This TED Talk features political scientist Graham Allison, recorded live at We the Future, presented by TED, the Skoll Foundation and the United Nations Foundation.

So let me thank you for the opportunity to talk about the biggest international story of your professional lifetime, which is also the

most important international challenge the world will face for as far as the eye can see.

The story, of course, is the rise of China. Never before have so many people risen so far,

so fast on so many different dimensions.

The challenge is the impact of China's rise.

The discombobulation, this will cause the United States and the international order

of which the U.S. has been the principal architect and guardian.

The past hundred years have been what historians now call an American century.

Americans have become accustomed to their place at the top of every pecking order.

So the very idea of another country that could be as big and strong as the U.S. or bigger strikes many Americans as an assault

on who they are. For perspective on what we're now seeing in this rivalry, it's useful to locate

it on the larger map of history. The past 500 years have seen 16 cases

in which a rising power threatened to displace a ruling power.

Twelve of those ended in war.

So just in November, we'll all pause

to mark the 100th anniversary of the final day of a war

that became so encompassing that it required historians to create an entirely new category,

World War. So on the 11th hour of the 11th day, of the 11th month in 1918, the guns of World War I fell silent,

but 20 million individuals lay dead.

I know that this is a sophisticated audience, so you know about the rise of China.

I'm going to focus, therefore, on the impact of China's rise, on the U.S., on the international

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