The second is that China has a distinctive civilization, with a culture and outlook very different from that of the Western world, which risks producing a clash of the sort described by Samuel Huntington in the early 1990s. Now that it has economic weight, military strength, and consequential political power Beijing sees this as a time to demonstrate that the country can no longer be pushed around and that past grievances must be addressed. Its treatment at the hands of the great powers from the late 19th century left its mark. The first is that China knows what it is like to be powerless and humiliated. Behind the particularities of the various scenarios there are three larger and related issues shaping Chinese behavior and American responses. “On the current trajectory,” he warns, “war between the United States and China in the decades ahead is not just possible, but much more likely than currently recognized.” Fortunately it is not “inevitable.” To explain the extent of the danger he gives the niggling set of potential conflicts a wider context. Graham Allison, former Director of the Belfer Center at Harvard University, describes these concerns in a lively, readable, and in some respects alarming, book. In other cases, the risks revolve more around actions that might be taken by others, for example a formal secession by the Republic of China (Taiwan) from China. Whether or not there is a conflict will depend on how far China pushes to assert its interests, for example in the South China Sea.

None of this is news, as tension has been evident for some time. There are a number of possible scenarios involving a disturbing range of countries-Taiwan, the Philippines, Vietnam, India, Japan, and the Koreas-that could draw the two countries into a fight.

It is conceivable that one day the United States and the People’s Republic of China will go to war.

Thucydides peloponnesian war sparknotes