The Origin of Thucydides’s Trap
The term Thucydides’s Trap was popularised by Professor Graham Allison’s 2017 book Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides’s Trap?. It draws on Greek soldier-historian Thucydides’s History of the Peloponnesian War, where he identifies the structural stress that occurs when a rising power threatens an established one.
From Athens to the White House
Thucydides entered U.S. policy circles with Dr. Henry Kissinger, who had taught the text at Harvard. When Kissinger joined Richard Nixon’s administration, he sought to apply the Melian Dialogue’s line, “The strong exact what they can; the weak concede what they must,” as a slogan for Cold War strategy. Kissinger himself recognised the nuance of Thucydides’s message, but the simplified interpretation has influenced U.S. policymakers ever since.
The Plague and Moral Decay
Thucydides’ narrative begins in Book Two with the Plague of Athens (430 BCE). He describes a city where indiscriminate death erodes law (nomos) and religious restraint. Citizens abandon honour for instant gratification, arguing that the virtuous and the wicked die alike. This loss of moral constraint (anomia) institutionalises a new ethos: self-interest and survival replace civic virtue. The plague also claimed Pericles and his family, symbolising the demise of nomos.
From Cleon to the Melian Dialogue
The internal lawlessness that emerged after the plague manifests in the Mytilenian debate between Cleon and Diodotus. Cleon advocated executing all citizens of Mytilene to send a terror message, while Diodotus persuaded the assembly to reverse the decision. Athens still imposed a brutal punishment on the city. In the Melian Dialogue (416 BCE), Athenian envoys declare that “the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must,” a worldview that directly descends from the plague’s nihilism.
The Sicilian Expedition and Hubris
Book Six shifts to the Sicilian Expedition (415-413 BCE). Nicias, representing old Athenian moderation, warns against overreach. The plague-damaged psyche, now driven by imperial appetite, rejects restraint and rallies behind Alcibiades, who appeals to the city’s desire for expansion. The expedition ends in disaster, with Athens reduced to the same desperate reliance on hope and suffering that they had ridiculed at Melos.
A Tragic Warning
Thucydides’s narrative shows that the danger of power overreach lies not only in external opposition but also in the internal erosion of moral and intellectual clarity. The lawlessness born in the plague becomes strategic blindness, leading Athens to mock the Melians and ultimately to its own destruction in Sicily. The article argues that modern scholars and policymakers must analyse Thucydides’s history in view of its hermeneutics rather than cherry-picking episodes to justify their own approaches.
