Latest news with #DestinedforWar
Asia Times
17-04-2025
- Business
- Asia Times
Chinese dragon elegantly twirled around American eagle's neck
There is an image that likely increasingly haunts the minds of US strategists: a Chinese dragon, no longer just coiled in defense but elegantly entwined around the neck of the American bald eagle. Not to suffocate but rather to regulate the bird's breath. The symbolism is not hyperbole. It captures a world where China, long caricatured as the imitator, has now morphed into a systemic rival, outrunning and outgunning the United States in critical business and security sectors. From technology to trade, currency to cyber power, the Chinese state has mastered the long game. As Graham Allison warned in 'Destined for War', the Thucydides Trap is not only about the inevitability of conflict between rising and ruling powers. It's also about the erosion of assumptions that the West has long taken for granted—namely, that liberal democracies will always innovate faster and govern better. That assumption is collapsing under China's weight. Let us now turn to the strategic sectors where China has not just caught up, but, in many instances, sprinted ahead. 1. Semiconductors: from dependency to near parity Semiconductors, once China's key vulnerability, are now the arena of its most dramatic gains. Despite Washington's embargoes on Huawei and export bans on advanced lithography equipment, Beijing has poured over 1.5 trillion yuan into its domestic chip ecosystem. China's 14nm chips are now being produced domestically at scale, and according to Dr Dan Wang of Gavekal Dragonomics, an economic consultancy, 'China is only a node or two behind global leaders, and catching up fast.' This acceleration is powered by 'dual circulation'—a policy that embeds state subsidies across the entire supply chain, from rare earth mining to chip design. In contrast, the US remains fragmented. The CHIPS and Science Act is slow-moving and could be scrapped while American fabs are still dangerously dependent on geopolitical choke points like Taiwan. And it's not clear that forcing Taiwan to build fabs in the US will even remotely work due to a lack of skilled labor and relevant supply chains. 2. Electric vehicles: Tesla in the rearview mirror China's BYD, not Tesla, is now the world's top EV manufacturer. In 2023, it overtook Tesla in global sales and its footprint now spans Latin America, Europe and Southeast Asia. Why? Because China owns the supply chain. From lithium in Bolivia to cobalt in the Congo, Chinese firms like CATL dominate the upstream. They also control over 75% of global lithium battery production. As Professor Tu Xinquan of the China Institute for WTO Studies notes, 'Beijing treats EVs as the next strategic industry, not just a consumer product.' The result? China is setting the global terms for green mobility. 3. Artificial intelligence: authoritarian efficiency at scale While Silicon Valley battles over ethics and data privacy, Chinese AI firms race ahead by leveraging the scale of their digital ecosystems. With 1.4 billion citizens contributing to vast data pools, firms like SenseTime and iFlytek are training machine learning models at a rate unimaginable in the US. Stanford's AI Index 2024 noted that 'China now publishes more peer-reviewed AI papers than the US and the EU combined.' More importantly, the integration of AI into national surveillance systems—facial recognition, behavioral analytics and even predictive policing—is an institutional advantage in authoritarian governance. 4. Space & hypersonics: leaping over the Pentagon's horizon In 2021, China tested a hypersonic glide vehicle that stunned Pentagon officials. It circled the globe before hitting its target—a demonstration of capabilities that America did not anticipate and does not have. Today, China launches more satellites than any other country, and its Tiangong space station functions independently of NASA. This is not just about prestige. It's about owning low-Earth orbit (LEO) infrastructure and building an integrated command architecture. According to James Acton of the Carnegie Endowment, 'China's civil-military fusion in space tech gives it a decisive asymmetry—the ability to repurpose civilian launches into military capacity overnight.' 