war, Allison argues that certain factors reduce this risk.

The most famous instance where the rise of a power did not lead to (large scale) war is between the USA and the USSR. Allison points to the fear of nuclear war, credible deterrence (from both sides) and the establishment of “rules of the status quo”, which could determine what was an undue provocation.

At the center of the theory of the Thucydides trap is a simple game theoretical model. In each period, the rising and the established power need to decide whether to go to war. For each nation, the leaders will judge if their power – relative to their opponent – is large enough to win a conflict or if they need to wait for an opportunity in the future. If their relative power will (significantly) larger in the future it makes sense to wait, if the present period is their best chance, it makes sense to commence hostilities. Assuming that one power is rising relative to the other, it will be rational for the established power to attack as soon as possible, leading to the Thucydides trap.

However, as is often the case, the most interesting thing about the model is not the conclusion, but rather the assumptions, hidden and otherwise, that lead to the conclusion. If we can identify which assumptions are critical to the conclusion, we can effectively identify under what circumstance nations fall into the trap and under what circumstances they don’t. And as we shall see, the ideologies of nations and leaders can play an important role in tilting and breaking the calculus of the Thucydides trap, explaining why some changes in power did not lead to war, and how war might be avoided in the future.

Peace Through Arrogance

Implicit in the model behind the Thucydides trap is the idea that the stronger you are now, the likelier it is that you would want to start a conflict, but being stronger in the future will make you less likely to start a conflict. The most famous example of this phenomenon is likely the advice by Deng Xiaoping that China should “Hide its strength and bide its time”. China should do whatever it took to grow but hide its strength to prevent scaring the US (or USSR) into conflict with them while they were still weak. Comparing the relative power of China in the eighties and today clearly shows that the strategy was successful.

Deng Xiaoping’s advice for China to hide its strength points us to an important fact: The decision of a ruling power to go to war with a rising one is not ultimately decided by the development of relative power, but rather by how leaders assume relative power will develop. It is not the actual strength of nations that govern the decision, but rather the perceived strength of nations and their adversaries that will decide the matter.

This has the consequence that countries that overestimate how economically powerful they will be in the future – what we might call progressive arrogance – are less likely to initiate war, while those who overestimate their current or general capabilities – what we might call essential arrogance - are more likely to initiate war. Thus, while the simple model implies that one power will always try to postpone conflict, once we factor in ideology in the form of essential and progressive arrogance the situation changes. Two powers that both believe their system of government to be superior will both want to postpone conflict in order to make their own victory more likely, while powers with high levels of essential arrogance will tend to think that a war is easily winnable and thus try to initiate it quickly. Importantly, this simple thought experiment actually fits quite well with key historical struggles.

Of the sixteen challenges to power identified by Allison, the most interesting is arguably the Cold War, which is famous for being a struggle between two relatively well-defined ideologies. While wars where ideology was a strong factor - such as the 30-years War, the French revolutionary wars, and World War II - all were exceptionally bloody, the Cold War never turned hot. While the deterrent power of nuclear Armageddon clearly played a role in this, the Cold War was also characterized by the two opponents having very high levels of progressive arrogance. A key part of the Marxist ideology on which the USSR was built was that capitalism would eventually collapse under its own weight. Already during the rule of Stalin, and even more clearly as Khrushchev took over, the USSR wanted to beat the Western world, not by immediate conquest, but by outcompeting it ideologically and economically. No need to rush a world revolution and risk a nuclear war if you are going to win eventually anyway.

Conversely, although there were a surprising amount of voices that were skeptical of the ability of the Western world to compete with the Soviets – even among individuals opposed to their system – there was also in the West a strong belief among decision-makers that the capitalist system would prove to be superior in the long run. Here John F. Kennedy:

“My feeling is that we are more durable in the long run. These dictatorships enjoy many short range advantages that we saw in the Thirties. But in the long run, I think our system suits the qualities, and aspirations of people, the desire to be their own masters – I think our own system suits better. Our job is to maintain our strength until our great qualities can be brought more effectively to bear”

Effectively, what turned out to be systematic arrogance in the case of the USSR meant that both the US and the USSR thought themselves to be the rising power and that waiting was thus in their interest. At the same time, both sides were very aware (at least at the political level) of the risk associated with direct war. The Cold War was thus characterized by high levels of progressive arrogance and low levels of essential arrogance, and war was avoided.

The Essential Arrogance of Aggression

When giving examples of ideological and geopolitical hubris, the most common example is the breakout of the First World War and the popular belief on both sides that the war would be “over by Christmas”. Given that both sides logically couldn’t be sure of victory at the same time, it is arguably one of the better examples of what I call essential arrogance. However, a much more interesting example is the motivations of Nazi Germany at the beginning of World War II. While Nazi Germany initially had a series of spectacular victories against the Allies, once both the US and the USSR were involved in the war, it was basically a matter of time before Germany (and Japan) would be defeated. The productive capabilities of the United States (especially in combination with the UK and USSR) were so enormous that winning a protracted war of attrition was hopeless. Given this, why did Hitler attempt the war?

