Caught between the Thucydides and Kindleberger Traps while trying not to fall into either, the critical relationship between China and the US continues to evolve.
The former is a rapidly rising superpower. The latter is a superpower clinging to its status at the pinnacle of the world order in a position acquired after long periods of steady growth that were consolidated after leading the Allied powers to victory in World War II and then secured through global hegemony following the collapse of the Soviet Union.
The Thucydides Trap is named after the ancient Greek historian Thucydides who chronicled the Peloponnesian War in the 5th century BCE. He held that the steady rise of Athens and the fear it provoked in Sparta as the established hegemon made war between them inevitable.
The Kindleberger Trap, by contrast, arises in the absence of an international leader capable of maintaining security and global stability. According to US economist Charles Kindleberger, the Great Depression of the 1930s followed the global financial collapse in 1929 because Britain was no longer able to lead the world and the US was unwilling to do so.
As a result, the provision of global public goods broke down since there was no lender of last resort and no macroeconomic policy coordination. This led to the economic depression whose disastrous consequences culminated in the outbreak of World War II.
Harvard University professor Graham Allison invoked the concept of the Thucydides Trap in his 2017 book Destined for War to explain the rising tensions between the US hegemon and the emergent Chinese superpower. According to his study, out of 16 cases of rivalry between rising and established powers since the conflict between Athens and Sparta, 12 ended in war.
In my view, two factors have prevented a slide into conventional war between China and the US: first, mutual deterrence between two nuclear powers; and second, China’s prudence in exercising restraint and avoiding escalation.
During US President Donald Trump’s recent visit to China, the Thucydides Trap came up in a major speech by Chinese President Xi Jinping. Noting the “fluid and turbulent” international situation arising as a result of transformations not seen in a century, Xi asked “can China and the United States overcome the Thucydides Trap and create a new paradigm of major-country relations? Can we meet global challenges together and provide greater stability for the world? Can we build a bright future together for our bilateral relations in the interests of the well-being of the two peoples and the future of humanity?”
This was not the first time the Chinese president had voiced this view. He has reiterated it on numerous occasions since 2013, especially in meetings with US leaders. On these occasions, he has stressed that falling into the Thucydides Trap is not inevitable and that the problem is not China’s rise but the fear of it.
While it has so far been possible to avoid falling into the Thucydides Trap, which involves great-power conflict, the Kindleberger Trap presents a more immediate danger due to the lack of effective international coordination on crucial issues.
Several mounting risks cannot be understood in isolation from the erosion of trust in the rules and norms of international relations, the weakening of governance within international institutions, the decline in their ability to carry out their functions, and the escalating scale of geopolitical conflicts and their repercussions.
Today we observe multiple examples of failures in international cooperation in addressing, for example, sovereign debt crises in developing countries, public health threats such as the Covid-19 pandemic, and the dangers presented by climate change.
The perils of the two traps are mounting, and the consequences and costs do not fall only on the rival great powers. Indeed, much of the detrimental impact is borne by poorer countries that depend on systemic stability to facilitate trade, finance, and protection from shocks.
Under these conditions, recurrent crises exacting severe economic and social tolls should come as no surprise. When they occur, we hear the refrain that “every crisis brings both hardships and opportunities.” Yet, ordinary people only see the former, while receiving reassurances that what they are experiencing are merely temporary and unintended side effects.
While war is, as the Prussian military thinker Carl von Clausewitz wrote in his 1832 work On War, the continuation of politics by other means, war is also waged through non-military means. Among the most pernicious are economic instruments, which include trade wars, currency wars, financial sanctions, the weaponisation of supply chains, and restrictions on exports of energy and critical technologies.
In a disjointed world, as I described it in a previous article, geopolitical tensions and conflict are intensifying while an increasingly crippled international institutional framework is incapable of resolving disputes, especially in areas of trade due to rising protectionism and restrictions on investment and technology.
The US political analyst Edward Fishman has explained “how to fight an economic war,” also the title of his recent article in the US journal Foreign Affairs. He observes that a spirit of cooperation has given way today to increasing polarisation, ruptures, and intensifying tensions and conflicts centring around “chokepoints”.
These are areas over which a single state exercises tight control and may also use as leverage against rivals who have no easy alternatives. Such chokepoints can be geographical, as with the Strait of Hormuz, or economic, through the weaponisation of the US dollar, or of supply chains in the race to acquire critical rare-earth minerals.
At the same time, whenever the US weaponises its economic power, other countries scramble to come up with ways to reduce their dependence on it. They have turned to gold and other financial assets, or they have adopted alternative payment systems, as China and Russia have done in response to restrictions on access to the SWIFT international payments system.
The measures China has taken to secure technological sovereignty were clearly evident during Trump’s recent visit to Beijing.
The road to international stability does not lie in preventing competition or wasting energy on obstructing rising powers in the race of nations. Nor does it lie in replacing one global hegemon with another, which would risk creating a power vacuum leading to the Kindleberger Trap.
Instead, the remedy is to promote an efficient and just multilateral system grounded in legitimacy and confidence in its rules. The best starting point for this is to localise development and strengthen regional cooperation.
This article also appears in Arabic in Wednesday’s edition of Asharq Al-Awsat.
* A version of this article appears in print in the 21 May, 2026 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly
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