Is a third world war inevitable? A dramatic question, certainly, and one drawing a great deal of attention these days. The American national security establishment talks at length about the return of “great power competition;” major nuclear powers modernize their nuclear arsenals with greater capability and reliability; North Korea, a “rogue state,” develops nuclear weapons capabilities, while Iran, another unpredictable actor on the global stage, stands on the cusp and seems increasingly liable to calculate the benefits of nuclear weapons outweigh the risks; Russia engages in a war of territorial acquisition on NATO’s edge while China seeks to rewrite the rules of the Pax Americana world order; the apparent global consensus on major issues from economics to politics to arms control frays at national levels, while significant multilateral bodies appear increasingly impotent or worse; America’s current president is, rightly or wrongly, perceived widely as dangerously unpredictable (or so we are supposed to believe).
Certainly, there is no shortage of reasons for the question’s present salience, but it is a poorly defined question. Indeed, even the discussions of great power competition seem lacking in resolution and specificity, conducted, it seems, largely by unsober scholars without a realistic grounding in the ideas involved, strong incentives to abet the consensus without producing destabilizing ripples, and significant failures of imagination, or a subconscious unwillingness to directly confront the implications of their rhetoric. The Wall Street Journal even ran an essay suggesting we are already in the midst of a sort-of World War III, highlighting just how ambiguous the very notion is. Consciously or unconsciously, all these discussions are painted by the naïve notion which permeated certain political science circles at the end of the Cold War, that the transition away from the former bipolar order constituted a conclusion to the bloody, conflict-riddled human history which preceded, and a turn to a “post-history” in which international fora would serve to mediate the peaceful, profitable, and reasonable cooperation of states.
Those notions being thoroughly disproven by events, especially of the 21st century, these political scientists, analysts, and “experts” in the national security world are now faced with attempting to redevelop an understanding of a notion which had a generation or two to grow stale, while simultaneously adapting that prior sober comprehension to suit today’s multipolar order. It is not unreasonable to turn to history for insight, but history does not yield as clear of answers as a scientific dataset. Depending on which factors are examined, and the assumptions made in examining them, entirely different conclusions can be derived. In that sense, it may be more productive and insightful to analyze the rhetoric of the people doing the thinking than the particular contents of their writings.
This notion of inevitability, for instance. By drawing parallels to historical examples from varying perspectives, analysts and strategists conclude from a variety of viewpoints that an armed conflict between great powers is unavoidable in some 75% of cases similar to those of the present and near future, but the past is no predictor of future results, and history does not repeat itself, and only sometimes, as Mark Twain said, rhymes. We may make a particular future inevitable because we think it is inevitable more than because it was in itself inevitable.
It’s called Thucydides’ Trap. Graham Allison popularized the term with articles and a book, Destined for War, which has become all but required reading for the American national security establishment for how it speaks to the unease and insecurity therein contained. The name derives from a single line in Thucydides’ A History of the Peloponnesian War, where the historian asserts “it was the rise of Athens and the fear that this instilled in Sparta that made war inevitable.” This analysis is questionable, and Thucydides himself seems unlikely to have believed it the whole cause, but it is straightforward, sensational, and therefore appealing to our modern zeitgeist.
In a strategic assessment from 2020, Thomas Lynch and Frank Hoffman embrace Allison’s postulate with a four-part case study of great power competitions since the somewhat arbitrary date of the signing of the peace of Westphalia. In political science circles, the treaty of Westphalia is regarded as the beginning of an international order based on the premise of mutually recognized statehood, from which point Lynch and Hoffman assert “state-to-state competition has been multifaceted, incorporating an array of state interactions.” While true, this claim is unnecessarily limited – competition between state-like organizations of humans has been multifaceted since the days of ancient Sumer, although there is an argument to be made that conflict between American indigenes developed and played out along quite different dimensions. There is also an argument that UN interventions in state-to-state and intra-state conflicts and crises during the latter part of the twentieth century suggest geopolitical competition and organization is becoming post-Westphalian, although this argument, too, is lacking in rigor. Regardless, the authors use the mid-seventeenth century as a cut-off date, before which they do not consider any cases of so-called great power competition.
Competition between states can occur through a variety of means. The simplest framework may be DIME: diplomatic, intelligence, military, and economic. This leaves out significant venues for interstate competition, however, especially scientific and technological competition, and social and cultural competition. The National Defense Strategy, in discussing great power competition, uses a modified DIME approach, DIIME, and broadens the commonly held definitions of their components to include missing facets. DIIME: Diplomatic and political, Ideological, Informational, Military, and Economic. In examining cases of great power competition, Lynch and Hoffman find that only in 1/4th of cases (although they have so few cases under examination that I hesitate to grant that proportion statistical significance) does the competition remained confined to non-military dimensions, and many of those exceptions entailed exceptional circumstances, such as the particularity of the relationship between the US and Great Britain in the mid to late nineteenth century. Since it is commonly held that we are already in an era of great power competition, with that competition occurring primarily through economic, technological, and cultural means, the hawkish view suggested by Allison-adherents is that the competition will inevitably spill over into the military dimension.
