American politicians are almost unique in failing to learn from history--although M. Macron is giving our pols a run for the money (Rothchild's actually) by suppressing the Yellow Vests. The lesson I am sharing with you is not new. It's 2500 years old in fact and well documented too.

Thucydides Trap

Thucydides Trap: Definition, Theory & Historical Examples

The Thucydides Trap
History is littered with examples of things that seemed like good ideas at the time, but that turned out to be disastrous. While we've recognized these pitfalls for a long time, we now have an official term for at least one of them. In 2015, Harvard political scientist and professor Graham Allison identified a scenario he calls the Thucydides Trap. Basically, the Thucydides Trap says that as a rising power challenges the dominance of an established power, that dominant power is likely to respond with violence. It's a model for predicting when warfare is likely between two nations, but also a way to propose alternative solutions meant to prevent warfare. After all, the whole point of identifying a trap is to avoid it.

The Thucydides Trap is a political metaphor, so in order to understand it we need to look at its namesake. Thucydides was a 5th-century BCE Greek historian and politician who wrote the most famous account of the Peloponnesian War. Here's what he observed in the outbreak of the nearly 30-year conflict that rocked the Greek city-states.

Sparta was the hegemony, or dominant power, of the Aegean. Athens, however, was growing so quickly that Sparta got spooked. They worried that Athens would soon become a real threat to their power, so they attacked preemptively. And that's the trap. Athens' ambition and Sparta's fear of losing power drew the two into conflict, even when no one expected it. When Sparta attacked Athens, it forced the other Greek city-states to pick a side, and a massive Greek war ensued that lasted for decades. Thucydides would later write that the entire Peloponnesian War was due to ''the growth in power of Athens, and the alarm which this inspired in Sparta.''

But objectives are not limited to resources whether mineral, agricultural or even human. The value exceeds those "objective" entities and erodes into the broader reality of human emotionality. And there is the rub. People rationalize emotional impulses and drives making them seem, after the fact, reasonable instead of emotional. Can't source the next assertion but I've seen the following written: 90% of human decisions are primarily emotional.

The Real Thucydides’ Trap

Professor Graham Allison of the Harvard Kennedy School has popularized the phrase “Thucydides’ trap,” to explain the likelihood of conflict between a rising power and a currently dominant one. This is based on the famous quote from Thucydides: “It was the rise of Athens and the fear that this inspired in Sparta that made war inevitable.” This usage has even spread to Chinese President Xi Jinping who said “We all need to work together to avoid the Thucydides trap – destructive tensions between an emerging power and established powers … Our aim is to foster a new model of major country relations.” However, those like Graham Allison who talk about a Thucydides trap only capture half the meaning of the History of The Peloponnesian War. The true trap is countries going into, and continuing, war clouded by passions like fear, hubris and honor.

In Thucydides’ history, human emotion made conflict inevitable, and at several points where peace was possible, emotion propelled it forward. In the beginning, there is a set of speeches in Sparta debating the possibility of going to war with Athens. Archidamus, the Spartan king, tells the Spartan people not to underestimate the power of Athens and urged that Sparta “must not be hurried into deciding in a day’s brief space a question which concerns many lives and fortunes and many cities, and in which honor is deeply involved – but we must decide calmly.” However, Sthenelaidas, a Spartan ephor, advocated, “Vote, therefore, Spartans, for war, as the honor of Sparta demands.” The Spartans followed Sthenelaidas, which led to a war of honor and fear against the Athenians.

Tell me if anyone here at c99 believes "American exceptionalism" is nothing more than an excuse to plunder, to violate all treaties, build Empires. But more importantly such exceptionalism is neither new nor true. It is the mantra, the grand excuse for Empire.

What is the Thucydides’s Trap and how does it inform US-China relations in the 21st century?

Escaping Thucydides’s Trap
It shouldn't surprise anyone that Graham Allison is not the first who has studied Greek history and Thucydides’s Trap. Therefore it shouldn't surprise that Europe's greatest minds debated and wrote extensively on how to escape Thucydides’s Trap, like William Penn (of Pennsylvania), Tadeusz Kościuszko, Immanuel Kant, Victor Hugo, and Giuseppe Garibaldi. In the 20th century proponents were Albert Einstein, Sigmund Freud, Konrad Adenauer, Robert Schuman and Winston Churchill among many, many others (I just mention those, so you can feel comfortable that this question has finally been settled for good - 30 years ago)

How did we settle this question and why did it take us so long?

The main reason for adopting the solution is obvious: nuclear deterrence - every nuclear power has the power to annihilate humanity. So it's a no-brainer to adopt the mechanism which prevents war in the first place. This mechanism is the central founding idea for the European Union and it's called T-R-A-D-E.

The founding idea of the European Union is to so deeply link and intertwine nation economies that conflict becomes unthinkable. That war between France and Germany is as unthinkable as a war between Paris and Versailles or New York and Boston.

No. No. No. Trade is not the answer. In fact it is a very serious matter when the truly free flow of trade at equivalent exchange rates is balked by tariffs or other trade-defeating measures. I don't want to hear about "free trade", a mythical creature dwelling in the land of unicorns and rainbows.

