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Thucydides Trap

1. Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides’s Trap? https://www.belfercenter.org/thucydides-trap/overview-thucydides-trap

2. “Prospect Of U.S.-China War Rising” After US Warships Sail Through Taiwan Strait https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-10-23/graham-allison-tensions-taiwan-strait-prospect-us-china-war-rising

3. History of Peloponnesian war

4. What is Thucydides’s Trap? https://www.quora.com/What-is-Thucydides%E2%80%99s-Trap

The Thucydides Trap is a theory proposed byGraham Allison who postulates that war between a rising power and an established power is inevitable:

“It was the rise of Athens and the fear that this instilled in Sparta that made war inevitable.” Thucydides from“The History of the Peloponnesian War”

The two key drivers allegedly being “the rising power’s growing entitlement, sense of its importance, and demand for greater say and sway, on the one hand, and the fear, insecurity, and determination to defend the status quo this engenders in the established power, on the other.”

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US-China trade war: Opinion Home Opinion All stories From trade war to third world war? From Korea to the South China Sea, Trump’s tariffs risk escalation

Source: https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/united-states/article/2154568/trade-war-third-world-war-korea-south-china

Go one step beyond that, and countries are going to begin blockading shipping and closing borders entirely. Finally, there is the danger of war as the only recourse that some leaders will decide is needed to set matters straight again.

Think of Chinese support for North Korea: Pyongyang relies on Beijing for virtually all its oil and a large percentage of its food, among many other items. If the US fails in its dialogue with North Korea over denuclearisation and the danger of war again hovers over the Korean peninsula, China would surely side with North Korea, as it did in the Korean war.

The stand-off with China extends all round the rim of Asia, down to the South China Sea and on to the Indian Ocean and the Arabian Sea, and beyond.

Korea’s trade surplus with the US last year was US$23.1 billion, down from a high of US$28.3 billion in 2015 but still considerably more than US trade officials would like.

Japan, whose surplus with the US last year reached US$68.8 billion, down from a peak of US$76.4 billion in 2012 but still far too high.

With numbers like these, it’s easy to see why Trump is talking so tough about the trade deficit while America’s trading partners are outraged by moves to cut it.

The fear, however, is that these nasty battles could eventually explode into armed conflict in which hundreds of millions, maybe billions, would perish. Policymakers and negotiators have to keep this risk at the top of their concerns as they confront one another in a global trade war that could someday erupt into the third world war.

 

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War and Peace quotes

Everyone will have defects, like God bitten apple, some people defect is relatively large, it is because God particularly like his (or her) fragrance.

任何看似愚蠢的东西，它一定也有值得喝彩的地方。

生命，生活，只有在这个时候才能被人感觉出它的美好，在平时往往被人忽略的内涵。其实生命的真正意义在于能够自由地享受阳光，森林，山峦，草地，河流，在于平平常常的满足。其它则是无关紧要的。

The higher a man stands on the social ladder, the more people he is connected with and the more power he has over others, the more evident is the predestination and inevitablitlity of his action.

A king is history’s slave.

“Never, never marry, my dear fellow! That’s my advice: never marry till you can say to yourself that you have done all you are capable of, and until you have ceased to love the woman of your choice and have seen her plainly as she is, or else you will make a cruel and irrevocable mistake. Marry when you are old and good for nothing- or all that is good and noble in you will be lost. It will all be wasted on trifles. Yes! Yes! Yes! Don’t look at me with such surprise. If you marry expecting anything from yourself in the future, you will feel at every step that for you all is ended, all is closed except the drawing room, where you will be ranged side by side with a court lackey and an idiot!… But what’s the good?…” and he waved his arm.