Graham Allison on the Risks of a US-China War

SPEAKER_2 (0:02)

Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio, news.

Tracy Alloway (0:18)

Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots Podcast. I'm Tracy Alloway.

Joe Weisenthal (0:22)

And I'm Joe Weisenthal.

Tracy Alloway (0:23)

Joe, in preparation for this conversation today, I sat down this morning, we're recording on, what is it, November 20th.

Joe Weisenthal (0:30)

That's correct.

Tracy Alloway (0:31)

And I typed US. China into Google News results.

Joe Weisenthal (0:35)

You just see what the latest is.

Tracy Alloway (0:37)

Here is a selection of headlines. US. Commission says China could invade Taiwan with little advance warning. China leveraged India-Pakistan conflict to trial and tout its military strengths. Pacific Islands on front line of future U.S.-China war. And then finally, the U.S.-China chip war. Are we ready?

Joe Weisenthal (0:56)

I was just going to say, I feel like the chips in particular, every other day, there's a different headline about what's allowed or what's not. But to your point, this is the story. I mean, there's AI, there's a couple other things, and then the U.S.-China relationship.

Tracy Alloway (1:09)

Absolutely. And it seems almost inevitable at this point that we talk about US and China in competitive terms, right? And also in militaristic terms. And this has been going on for as long as I can remember at this point.

Joe Weisenthal (1:23)

It's building up, right? Like really in the last decade, you know, when we were younger, I thought, oh, we're just going to trade together and maybe they'll even liberalize and become a liberal democracy one day. It didn't happen. But in the last 10 years or nine years, it's really picked up how much people are framing this in military terms.

Tracy Alloway (1:40)

Well, I wrote that paper back in like 2002, that China was going to invade Taiwan by the 2008 Olympics. So my view of this might be different to yours. My view has also been proven to be incredibly incorrect. So I'll leave it at that. But, you know, we recorded this episode with Henry Wang a few months ago, where we were talking about US-China relations. And he mentioned one person and he said, you got to get him on the show. You got to get his perspective on this view of US-China competition. And are we doomed, destined, to end up in a military conflict? So here we are. We're going to do it.

Joe Weisenthal (2:16)

We're in his office. Let's do it.

Tracy Alloway (2:17)

All right. We have, in fact, the perfect guest. We have Professor Graham Allison. He is the Douglas Dillon Professor of Government at Harvard University. And he, of course, is the one who coined the term the Thucydides Trap to describe the potential outcome of US-China competition. So really, the perfect person to speak to about this. Professor Allison, thank you so much for coming on Odd Lots.

Graham Allison (2:41)

Thank you so much for having me.

Tracy Alloway (2:43)

So I mentioned the Thucydides Trap, and I think a lot of listeners will know what it is. And probably a substantial portion of our listeners are really into ancient Greek history and know all about it. But when you first came up with that term, was there a light bulb moment in your head where you thought like this is the way to characterize the future of US and China relations?

Graham Allison (3:06)

So thank you. And the answer is yes. I think I had actually Speaker Kevin McCarthy here at a forum event a couple of nights ago, and he was reminding me that when he was trying to figure out what was happening with China, he called me up and he said, would you give me a tutorial? I said, of course, I'd be honored to. We started this conversation. And his first question when we began was, what the hell is going on here?

Tracy Alloway (3:35)

That should have been my first question.

Graham Allison (3:37)

It's a very good question. Basically, here every day and every way, somehow or another there's a story about China threat, China competition, China, China, China. I said, in a word, if you're trying to capture this in a phrase, this is a classic lucidity and rivalry. So China is a meteoric rising power.

Never before in history has a nation risen so far so fast on so many different dimensions. A country that we couldn't even find in our rear-view mirror at the beginning of the century because it was so far behind us. It's very hard to find in our rear-view mirror today because it's either beside us or ahead of us, if you think about it, rivalry. So a meteoric rising power. The US is a colossal ruling power. Never since Rome has a country been so powerful in so many different dimensions for such an amazing period of time. In fact, I just have a piece. It will be in Foreign Affairs next week on the longest piece. This is the longest period without Great Power War since Rome. 80 years we celebrated in September without Great Power War. Historically, every generation or two, for the last few thousand years, there's been Great Power Wars. So amazing, colossal ruling power, who's not only been good for itself, but actually good for an international piece. So Thucydides, when he was trying to understand what the hell was going on in ancient Greece, wrote about what he called the rise of Athens and the fear that this instilled in Sparta that made war virtually inevitable. So think about a seesaw on a kid's playground, and one heavy is on the one end, and one light is on the other. And the heavy is kind of in control. I can jiggle you if I want to, blah, blah, blah. Now all of a sudden, the light starts heavying up.