China, US not fated to fall in Thucydides' trap

Editor's Note: Will China and the United States fall into the Thucydides' trap? Graham T. Allison, founding dean of Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government, Wang Huiyao, president of the Center for China and Globalization, and Li Chen, director of the Center for International Security and Strategy at Renmin University of China's School of International Studies, try to find an answer to this most important question of our times at a dialogue organized by the CCG earlier this month. Excerpts from their conversation follow:

Wang Huiyao: It's been four years since you published Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides's Trap. Can you share with us any new thoughts you may have developed on the subject, Professor Graham.

Graham T. Allison: In the structural realities, it's a rising China that's impacting a ruling US. And I compare this in my book to a seesaw of power in which China gets stronger and wealthier and more powerful inevitably. That's the nature of the Thucydides' rivalry. That rise shifts the tectonics of power, the seesaw of power between the rising power and the ruling power. So that's point one.