5. Quantum computing and cyber sovereignty China's quantum leap is not metaphorical. It has already built a city-level quantum communication network in Hefei and launched the Micius satellite to demonstrate secure quantum encryption. While the US still grapples with theoretical breakthroughs, China is operationalizing quantum networks—one step closer to unhackable communication. Simultaneously, China's cyber units under the PLA Strategic Support Force have matured into a formidable force. As cybersecurity expert Adam Segal warns, 'Unlike the US, where cyber operations must go through inter-agency review, China's centralized command is more agile, more ruthless and more strategic.' 6. Infrastructure diplomacy: steel, fiber and sovereignty The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) was once dismissed as 'debt-trap' diplomacy. Yet in 2025, it has morphed into a network of real-world influence. Over 70 ports, 150 countries, and countless rail links are now locked into Chinese logistics systems. Malaysia's ECRL and industrial parks under the 'Two Countries, Twin Parks' initiative are cases in point. In contrast, America's Build Back Better World (B3W) never took off due to a lack of institutional backbone and material delivery. 7. Financial innovation: dollar dependency, yuan strategy Though the dollar still dominates, China's Cross-Border Interbank Payment System (CIPS) now clears over US$400 billion in yuan-denominated transactions annually. As Professor Eswar Prasad of Cornell observes, 'CIPS, when coupled with the digital yuan, offers China a way to de-dollarize bilateral trade without directly challenging the dollar's global reserve status.' Even in ASEAN, Indonesia and Malaysia have signed local currency settlement agreements with Beijing. The implications are serious: the US no longer controls the plumbing of international finance unilaterally. 8. Pharmaceuticals and public health diplomacy Sinopharm and Sinovac may have drawn Western skepticism during Covid-19, but they reached over 80 countries. China became the pharmacy of the Global South, capturing new health markets. Meanwhile, China controls up to 70% of active pharmaceutical ingredient (API) exports—vital for antibiotic and chronic disease drugs. Even the US Food and Drug Administration has flagged this as a national security risk. 9. Maritime dominance: steel leviathans in Asian waters The People's Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) is now the largest navy in terms of number of vessels, with China launching new destroyers, frigates and carriers at an unmatched pace. According to the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), China's naval shipbuilding capacity exceeds the US by a ratio of 3:1 annually. This has strategic consequences: with militarized reefs and carrier-killer missiles, Beijing is remaking the Indo-Pacific naval order—challenging the US Seventh Fleet's dominance. Conclusion: The end of complacency, the beginning of multipolar discipline The Chinese dragon did not roar its way to supremacy. It studied the American system—its think tanks, capital markets, academic networks and defense-industrial base—and replicated a version of it with Chinese characteristics: centralized, agile, state-backed and global. This is no longer a contest of ideologies. It is a contest of capacities. For Malaysia and ASEAN, the time for strategic hedging has reached its limit. As Professor Lee Jones warns, 'Neutrality in a bifurcating world must be underwritten by genuine resilience—economic, technological and political.' China's dragon does not need to strangle the eagle. It merely needs to squeeze at the right moments. And in that tightening grip lies the uncomfortable truth of 21st-century power: it is no longer about who dominates, but who endures. Phar Kim Beng, PhD, is professor of ASEAN studies at the International Islamic University Malaysia. His analyses have been published across Asia and Europe, with a focus on strategic diplomacy, interdependence and power asymmetries.
Asia Times
16-04-2025
- Politics
- Asia Times
Are US and China really in a Thucydides Trap?
