Destined For War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides’s Trap? by Graham Allison
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Almost everything that Elon Musk tweets about can be safely dismissed as either trash or bias. However, his recommendation of this book on Twitter seems useful.
China and the US seem to be on a collision course. However, the book teaches us that in four out of the sixteen similar situations in history, with crafty politics and skillful diplomacy, devastating wars were avoided.
Do you know why Brazil is a Portuguese-speaking country while the rest of South America is Spanish? This is because Portugal (then the most powerful country, like the US today) and emerging Spain (like China) reached an agreement to peacefully divide the continent to avoid a devastating war for both countries. The Pope intervened and convinced monarchs that the pie is big enough for both parties and that it doesn’t make sense to kill each other.
The book is a great mix of Greek mythology, contemporary geopolitics, economics, and history, peppered with good story-telling. It’s an excellent primer for anyone who wants to understand the reasons for the rift in relations between China and the USA in recent years. If you like history, you will love this book, as it analyses sixteen war stories between 400 BC and World War 2.
One thing that I learned from the book is that PPP (Purchasing Power Parity) is a better metric to compare nations than GDP (Gross Domestic Product), as the former indicates what you can buy with that money rather than actually comparing absolute values.
This is a must-read for anyone who wants to understand the current state of affairs between the US and China and where it might be headed.
“Let China Sleep, For When She Wakes, She Will Shake The World—Napoleon Bonaparte
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