The mainstream press has been clamoring about Xi Jinping\u2019s remarks to President Trump regarding the \u201cThucydides Trap.\u201d Commentators have rushed to interpret the phrase as a new, ominous warning, with one \u201cexpert\u201d suggesting that Xi would never have dared speak in those terms had he not been emboldened by American weakness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
According to the New York Times<\/em>, Xi\u2019s recent words to President Trump were:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe world has come to a new crossroads. Can China and the United States transcend the \u2018Thucydides Trap\u2019 and forge a new framework for relations among major powers?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \\Presented this way, the casual reader could be forgiven for thinking this phrase was coined for Trump, or that it signals some new level of Chinese confidence in American decline. In reality, Xi has used this language for years, addressing it to several American administrations and to other foreign leaders as well. As has been reported, back in 2013 Xi told international leaders: \u201cWe need to work together to avoid the Thucydides Trap, which is a destructive tension between emerging powers and existing powers, or between two existing powers.\u201d Those words were first spoken when Barack Obama was president of the United States, long before the current media cycle discovered them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The \u201cquote from Thucydides\u201d to which Xi alludes distills a sober insight from the History of the Peloponnesian War<\/em>: that it was \u201cthe rise of Athens and the fear that this instilled in Sparta that made war inevitable.\u201d The warning is straightforward: when a rising power provokes fear in an established power, the resulting insecurity and miscalculation can drag both into great\u2011power war\u2014unless the dynamic is consciously checked. When Xi invokes the Thucydides Trap, he is not merely performing for the cameras; he is signaling how he understands the strategic relationship between China and the United States.<\/p>\n\n\n\n From the vantage point of an external observer looking at our domestic political turmoil, it would not be difficult to conclude that America is drifting into precisely the kind of weakness that would tempt ambitious rivals. I would go further: it has been Donald Trump, more than any other recent American leader, who has meaningfully altered that trajectory since Xi first began invoking this phrase. Xi is watching not only our military posture and economic statistics, but the resolve of the American people. He senses weakness when we doubt ourselves, and strength when we rally behind a leader who is willing to confront him in terms he understands.<\/p>\n\n\n\n History offers a useful metaphor. Alexander the Great is often credited with saying he would rather face a pack of wolves led by a lamb than a herd of sheep led by a wolf. For roughly 250 years, Americans have been that pack of wolves\u2014fierce, independent, and dangerous when roused\u2014led, at crucial junctures, by leaders who seemed to appear just when the nation most needed them. In recent decades, however, from George W. Bush through Barack Obama and then Joe Biden, we have too often been a strong people led by lambs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Now we face a different situation. We once again have a strong leader at the head of a strong people. That is what truly alarms Xi Jinping. He is a patient man, and no stranger to historical thinking, but all is not well within his own country. China faces economic strains, demographic decline, and internal discontent. Men like Xi understand only the language of strength. Communist dictators rise and rule through fear and coercive subjugation; there has never been an exception to that pattern, and Xi is certainly not the first to fit it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That is why it is encouraging that President Trump has not flinched in the face of Xi\u2019s repeated, thinly veiled references to the Thucydides Trap. The appropriate response to such a warning is not panic, nor is it capitulation. It is steady, disciplined strength\u2014moral as well as military\u2014backed by a people whose confidence is rooted in something deeper than economic output or technological prowess.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Rudyard Kipling, in his poem \u201cRecessional,\u201d wrote at a moment when the British Empire was beginning to crumble under the weight of its own bureaucratic imperialism. His warning still applies:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cO heathen heart that puts its trust Kipling\u2019s point was not that arms and industry are unimportant, but that any empire\u2014or republic\u2014that trusts only in its weapons and institutions, while abandoning the moral and spiritual truths that once animated it, is already hollow at the core. When nations forsake biblical and natural\u2011law truths, they eventually fail. That has been the pattern across the ages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Our strength has never resided solely in our GDP, our aircraft carriers, or our nuclear arsenal. It lies in our Greco\u2011Roman and Judeo\u2011Christian inheritance: the conviction that there is a moral law above the state, that human beings are endowed with inalienable rights, and that rulers themselves are accountable to a higher standard. If we do not return to those principles\u2014if our current Great Awakening falters and we continue to erode our own foundations from within\u2014then China will not need to fire a shot. The internal damage wrought by progressive ideologies and policies will be sufficient to ensure that America yields ground economically, politically, and ultimately militarily.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Kipling concluded with a plea that should be ours as well:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cGod of our fathers, be with us yet, That is the crux of our present crisis and the answer to Xi\u2019s calculated invocation of Thucydides. The question is not only whether America and China can avoid the Thucydides Trap in some abstract, geopolitical sense. It is whether the American people still have the resolve to stand against totalitarianism, as we did when we saved the world from Fascist regimes in WWI and II and when seven hundred thousand young lives were sacrificed to destroy the evils of slavery and fulfill the promises of our great Founding Documents.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The mainstream press has been clamoring about Xi Jinping\u2019s remarks to President Trump regarding the \u201cThucydides Trap.\u201d Commentators have rushed to interpret the phrase as a new, ominous warning, with one \u201cexpert\u201d suggesting that Xi would never have dared speak in those terms had he not been emboldened by American weakness. According to the New York […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":19882,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1051],"tags":[281,237],"class_list":["post-19881","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-john-livingston","tag-china","tag-donald-trump","cat-1051-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gemstatepatriot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19881","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gemstatepatriot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gemstatepatriot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gemstatepatriot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gemstatepatriot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19881"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gemstatepatriot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19881\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19883,"href":"https:\/\/gemstatepatriot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19881\/revisions\/19883"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gemstatepatriot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19882"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gemstatepatriot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19881"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gemstatepatriot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19881"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gemstatepatriot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19881"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
In reeking tube and iron shard,
All valiant dust that builds on dust,
And, calling, calls not on the Lord.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Lest we forget\u2014lest we forget.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n