The so-called Thucydides Trap has become a staple of foreign policy commentary over the past decade or so, regularly invoked to frame the escalating rivalry between the United States and China. Coined by political scientist Graham Allison — first in a 2012 Financial Times article and later developed in his 2017 book 'Destined for War' — the phrase refers to a line from the ancient Greek historian Thucydides, who wrote in his 'History of the Peloponnesian War,' 'It was the rise of Athens and the fear that this instilled in Sparta that made war inevitable.' At first glance, this provides a compelling and conveniently packaged analogy: Rising powers provoke anxiety in established ones, leading to conflict. In today's context, the implication seems clear – China's rise is bound to provoke a collision with the United States, just as Athens once did with Sparta. But this framing risks flattening the complexity of Thucydides' work and distorting its deeper philosophical message. Thucydides wasn't articulating a deterministic law of geopolitics. He was writing a tragedy. Thucydides fought in the Peloponnesian War on the Athenian side. His world was steeped in the sensibilities of Greek tragedy, and his historical narrative carries that imprint throughout. His work is not a treatise on structural inevitability but an exploration of how human frailty, political misjudgment and moral decay can combine to unleash catastrophe. That tragic sensibility matters. Where modern analysts often search for predictive patterns and system-level explanations, Thucydides drew attention to the role of choice, perception and emotion. His history is filled with the corrosive effects of fear, the seductions of ambition, the failures of leadership and the tragic unraveling of judgment. This is a study in hubris and nemesis, not structural determinism. Much of this is lost when the phrase 'Thucydides Trap' is elevated into a kind of quasi-law of international politics. It becomes shorthand for inevitability: power rises, fear responds, war follows. But Thucydides himself was more interested in why fear takes hold, how ambition twists judgment and how leaders — trapped in a narrowing corridor of bad options — convince themselves that war is the only viable path left. His narrative shows how conflict often arises not from necessity, but from misreading, miscalculation and passions unmoored from reason. Even Allison, to his credit, never claimed the 'trap' was inescapable. His core argument was that war is likely but not inevitable when a rising power challenges a dominant one. In fact, much of Allison's writing serves as a warning to break from the pattern, not to resign oneself to it. Traditional Russian wooden dolls depict China's President Xi Jinping and U.S. President Donald Trump. Photo: Dmitri Lovetsky / AP via The Conversation In that sense, the 'Thucydides Trap' has been misused by commentators and policymakers alike. Some treat it as confirmation that war is baked into the structure of power transitions — an excuse to raise defense budgets or to talk tough with Beijing — when in fact, it ought to provoke reflection and restraint. To read Thucydides carefully is to see that the Peloponnesian War was not solely about a shifting balance of power. It was also about pride, misjudgment and the failure to lead wisely. Consider his famous observation, 'Ignorance is bold and knowledge reserved.' This isn't a structural insight — it's a human one. It's aimed squarely at those who mistake impulse for strategy and swagger for strength. Or take his chilling formulation, 'The strong do what they will and the weak suffer what they must.' That's not an endorsement of realpolitik. It's a tragic lament on what happens when power becomes unaccountable and justice is cast aside. Seen in this light, the real lesson of Thucydides is not that war is preordained, but that it becomes more likely when nations allow fear to cloud reason, when leaders mistake posturing for prudence and when strategic decisions are driven by insecurity rather than clarity. Thucydides reminds us how easily perception curdles into misperception — and how dangerous it is when leaders, convinced of their own virtue or necessity, stop listening to anyone who disagrees. It ain't necessarily so. Photo: Dan Kitwood / Getty Images via The Conversation In today's context, invoking the Thucydides Trap as a justification for confrontation with China may do more harm than good. It reinforces the notion that conflict is already on the rails and cannot be stopped. But if there is a lesson in 'The History of the Peloponnesian War,' it is not that war is inevitable but that it becomes likely when the space for prudence and reflection collapses under the weight of fear and pride. Thucydides offers not a theory of international politics but a warning — an admonition to leaders who, gripped by their own narratives, drive their nations over a cliff. Avoiding that fate requires better judgment. And above all, it demands the humility to recognize that the future is not determined by structural pressures alone but by the choices people make. Andrew Latham is professor of political science, Macalester College This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Yahoo
15-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
The Thucydides Trap: Vital lessons from ancient Greece for China and the US … or a load of old claptrap?
