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War with China is much more likely than anyone thinks When Athens went to war with Sparta some 2,500 years ago, the Greek historian Thucydides identified one simple cause: a rising power threatened to displace a ruling one. As the eminent Harvard scholar Graham Allison explains, in the past 500 years, great powers have found themselves in "Thucydides's Trap" sixteen times. In twelve of the sixteen - from war between the French and the Habsburgs in the sixteenth century to the two world wars of the twentieth - the results have been catastrophic. Today, the same structural forces propel China and the United States toward a cataclysm of unseen proportions, even as both sides insist that such a war could never occur. In Destined for War, Allison compares the U.
About the Author
Graham Allison is Director of Harvard Kennedy School's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs and the bestselling author of Destined for War: America, China, and Thucydides's Trap (2017) ; Lee Kuan Yew: The Grand Master's Insights on China, the United States, and the World (2013) ; Nuclear Terrorism: The Ultimate Preventable Catastrophe (2004) ; and Essence of Decision: Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis (1971, 1999) . Founding dean of the Harvard Kennedy School, Dr. Allison has served as Assistant Secretary of Defense and advised the secretaries of defense under every president from Reagan to Obama. He has twice been awarded the Department of Defense's highest civilian award, the Distinguished Public Service Medal, and serves on the Advisory boards of the Secretary of State and Secretary of Defense.
