Victor Davis Hanson: Why War With China Is Not Inevitable

The Daily Signal

Politics, Government, Daily News, News

4.8 • 1.4K Ratings

🗓️ 18 May 2026

⏱️ 11 minutes

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Summary

Chinese officials increasingly warn about the so-called “Thucydides Trap,” the idea that a rising China and an established United States are destined for war. But the historical comparison falls apart under closer examination. From ancient Athens and Sparta to modern America and China, Hanson breaks down why the analogy is flawed, why the United States is not a declining power, and why China may be facing deeper long term problems than many in the West are willing to admit. Despite endless predictions of American decline, the United States still leads China in energy production, military power, food security, technological dominance, alliances, and economic productivity, while China faces mounting problems with demographics, debt, energy dependence, and slowing growth, argues Victor Davis Hanson on today’s edition of “Victor Davis Hanson: In a Few Words.” 👉 The Daily Signal cannot continue to tell stories, like this one, without the support of our viewers: http://dailysignal.com/donate 👉Don’t miss out on Victor’s latest short videos by subscribing to The Daily Signal today. You’ll be notified every time a new piece of content drops: ⁠https://www.youtube.com/dailysignal?sub_confirmation=1⁠ Also on Spotify: https://megaphone.link/THEDAILYSIGNAL9753340027 👉Want more VDH? Watch Victor’s weekly, hour-long podcast, “Victor Davis Hanson: In His Own Words,” now! Subscribe to his YouTube channel, and enable notifications: https://www.youtube.com/@victordavishanson7273?sub_confirmation=1👉More exclusive content is available on Victor’s website: https://victorhanson.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to the Daily Signal podcast, where we provide intelligence for the intelligent.
0:05.1	Now, without further ado, here's today's take.
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0:31.6	to learn more. Hello, this is Victor Davis Hansen from The Daily Signal.
0:46.0	Recently at the American Chinese summit in Beijing, Premier Chi mentioned that he hoped that both parties, the United States and China, could avoid the Thucydides' trap.
0:59.4	What did that mean? It refers to a book and an article by the well-known political scientist Graham Allison.
1:09.2	And in it, he presented a paradigm of international relations.
1:14.0	And briefly, it was this, that if you have an established power like ancient Sparta
1:20.0	and it gets worried that there's an incending power, a rising new neighborhood bully or something,
1:27.1	the older power, the established power, will attack it.
1:32.1	And there will be a war. And he gave some examples from history.
1:35.9	Now, he called it the Thucydides trap because in the historian Thucydides, it was born about 460 BC and died somewhere around 400 or 395 BC, he wrote a
1:47.4	history of the Peloponnesian War.
1:49.7	And at two key places in his first book or chapter, he said that there were various reasons
1:56.3	to go to war, but probably in his opinion, the most likely, and he said this in two different
2:01.6	places, was that Sparta was afraid of the dominance that was growing throughout the Greek
	...

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