Dear Summer Camp, the situation we are living in today is one in which day by day we are moving towards conflict. The question – the 1-million-dollar question – is whether this conflict can be avoided.
There are ever more studies and books on this, and I am also working from them. One notable work says that in the last three hundred years there have been sixteen occasions when a new “champion” has risen to pull alongside – or overtake – the world’s leading power. The bad news is that of the sixteen instances thus identified, twelve have ended in war, and only four were peacefully resolved. In other words, Dear Friends, we are at the most dangerous moment in world politics today, when the leading great power sees itself sinking towards second place. Experience shows that the dominant great power tends to see itself as more benevolent and better-intentioned than it really is, and attributes malice to its challenger more often than is – or should be – justified.
Consequently, the starting point for each opposing party is not the intentions of the counterpart, but its capabilities: not what the counterpart wants to do, but what it is capable of doing. And thus war is already in the making. This is what is called the “Thucydides Trap”, named after the man who wrote the history of the Peloponnesian War between Sparta and Athens, and who first identified the problem.