US Sutra | Forget the Thucydides Trap: China is no Athens, America no Sparta

The Thucydides Trap misreads the US-China rivalry. While America may not be declining, China could already be peakingTwice this year, Chinese President Xi Jinping has invoked a dead Greek historian to explain the most consequential bilateral relationship of our times.When Donald Trump visited Beijing on May 14, Xi asked: “Can China and the United States overcome the Thucydides Trap and create a new paradigm of major-country relations?” At the White House on September 24, he supplied his own answer: “The Thucydides Trap can be overcome.”