Gwynne Dyer: US-China war inevitable - or is it?

A SMALL but notable industry in the United States predicts the "coming war" with China, and Atlantic Magazine is foremost among reputable American monthlies in giving a home to such speculation. It has just done it again, in an article that includes a hearty dose of geopolitical theory. The theory is "The Thucydides Trap".

The author was Harvard University's Graham Allison, who coined that phrase. Thucydides, the historian of the Peloponnesian War in the 5th century BC, explained what caused the war this way: "It was the rise of Athens, and the fear that this inspired in Sparta, that made war inevitable." It lasted 20 years and, at the end of it, the ancient Greek world's two great powers were devastated.

Yet they didn't really go to war over anything in particular, Thucydides said. The problem was that Athens was overtaking Sparta in power (as China is overtaking the US now), and that was enough to send them to war. So are China and the US doomed to go to war in the next decade?

Graham Allison knows better than to make a hard prediction, but he points out that of the past 16 cases when one major power was gaining in power and its rival feared relegation to the second rank, 12 ended in war.

Does it really matter who is more powerful when China and the US have no shared border, make no territorial claims against each other, and are separated by the world's largest ocean? Many in each country would say no, but both countries have military-industrial-academic complexes that thrive on the threat of a US-Chinese military conflict.

War wouldn't benefit them, of course. But the threat of a great war kept millions of people in the military, in defence industries and in various universities and think tanks in interesting, sometimes very profitable work during the four decades of the US-Soviet Cold War.

The threat of a US-Chinese war already provides jobs for a lot of people, though nothing like as many as those who made a living off the threat of World War III in the Cold War era. If the perceived threat of war grows, so will the number of US and Chinese experts who make a living from it. So it is worth seeing if Graham Allison's assumptions hold water.

There are only two key assumptions. One is that China will decisively surpass the US in national power in the coming decade. The other is that such transfers of power from one dominant nation to another are still likely to end in war. Neither is as certain as it seems.

Chinese dominance is certain if the country keeps growing economically even at its new, lower rate of 7 per cent a year. That is still at least twice the US rate, and the magic of compound interest will still do its work. But the era of 10 per cent annual growth ended for Japan and South Korea, the other East Asian "miracles", after about 31 years. Each country then fell to a normal industrialised-country growth rate or (in Japan's case) below it.

China is at about the 30-year point now.

Most observers believe China's economic growth this year is already below 7 per cent - maybe 4 per cent, or even less. Neither of the other East Asian miracles ever got back on to the ultra-high growth track after they fell off it. At 4 per cent growth or less, China would not overtake the US any time soon.

As for 12 out of 16 changes in the great-power pecking order ending in war, that is true. But according to Allison's own data, three out of the four that didn't end in war were the last three, covering the last half-century. Recent history is a great deal more encouraging than older history.

Maybe more effective international institutions have helped the great powers avoid war. Maybe nuclear weapons have made them much more cautious. Probably both. But a US-Chinese war is not inevitable. It may not even be very likely.

-Gwynne Dyer is an independent journalist whose articles are published all over the world.