Catching rats with the Thucydides Trap

Welcome back to Pestory, our occasional look at the intersection of history with, well, pests. This week, a deadly serious look at the future of humanity.

In the kind of circles where grand strategy and superpower politics is discussed, there’s a lot of talk these days about a thing called the Thucydides Trap. No, that’s not a better way to capture rodents (you’re clearly confusing it with EverSmart Pest). In fact, Thucydides Trap is a concept in geopolitical theory named for the Greek historian of the same name, often referred to at the Father of History, who wrote about what must have seen like the superpower conflict of his day: Athens vs. Sparta.

Basically, the Thucydides Trap proposes, not without evidence, that there’s a very good chance in any historical era that the dominant power of the day (read: United States for the moment) will find itself in a war with the up-and-coming challenger (read: China).

I hear you saying, “Yeah, scary stuff, pal. But what does this have to do with pests?” Bear with me. History requires patience.

Thucydides Trap is a very real phenomenon. When I’m not writing about rats and toilets and such, I teach a university course in something called Political Risk at the Korbel School of International Affairs at the University of Denver. I’ve done this for years, building on my former career as a risk consultant and foreign correspondent for various media outlets. Anyway, this term, one my required books is “Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides Trap?  (Spoiler Alert: The answer is maybe). As it turns out, rats and a plague they carried weakened Athens during ancient times, playing an important role in the downfall of this birthplace of democracy to Sparta, a militarized tyranny peopled by the kind of guys who crush beer cans against their foreheads.

Rats, in short, helped alter the balance of power in ancient Greece. From 430-427 BC, in the midst of terrible warfare inter-city-state warfare, the rat-borne Plague of Athens caused 75,000–100,000 deaths, including Athen’s famous leader, Pericles. The breakdown of social and political order that followed is vividly described by Thucydides himself.

Thucydides timeline of rivalry and war

“Well, who cares?” I hear you say. For one, I do. Those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it, and I, for one, don’t want some Spartan lurking outside my window in the morning, yelling: “You can’t handle the truth.”

And what about the Thucydides Trap? For those who doubt that it matters, the chart above from the author, Graham Allison, shows just how risky these rising power-dominant power rivalries can be. Only four times in the history of the Western World has the rising power and the dominant power managed to avoid war.

Happily, three of the four examples are from the 20^th Century, which means maybe humanity is capable of learning. But then, when you think about the 20^th Century, “peaceful coexistence” isn’t exactly the phrase that comes to mind, is it? It could be, I hope, that the stakes have simply become much higher since the creation of atomic weaponry. After all, if the Hapsburgs and the Swedes went at it in the first half of the 17^th Century, as the chart suggests, the world might have suffered a supply chain crisis of smoked cod roe and Linzer Tortes, but the species survived.

A US-China War? Let’s hope we don’t have to find out. Questions of war and peace won’t be left to rodents in this century. This time, it’s on us to avoid the Thucydides Trap.

Michael Moran is CMO, Chief Risk & Sustainability Officer at Microshare and a Lecturer in Political Risk at the University of Denver’s Korbel School of International Affairs. Check out part one of our Pestory series, where we told the story of the field mice that helped the Soviets win the Battle of Stalingrad in 1941-42, read “How field mice changed the course of WWII.” If you have any story ideas, sent them his way at mailto:mmoran@microshare.io. And to avoid tragedies like the Plague of Athens, deploy EverSmart™ Pest: #NoPestLeftBehind.