Can China Avoid the Thucydides Trap?

• Published in: New perspectives quarterly Vol. 31; no. 2; pp. 31 - 33
• Main Author: BRZEZINSKI, ZBIGNIEW
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Hoboken Blackwell Publishing Ltd 01.04.2014
• Subjects: Cosmopolitanism; Globalization; Nationalism; China
• ISSN: 0893-7850; 1540-5842
• DOI: 10.1111/npqu.11444

Despite grand visions of a cosmopolitan planet living in peace, the first globalization at the turn of the 20th century descended into World War I as the old empires scrambled to preserve themselves as others sought self‐determination. Powers on the losing end of that war reasserted themselves in yet another worldwide calamity within decades. After World War II, in the early 1950s, with the victorious American‐led alliance in the driver's seat, institutions such as the United Nations and the Bretton Woods arrangements created a global stability that enabled peace, prosperity and the “rise of the rest.” In 2014, the world order is shifting again with the rise of China reviving in Asia the very kind of nationalist rivalries that led Europe to war twice in the 20th century. Will we be able to build new institutions that accommodate the new powershift without resorting to war, or will the second globalization collapse as well? Top strategists from the US, Japan and China respond to this momentous question.