October 19, 2017
Discussion by Joel Wolk
Joel will be discussing the two books mentioned below. He suggests that if you are pressed for time, then read the second book of "The Thucydides's Trap". The book by Howard W. French is short at 352 pages.
Everything under the heavens: how the past helps shape China's push for global power.
by Howard W. French
From the former New York Times Asia correspondent and author of China's Second Continent, an incisive investigation of China's ideological development as it becomes an ever more aggressive player in regional and global diplomacy.
For many years after its reform and opening in 1978, China maintained an attitude of false modesty about its ambitions. That role, reports Howard French, has been set aside. China has asserted its place among the global heavyweights, revealing its plans for pan-Asian dominance by building its navy, increasing territorial claims to areas like the South China Sea, and diplomatically bullying smaller players. Underlying this attitude is a strain of thinking that casts China's present-day actions in decidedly historical terms, as the path to restoring the dynastic glory of the past. If we understand how that historical identity relates to current actions, in ways ideological, philosophical, and even legal, we can learn to forecast just what kind of global power China stands to become--and to interact wisely with a future peer.
Steeped in deeply researched history as well as on-the-ground reporting, this is French at his revelatory best.
https://beta.theglobeandmail.com/arts/books-and-media/howard-w-frenchs-everything-under-the-heavens-reviewed-the-last-empire/article34414260/?ref=http://www.theglobeandmail.com&
http://asianreviewofbooks.com/content/everything-under-the-heavens-how-the-past-helps-shape-chinas-push-for-global-power-by-howard-french/
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/15/books/review/everything-under-the-heavens-howard-french-destined-for-war-graham-allison.html?mcubz=3&_r=0
Destined for War. Can America and China Escape Thucydides's Trap?
by Graham Allison.
CHINA AND THE UNITED STATES ARE HEADING TOWARD A WAR NEITHER WANTS. The reason is Thucydides’s Trap, a deadly pattern of structural stress that results when a rising power challenges a ruling one. This phenomenon is as old as history itself. About the Peloponnesian War that devastated ancient Greece, the historian Thucydides explained: “It was the rise of Athens and the fear that this instilled in Sparta that made war inevitable.” Over the past 500 years, these conditions have occurred sixteen times. War broke out in twelve of them. Today, as an unstoppable China approaches an immovable America and both Xi Jinping and Donald Trump promise to make their countries “great again,” the seventeenth case looks grim. Unless China is willing to scale back its ambitions or Washington can accept becoming number two in the Pacific, a trade conflict, cyberattack, or accident at sea could soon escalate into all-out war.
In Destined for War, the eminent Harvard scholar Graham Allison explains why Thucydides’s Trap is the best lens for understanding U.S.-China relations in the twenty-first century. Through uncanny historical parallels and war scenarios, he shows how close we are to the unthinkable. Yet, stressing that war is not inevitable, Allison also reveals how clashing powers have kept the peace in the past — and what painful steps the United States and China must take to avoid disaster today.
http://www.npr.org/2017/05/29/530617244/destined-for-war-explores-how-to-avoid-unnecessary-future-conflicts
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/06/19/are-china-and-the-united-states-headed-for-war
Everything under the heavens: how the past helps shape China's push for global power.
by Howard W. French
From the former New York Times Asia correspondent and author of China's Second Continent, an incisive investigation of China's ideological development as it becomes an ever more aggressive player in regional and global diplomacy.
For many years after its reform and opening in 1978, China maintained an attitude of false modesty about its ambitions. That role, reports Howard French, has been set aside. China has asserted its place among the global heavyweights, revealing its plans for pan-Asian dominance by building its navy, increasing territorial claims to areas like the South China Sea, and diplomatically bullying smaller players. Underlying this attitude is a strain of thinking that casts China's present-day actions in decidedly historical terms, as the path to restoring the dynastic glory of the past. If we understand how that historical identity relates to current actions, in ways ideological, philosophical, and even legal, we can learn to forecast just what kind of global power China stands to become--and to interact wisely with a future peer.
Steeped in deeply researched history as well as on-the-ground reporting, this is French at his revelatory best.
https://beta.theglobeandmail.com/arts/books-and-media/howard-w-frenchs-everything-under-the-heavens-reviewed-the-last-empire/article34414260/?ref=http://www.theglobeandmail.com&
http://asianreviewofbooks.com/content/everything-under-the-heavens-how-the-past-helps-shape-chinas-push-for-global-power-by-howard-french/
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/15/books/review/everything-under-the-heavens-howard-french-destined-for-war-graham-allison.html?mcubz=3&_r=0
Destined for War. Can America and China Escape Thucydides's Trap?
by Graham Allison.
CHINA AND THE UNITED STATES ARE HEADING TOWARD A WAR NEITHER WANTS. The reason is Thucydides’s Trap, a deadly pattern of structural stress that results when a rising power challenges a ruling one. This phenomenon is as old as history itself. About the Peloponnesian War that devastated ancient Greece, the historian Thucydides explained: “It was the rise of Athens and the fear that this instilled in Sparta that made war inevitable.” Over the past 500 years, these conditions have occurred sixteen times. War broke out in twelve of them. Today, as an unstoppable China approaches an immovable America and both Xi Jinping and Donald Trump promise to make their countries “great again,” the seventeenth case looks grim. Unless China is willing to scale back its ambitions or Washington can accept becoming number two in the Pacific, a trade conflict, cyberattack, or accident at sea could soon escalate into all-out war.
In Destined for War, the eminent Harvard scholar Graham Allison explains why Thucydides’s Trap is the best lens for understanding U.S.-China relations in the twenty-first century. Through uncanny historical parallels and war scenarios, he shows how close we are to the unthinkable. Yet, stressing that war is not inevitable, Allison also reveals how clashing powers have kept the peace in the past — and what painful steps the United States and China must take to avoid disaster today.
http://www.npr.org/2017/05/29/530617244/destined-for-war-explores-how-to-avoid-unnecessary-future-conflicts
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/06/19/are-china-and-the-united-states-headed-for-war
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