Consider the basics here. The Russian-American Cold War is Over (except in the pinpoint heads of die-hard Neocons). The new game in town is ChinaChinaChina. The world's second largest economy but still rapidly grown despite recent slowdowns. China has adopted a military policy commensurate with its Five Year Plans and other national goals. China does not want to rule the world militarily--it wants to own it. At the very least hint is staking out its extended sovereignty (do you hear a whisper of exceptionalism here?) by local exertion of military and economic power in its own relatively local sphere of influence. Will One Belt One Road be the mechanism of that? The particulars do not matter. The Chinese are not going to let the shifty Americans set the rules of the game, either in commerce or arms, especially on what they consider their home turf.

History does indeed show the Thucydides Trap, sometime by nearly equal powers, as opposed to a relatively rapidly equilibrium.

Here's an article which indicates Chinese restraint, a virtue the neither Trump or the Dems can seem to manifest:

As Trade Talks Begin, US Infuriates Beijing With Latest Navy Operation In South China Sea

As a US delegation led by senior trade officials arrived in Beijing on Monday to begin the first round of in-person talks to resolve the burgeoning US-China trade war, the US has reportedly carried out its latest 'Freedom of Navigation' operation in the South China Sea - though at least this time there wasn't a near-collision with a Chinese ship.

Since President Trump's inauguration, the US has stepped up its 'Freeops' as the US Navy seeks to contain China's growing military ambitions in the Pacific. But since the trade war began, the US has demonstrated a keen sense of timing, contributing to China's decisions to cancel security conferences and reconsider coming to the table to talk on trade.

But this time, the controversial maneuver seemingly doesn't bode well for the fate of a lasting US-China trade compromise. According to the Wall Street Journal, the US-guided-missile destroyer the USS McCampbell patrolled within 12 miles of the Paracel Islands in the South China Sea on Monday. In particular, it came within a few miles of three islands: Tree, Lincoln and Woody.

China sent its own ship to try and deter the McCampbell, but ultimately decided to file an official complaint. According to Bloomberg, China urged the US to halt "provocative actions" in the South China Sea. "The actions by the U.S. fleet have violated Chinese law and related international laws, and undermined the peace, security and good order in the relevant waters,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang told a briefing Monday in Beijing. "China strongly opposes the actions."

This short Youtube video (10:38) gives a visual perspective and very much on point at the realistic dangers such needless provocations may develop: [video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zk62lYdohY8]

Here is a link to an article the Nation-Pakistan: US trade wars & hot wars

President Trump should understand that the international trade system is not only hardwired but also connected through a delicate cobweb of interdependent systems, which when abruptly disturbed, can unleash a butterfly effect, creating a financial chaos throughout the globe.

...

Quoting Jeff Mills, co-chief investment strategist at PNC Financial Services Group, the CNBC also stated that China holds about 20 percent of U.S. debt held by foreign countries and if China does decide to dump treasuries, it could make others panic and sell as well. It will also become more expensive for the U.S. government to issue debt they’ll have to pay higher rates to borrowers, while the $15 trillion of treasuries held by itself and investors would fall in value. Equities would be sent crashing, too, as yields climb. “Higher interest rates would ripple through the entire economy,” says Mills. “It would have a slowing effect.”

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I will end the piece with the observations of Professor Andrew Bacevich from Boston University (author of a book, The Limits of Power and the End of American Exceptionalism), who identified the three challenges facing the US, “the economy, in remarkable disarray, can no longer be fixed by relying on expansion abroad; the government, transformed by an imperial presidency, is a democracy in form only; and U.S. involvement in endless wars, driven by a deep infatuation with military power, has been a catastrophe for the body politic. These pressing problems threaten all of us, Republicans and Democrats. If the nation is to solve its predicament, it will need the revival of a distinctly American approach: the neglected tradition of realism”.

How Trade Wars Become Hot Wars

Here is an astute comment from the Quora article, linked above, which does a nice job of near term analysis.

1. One or both sides must believe that they can defeat the other side and gain its objectives.
2. Neither side is going to back down on a conflict. Compromises have been exhausted. Both sides must believe that the other had crossed the red line.
But the big power conflict is complicated for multiples reasons. First, nuclear war is unwinnable. Second, even on a limited conventional conflict, strategists must ask what is to be gained, versus what is lost? If China goes to war and even if it thinks it can win a local battle, such as Taiwan or Diaoyudao, is it worth destroying its current political status and economic relationships with the world?
Once a major conflict starts, it might be a no turning back scenario. Just like the European powers found out in World War One. They enthusiastically rushed into war, deluded that it will be over in few months. Also, Hitler and Germans almost believed that they can get away with invading Poland. Even though they may have been already thinking about invading Russia and France eventually.
Nation can be pressured into a corner and start a war. Japanese in Second World War attacked Pearl Harbor after it was denied access to crucial rubber and oil from French Indochina, British Malay, Dutch Indies, and Philippines. But did the Japanese leadership believe once you provoke US, it can pull off a limited victory or without the complete victory, US will accept nothing but an unconditional surrender?
But the leadership of the nations are not always reasonable and sane. Partly because there is no way you can have a full, reliable information. People or regimes, who start wars really believe they can win the wars based on the information they have or they have no choice, so they will take the risks into the unknown. But it will be found out the hard way, that their calculation was wrong.

Yes, in order to save face, China might be willing to risk a small scale military action, such as those already used in the South China Sea (USS Fitzgerald, McCain, etc) but would Trump ever let the Chinese respond even in a limited fashion with trying to even or surpass the score?

Of course with Bolton and Pompeo in the mix, it's like giving a kid a match and ask him to check out the gas tank.