In Cities, Geopolitical Economy, Imperialism, Politics, States and Nations, War

Presentation to the Fifteenth Forum of the World Association for Political Economy on ‘Rethinking Economic Analysis: Perspective of Political Economy’, 18-19 December 2021, Shanghai International Studies University, China

‘Not the Thucydides Trap’ is a full refutation of the popular thesis of Graham Allison which erects an historical analogy between Athens-Sparta conflict known as the Pelopponesian Wars, and the burgeoning conflicts between China and the USA. Allison seizes on a single quotation from Thucydides’ History of the Pelopponesian War in which he claims that the conflict was inevitable given the rise of Athens, and from this deduces that the US-China conflict is inevitable given the rise of China.

This is dangerous, since if war is inevitable then there is no point preparing for peace, and misleading, since it the only way to avoid war is for China to cease its path of development. But it is also false in two respects: it misunderstands the origins of the Athens-Sparta conflict and it misunderstands the origins of the US’s relative decline. The cause of the Athens-Sparta conflict was in fact Athens’ conversion into an Empire; the cause of the US’s relative decline is its absolute decline from 1974 onwards, in turn a function of the prolonged crisis of its neoliberal economic system.

This post contains the slideshow, the text of my talk, and the details of the event

Loader Loading…
EAD Logo Taking too long?
Reload Reload document
| Open Open in new tab
Loader Loading…
EAD Logo Taking too long?
Reload Reload document
| Open Open in new tab

Leave a Comment

Contact Us

We're not around right now. But you can send us an email and we'll get back to you, asap.

Not readable? Change text. captcha txt

Start typing and press Enter to search