Graham Allison

INTERNATIONAL SECURITY EXPERT

Graham Allison is an expert in international security and defense policy, and a professor at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, of which he was the founding dean. His 2017 book Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides’ Trap? provides a penetrating, and worrisome, lens for understanding current US-China relations. Allison’s Thucydides’ Trap takes its name from the Greek historian who chronicled the 5th-century BC war between Athens and Sparta, explaining that “it was the rise of Athens and the fear that this instilled in Sparta that made war inevitable.” This pattern — a rising power threatening to displace a ruling one — has repeated sixteen times over the past five centuries; twelve ended in war. Can China and the United States escape the Trap?

Graham Allison

INTERNATIONAL SECURITY EXPERT

Graham Allison is an expert in international security and defense policy, and a professor at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, of which he was the founding dean. His 2017 book Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides’ Trap? provides a penetrating, and worrisome, lens for understanding current US-China relations. Allison’s Thucydides’ Trap takes its name from the Greek historian who chronicled the 5th-century BC war between Athens and Sparta, explaining that “it was the rise of Athens and the fear that this instilled in Sparta that made war inevitable.” This pattern — a rising power threatening to displace a ruling one — has repeated sixteen times over the past five centuries; twelve ended in war. Can China and the United States escape the Trap?

Graham Allison

Graham Allison
Graham Allison is an expert in international security and defense policy, and a professor at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, of which he was the founding dean. His 2017 book Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides’ Trap? provides a penetrating, and worrisome, lens for understanding current US-China relations. Allison’s Thucydides’ Trap takes its name from the Greek historian who chronicled the 5th-century BC war between Athens and Sparta, explaining that “it was the rise of Athens and the fear that this instilled in Sparta that made war inevitable.” This pattern — a rising power threatening to displace a ruling one — has repeated sixteen times over the past five centuries; twelve ended in war. Can China and the United States escape the Trap?