If critics are failed artists, then within the heart of every scholar of international relations lurks the will to actual power over human affairs. Sometimes a scholar like Henry Kissinger achieves high office. But the next best thing is to hear one’s ideas about world politics on the lips of the great: exciting evidence that those ideas are shaping elite political thinking, and perhaps even world events themselves.
It must then be bliss for Graham Allison, who has popularized the idea of the “Thucydides Trap,” to hear Xi Jinping cite the notion during this week’s summit in Beijing. On Thursday, as the two leaders gathered for their summit at Beijing’s Great Hall of the People, Xi gave introductory remarks in Chinese and warned that the U.S. and China should beware, per an official English-language translation, the “Thucydides Trap.” It was not the first time Xi has invoked the concept, which he has raised as far back as 2014.
