Lessons from Thucydides as Pax Americana gives way to Pax Technologica

While much as been made of the ‘Thucydides trap’, the Greek historian’s insights are also useful in recognising how emotions fuel war
The US must be willing to end its role as the global cop and share power with the rest of the world to ensure prosperity and avoid catastrophe

Andrew Sheng

Published: 3:30am, 6 May 2023

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Corrected [7:49am, 6 May, 2023]

[7:49am, 6 May, 2023]
This article has been corrected to remove the reference to the date of Greek historian Thucydides' death.

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The “Thucydides trap” is an idea popularised by Harvard scholar Graham Allison, who quoted ancient Greek historian Thucydides’ description of the Peloponnesian War as an inevitable clash between Athens as a rising power and Sparta as the incumbent.

Athens wanted to expand while Sparta was determined to contain it, and thus the war was fought directly or through proxies and allies. It stretched over 27 years, in between periods of peace or truces. Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War ended abruptly, before the surrender of Athens in 404 BC.

Although it might seem plausible to apply the Sparta-Athens analogy to current affairs, perhaps Allison’s depiction suffers from being extrapolated from two city states that had a population of not more than a quarter of a million people between them, compared to the 1.4 billion people in China and 330 million people in the United States today.

Furthermore, the historical parallels between Sparta and Athens and the US and China are rather inapt since Athens, the centre of democracy, was destroyed by Sparta, which was the dominant land power in the Greek peninsula. In terms of military might, the US is more akin to Sparta with the strongest and most war-tested military and incumbent global power.

However, contemporary US leaders might identify with Athens as the guardian of democracy as well as having the strongest navy. Few remember that owning slaves was allowed in Athens, too.

My reading of Thucydides in the English translation indicates he saw war clearly from his realist experience not only as a general but also as a politician.

He understood that tragedy and calamity also came out of military glory, that brilliant men in charge of affairs often do not understand ordinary people and expect too much of them. He appreciated the unpredictability of war and how accidents happen. As people act emotionally, they will only think realistically when they begin to suffer from war.

The real issue is therefore how to avoid the trap itself. Each side has a narrative of its own destiny and, if the rival narratives clash, then they will fight over who is right. If it is less costly, they will engage in proxy wars in every domain, using smaller allies or borderlands as test beds for their contest of power.

Thucydides has an insightful chapter on the Athenian conquest of Melos, a colony of Sparta. The Melians argued for neutrality, but despite that, Athens conquered Melos, slaughtered its men and sold its women and children into slavery. As Thucydides wrote, “The strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.”

The ancient Greek historian Thucydides wrote his History of the Peloponnesian War in the 5th century BC. Photo: Shutterstock

History shows that Europe was always at war, punctuated by truces and periods of peace. Over the last five centuries, Europe’s infighting spilled over to become imperial quests. Much of the rest of the world – the victims of the proxy wars between European powers – remembers this vividly.

In the end, the wars within Europe became attritional, causing Britain to cede its imperial status. These wars became so exhausting that the warring parties finally sued for peace, only to revive the conflict when one side wanted to exact revenge.

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World War II was fought in Europe because Germany felt it was humiliated in the conclusion of World War I. Many wars are fought because they are emotion-driven, they end when everyone loses.

Stanford historian Ian Morris wrote the book War! What Is it Good For? in 2014 as a sequel to his Why the West Rules, For Now. He saw Pax Americana as the era of the global cop, fighting small wars to keep the global peace. But with the rise of the rest of the world in the form of China, India and others, we have moved into Pax Technologica in which those who have technology will have more power.

At what point will the US want to step back and agree on who will police the new Pax Technologica? The problem with Pax Technologica is that with the spread of technology, even small states with nuclear weapons can threaten everyone else. To prevent nuclear proliferation, small non-nuclear wars become inevitable. The escalation of local conflicts, from civil wars to failing states, make great power intervention even more risky and costly.

To defend Pax Americana, will the US be willing to “pay any price, bear any burden and meet any hardship” as president John F. Kennedy pledged in 1961? If not, will the indispensable nation, as secretary of state Madeleine Albright described the US in 1998, be willing to share power and global responsibilities to deal with global challenges such as climate warming and economic prosperity?

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The Thucydides Trap is not a matter of whether sliding into war is inevitable but whether peace should be maintained. It is easy to unleash the madness of war but tougher to control emotions for peace.

The difference between World War II and World War III will be nuclear termination. Stepping back from the brink of nuclear extinction will require extraordinary statesmanship which recognises that peace is the only rational way out of the emotional wreckage of war.

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Andrew Sheng writes on global issues from an Asian perspective