Will China and America go to war?
Analysis
BBC
4.6 • 1K Ratings
🗓️ 25 March 2019
⏱️ 30 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Will the growing competition between China and the United States inevitably lead to military conflict? One leading American academic created huge attention when in 2017 he posed the idea of what he called a "Thucydides Trap". Drawing on the work of the ancient Greek historian, he warned that when a rising power (Sparta) threatens an existing power (Athens) they are destined to clash, unless both countries change their policies. He warned that the same pattern could play out with the US and China. Since then, President Trump has engaged in combative rhetoric over trade, while China has fast been modernising and upgrading its military. BBC Diplomatic Correspondent Jonathan Marcus considers whether Washington and Beijing can escape the trap - or whether the growing economic, strategic and technological rivalry between the two nations will inevitably end in conflict. Producer: Stuart Hughes
Transcript
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| 0:54.6 | are China and the US destined to go to war? |
| 0:58.2 | Not so long ago China's rise was seen as essentially benign. A growing economy it was thought would go hand in hand |
| 1:05.9 | with a liberalising political system. China was, to use the phrase favoured by US experts, |
| 1:11.9 | becoming a responsible global stakeholder. |
| 1:15.0 | But over the last few years that has all changed. |
| 1:19.0 | China is increasingly seen as a threat. |
| 1:22.0 | Indeed many fear that the rivalry between China and the United States |
| 1:25.9 | could ultimately even lead to war, a conflict that would affect everyone everywhere. |
| 1:32.4 | The whole relationship between Washington and Beijing is being reframed. |
| 1:37.0 | The responsible stakeholder model is out and a new paradigm is in, one that harks back to the ancient classical world and the work of Thucydides, |
| 1:47.2 | the historian of the Peloponnesian war between Athens and Sparta. |
| 1:55.0 | It was the rise of Athens and the fear that this instilled in Sparta that made war inevitable. |
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