Summary
It is no secret that the current world order seems to be shifting, especially since the pandemic of 2020. As of now, The United States stands as the unipolar leader in global affairs, but recently China has emerged as a new economic / militaristic competitor for hegemonic power. Additionally, nation-states with opposing interests have begun to test the will of the United States by deliberately disregarding international norms that have been in place since the end of World War II. The grand example being the Russian invasion of Ukraine, but others include the formation of BRICS, China's persistent encroachment and seemingly inevitable annexation of territories like Hong Kong and Taiwan, and Saudi Arabia considering selling oil in Yuan instead of Dollars. In his recent article, Kroenig briefly expresses his concern of the world falling into a "Thucydides Trap". Although pessimistic, the idea is not so farfetched considering that the world has been going through a cycle of multilateral, bilateral, unilateral international world orders since the Peloponnesian Wars of the classical antiquity. Will a war occur? If the countries continue to act as they are currently doing, the odds of war seem to grow higher.
One reply on “Week 2 Blog”
Benjamin,
Thanks for completing the blog post assignment for Week #2. And just an observation that even the author of the “Thucydides Trap” concept, Professor Graham Allison at Harvard, notes that it is NOT inevitable that the rising power (China) will ultimately be at war with the dominant power (the United States). But if our two countries are to avoid going to war, there will need to be much more aggressive diplomacy and compromises by both sides. –Professor Wallerstein