In his brilliant book “The Wages of Destruction”, Adam Tooze argues that it was not because Hitler was unaware of the productive potential of the United States that he began the war, but because he understood it. As early as the 1920s, Hitler predicted that the future American economic capabilities would be so powerful that it would be impossible for European powers to compete with them, a prediction that turned out to be completely correct. Hitler saw the rise of America as inevitable unless he could quickly win a war and establish the infamous “lebensraum” (living space), in which the German people could proliferate. Thus, while it is mostly true when people say that the war against France and England was ultimately a distraction from Hitler’s goals of conquering Eastern Europe, the Eastern Front was ultimately about matching the economic and industrial power of the United States.¹

Ideological madness and arrogance did play a role in Hitler’s motivation for World War II, but it was the madness of wanting to sink the world into war to avoid American consumerism and the fear of a Jewish conspiracy, not the inaccurate assessment of the ratio of power between Germany and the United States. Moreover, though the progressive arrogance of Hitler might be less than commonly though, the “essential arrogance” was correspondingly large. Although the degree to which Nazi Germany believed their supposed racial supercity would help them has likely been exaggerated, and Hitler relied more on sober advice from the army staff, the war on the eastern front is hard to understand without factoring in a large amount of Hubris on the side of the Nazis. Combining a strong and correct pessimism about future growth with an inflated sense of immediate military strength, we get the mix of essential arrogance and lack of progressive arrogance that we should expect to lead to war.

Is China the Right Kind of Arrogant?

While China largely stuck to its maxim of hiding its strength and biding its time in the past, it has become increasingly aggressive in its rhetoric under Xi Jinping’s rule. The so-called wolf warrior diplomacy has led to a long period of Chinese diplomats more openly bullying China’s neighbors and threatening violence and invasion. Partly, this is because China has grown to such an extent that it might soon be able to succeed in a possible war with the Western alliance. The idea of a Thucydides trap is not that the rising power will wait forever but that it will attempt to attack when it has grown sufficiently powerful relative to the rising power.

However, something else also seems to be going on. Earlier, eventual economic dominance by China was seen as inevitable, but things are now looking more complicated. While the Chinese economy very recently looked as if it was about to overtake the US very soon, it is now not projected to happen in the near future or perhaps ever. While Chinese growth rates have fallen, those in America have grown. While the Chinese population is aging and soon shrinking due to abysmal fertility rates, birth rates in America remain reasonable. While very few people want to migrate to China, so many people want to become Americans that it risks toppling the current president. China might not be a rising power, but a power on the peak of its power.

At the same time, China does not seem to have much progressive arrogance. While the Soviets believed that the soviet system would eventually come to dominate in virtue of its superiority, the Chinese government seems to be much more nihilistic. When a power is peaking and has no illusions about future greatness, there is little incentive to postpone a war that will only prove more difficult in the future.

To make matters worse, the level of essential arrogance in China seems to be very high. Propaganda about military greatness and pride seems to be pushing China toward unprecedented levels of jingoism and confrontation with most of its neighbors. While we might hope that America and China will take the relatively peaceful solution of a second cold war, the combination of aggressive arrogance and a nihilistic prospect of stagnation is pushing us towards a higher risk of conflict.

The Progressive Peace

As the Berlin Wall fell, many saw the end of history and envisioned an end to large-scale conflicts. However, it seems that the disappearance of ideological alternatives to liberal democracy did not end conflict but simply meant that such conflicts became nakedly about power. While it has been argued that the universality of enlightenment values like human rights could be used as a justification for war and conquest others argue that conservative powers like Russia and China do not concern themselves with the internal politics of other countries, unless it directly interferes with their interest, which supposedly reduces conflict. However, both when we look at recent conflicts and when we look at historical data, this does not seem to hold. Looking at Allisons analysis of changes in relative powers between countries, none of the potential conflicts between “progressive powers” (liberalism and socialism) led to war, while all other potential conflicts (save one) did.²

A possible explanation is that while liberalism and socialism have been used to justify war and invasion, they are also ideologies that believe in the possibility of development and progress. Thus, although these ideologies might have an inborn tendency towards expansion, they might also see it as more likely that their utopian potential would help them in the long run and make conflict in the present less profitable. On the other hand, reactionary regimes, be they Putin’s Russia, Xi’s China, or Hitler’s Germany, are ultimately fatalistic about their ability to make a more vibrant society than their opponents in the long run.

While we can hope that failing authoritarians will see their relative decline as a sign that they need to reform, there is a darker possibility. Maybe they will want to settle the score before it is too late.

Lars Harhoff Andersen is an editor and writer at Unreasonable Doubt, where he writes about Culture, Politics, and Philosophy. Lars is a Ph.D. fellow at the Department of Economics at the University of Copenhagen where his research centers on economic history and the impact of culture on societal development. Lars also hosts the (Danish language) podcast Historien Fortsætter.

If you liked this article, you might also like our post on the value of ridicule in political discourse.

1. While the above argument is spread across Tooze’s book, the central argument is explained on page 13-15 of the preface.

2. This assumes that England and Holland in the 17^th century are not liberal.