The so-called Thucydides Trap has become a staple of foreign policy commentary over the past decade or so, regularly invoked to frame the escalating rivalry between the United States and China. Coined by political scientist Graham Allison — first in a 2012 Financial Times article and later developed in his 2017 book 'Destined for War' — the phrase refers to a line from the ancient Greek historian Thucydides, who wrote in his 'History of the Peloponnesian War,' 'It was the rise of Athens and the fear that this instilled in Sparta that made war inevitable.' At first glance, this provides a compelling and conveniently packaged analogy: Rising powers provoke anxiety in established ones, leading to conflict. In today's context, the implication seems clear – China's rise is bound to provoke a collision with the United States, just as Athens once did with Sparta. But this framing risks flattening the complexity of Thucydides' work and distorting its deeper philosophical message. Thucydides wasn't articulating a deterministic law of geopolitics. He was writing a tragedy. Thucydides fought in the Peloponnesian War on the Athenian side. His world was steeped in the sensibilities of Greek tragedy, and his historical narrative carries that imprint throughout. His work is not a treatise on structural inevitability but an exploration of how human frailty, political misjudgment and moral decay can combine to unleash catastrophe. That tragic sensibility matters. Where modern analysts often search for predictive patterns and system-level explanations, Thucydides drew attention to the role of choice, perception and emotion. His history is filled with the corrosive effects of fear, the seductions of ambition, the failures of leadership and the tragic unraveling of judgment. This is a study in hubris and nemesis, not structural determinism. Much of this is lost when the phrase 'Thucydides Trap' is elevated into a kind of quasi-law of international politics. It becomes shorthand for inevitability: power rises, fear responds, war follows. But Thucydides himself was more interested in why fear takes hold, how ambition twists judgment and how leaders — trapped in a narrowing corridor of bad options — convince themselves that war is the only viable path left. His narrative shows how conflict often arises not from necessity, but from misreading, miscalculation and passions unmoored from reason. Even Allison, to his credit, never claimed the 'trap' was inescapable. His core argument was that war is likely but not inevitable when a rising power challenges a dominant one. In fact, much of Allison's writing serves as a warning to break from the pattern, not to resign oneself to it. In that sense, the 'Thucydides Trap' has been misused by commentators and policymakers alike. Some treat it as confirmation that war is baked into the structure of power transitions — an excuse to raise defense budgets or to talk tough with Beijing — when in fact it ought to provoke reflection and restraint. To read Thucydides carefully is to see that the Peloponnesian War was not solely about a shifting balance of power. It was also about pride, misjudgment and the failure to lead wisely. Consider his famous observation, 'Ignorance is bold and knowledge reserved.' This isn't a structural insight — it's a human one. It's aimed squarely at those who mistake impulse for strategy and swagger for strength. Or take his chilling formulation, 'The strong do what they will and the weak suffer what they must.' That's not an endorsement of realpolitik. It's a tragic lament on what happens when power becomes unaccountable and justice is cast aside. Seen in this light, the real lesson of Thucydides is not that war is preordained, but that it becomes more likely when nations allow fear to cloud reason, when leaders mistake posturing for prudence and when strategic decisions are driven by insecurity rather than clarity. Thucydides reminds us how easily perception curdles into misperception — and how dangerous it is when leaders, convinced of their own virtue or necessity, stop listening to anyone who disagrees. In today's context, invoking the Thucydides Trap as a justification for confrontation with China may do more harm than good. It reinforces the notion that conflict is already on the rails and cannot be stopped. But if there is a lesson in 'The History of the Peloponnesian War,' it is not that war is inevitable but that it becomes likely when the space for prudence and reflection collapses under the weight of fear and pride. Thucydides offers not a theory of international politics, but a warning — an admonition to leaders who, gripped by their own narratives, drive their nations over a cliff. Avoiding that fate requires better judgment. And above all, it demands the humility to recognize that the future is not determined by structural pressures alone, but by the choices people make. This article is part of a series explaining foreign policy terms commonly used, but rarely explained. This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit, independent news organization bringing you facts and trustworthy analysis to help you make sense of our complex world. It was written by: Andrew Latham, Macalester College Read more: In trade war with the US, China holds a lot more cards than Trump may think − in fact, it might have a winning hand What is a 'revisionist' state, and what are they trying to revise? What the spiralling trade war means for relations between the US and China Andrew Latham does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
