Graham Allison, at the time was writing a book, Destined for War, which considered whether what he called the Thucydides Trap – a tendency for war to become inevitable when an emerging power threatens the hegemony of an existing great power, as Athens threatened the power of Sparta 2,400 years ago – had any relevance to the current US response to the rise of China.
The core thing to understand from history, he explained, is that power shifts create problems around three “Ps”: perception, psychology and (domestic) politics. Most notably, a ruling power that starts to feel insecure about a rival tends to overreact and miscalculate.
FT
Majicman Notes 
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