Review: The Inevitable War

By Graham Allison

2500 years ago, the Greek Historian Thucydides wrote: ““It was the rise of Athens and the fear that this instilled in Sparta that made war inevitable.”

Allison, Graham. Destined For War. HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.

These words have proven prophetic. Allison and his colleagues have analyzed a series of changes in the balance of powers in the world and found that they have often led to war, perhaps most catastrophically in the early Twentieth Century when the rising power of Germany ultimately led to the First world War and its aftermath, including the Second World War. 

Today it is the rise of China, which has now become the world’s largest economy and is in the process of becoming a military superpower which poses the threat.  Neither Thucydides 2500 years nor the Allison much more recently believed that war was truly inevitable, however.  Rather, it is the missteps of leaders and nations that lead to war, and Allison believes that if we are to avoid a truly catastrophic war with China, both the US and China need to start thinking and acting wisely.

China has a rather deep understanding of the US.  Xi Jinping, now the autocrat of China, like many other senior Chinese leaders, sent his only daughter to Harvard rather than to one of the many excellent Chinese universities.  The same cannot be said of the US and its understanding of China.  Instead, deep knowledge of China is confined to a small number of academics, intelligence analysts, and diplomats – Allison and colleagues.

Much of the book is devoted to a description of modern China, its economic transformation, its nationalism and resentment of past humiliations, and the continuing rule of the still Marxist-Leninist Chinese Communist Party.

Professor Allison also describes in detail how some sixteen earlier episodes of a similar change in the role of the dominant and rising superpowers evolved.  Most ended in war, but the lessons of those that did not are at least equally instructive.

The author makes a good case that the road to avoid war is narrow and perilous.  Many missteps have already been made: Trump’s reckless trade war and trashing of our alliances, Nancy Pelosi’s foolish stunt visit, the reckless stoking of anti-Chinese racism by some in the US.

China is well aware of the forces of division in the US.  If the US, and the West more generally cannot get its act together Chinese victory is all but certain, or worse, a war that destroys both the US and China.  I found his argument persuasive, and recommend it to anyone.