By Michael Roberts On the first day of talks during US President Donald Trump’s recent state visit to China, his host China’s Xi Jinping invoked the so-called “Thucydides trap” to warn against any war between the two superpowers that now dominate the world economic and political landscape. Xi was referring to the fifth-century BC Greek historian Thucydides who (it is ...
Chinese President Xi Jinping’s reference to the “Thucydides Trap” during US President Donald Trump’s latest visit to China reverberated across the world. The concept quickly attracted wide attention, with a wave of explanations and commentary. Yet this was not the first time Xi had spoken of the “Thucydides Trap”; he had used it many times before in his speeches and ...