Historical case studies make for the seeming of an empirical argument, but the real analysis taking place is more rationalistic in nature. In the analogy to the Peloponnesian War, the assumption is that the US is Sparta, the dominant geopolitical player, and that China is Athens, the rising challenger to the American-led global order. In other words, America is busy shuffling down the stairs in its silk slippers, and at some point it’s going to get spooked by the sound of China’s wooden shoes coming up, lash out, and then we’re in a third world war. A neat, convenient, straightforward read on the present geopolitical complexity…which is remarkably ungrounded in detailed analysis of the reality of the situation.
Even before the recent dynamism in international affairs (some of which is certainly overstated, and all of which awaits time to reveal its actual substance), depicting America and China in the role of waning and waxing power, respectively, was too simplistic a read. It does seem true in some dimensions, but in other dimensions the situation is complex, or even reversed, and the relationship overall between the two states is far more nuanced. Certainly, China does not view itself as a rising, new power on the global stage. On the contrary, they view themselves as returning to a place of power to which they are the rightful heirs. China’s historical perspective on itself and its role in the world is perhaps a better indicator of how it perceives its relationship to the United States and to multilateral bodies than America’s view of it as a disruptive force to the liberal world order. Nor does America view itself as a threatened, declining power. If anything, its current brand of foreign interaction under the second Trump administration is an assertive, peculiar admixture of bombast, realpolitik, and isolationism.
Complicating this international portrait are the domestic considerations, and it is here where the silk slippers metaphor becomes most relevant. The US – Western Civilization as a whole, to include western European countries and most elements of the international system composed of the United Nations and similar and related bodies – has produced for its citizens a higher standard of living than any in history. Oh, we can quibble over the definition of a standard of living, the philosophy and morality behind what a “high” or “low” standard would be, and the relativity inherent in those terms, but it is fair to say that at no time or place in world history have more people had easier or greater access to resources. In the form of supermarkets, fine dining, air travel, housing, medical technology, access to information and learning, and advanced technology, we’ve grown comfortable in our silk slippers, and we’ve forgotten what wooden shoes feel like on our feet. Indeed, most of us are generations removed from those wooden shoes, knowing only the silk, and find ourselves looking around and wondering how to do better than silk. Or, more perniciously, assuming we are somehow entitled to silk or better in the first place.
“History is filled with the sound of silken slippers going downstairs and wooden shoes coming up,” a quote attributed to Voltaire and which I explored in this post’s intellectual predecessor, “Silk Slippers of History,” is often misread as referring to comfort versus discomfort. It is not comfort that the silk slippers are intended to represent, but luxury and indulgence. Note that history is filled with the sound of silk slippers, not cotton, wool, rabbit fur, or (if the quote were from a more recent source) polyester-blend slippers. Indulgence, not comfort, is what leads those silken slipper-clad feet to slide down the stairs.
However, cultures, societies, and civilizations are not monolithic, despite the ease and ubiquity with which they are described in a cohesive, unified way. The real and perceived social mobility and equality of individuals superimposed upon the variety of potential outcomes means modern societies are dynamic and diverse in ways which earlier civilizations may not have been. Within a given society, there will be individuals whose feet have never known anything but silk, individuals who wear something comfortably utilitarian, and those who are still wearing wooden shoes, working their way up the stairs. To paint a whole civilization as decadent and on an inevitable downward path is unrealistically simplifying and reductionist, which is why arguments that the US and the larger system of Western Civilization are inevitably on their way down the stairs fall short. They lack nuance to acknowledge the continued dynamism within those civilizations, which is part of why Voltaire’s view of history fell out of favor.
Bemoaning the indulgence and laxity of the present in comparison to a more arduous, hardworking past is a time-honored tradition. Socrates did it. Tacitus’ Germania was written essentially to show the very principle Voltaire expressed, that the Romans were adrift from their roots in wooden shoes, putting on silk slippers, while those “barbarian” peoples from what would eventually become Germany were still growing tough, strong, and honorable in the face of their challenging land. Chinese royals did it in cycles, as captured in Romance of the Three Kingdoms. Ancient Egypt faced similar reckonings, and doubtless the same could be said of the Inca, the Maya, and the Aztecs, although their civilizations are less well-documented. Your parents did it, walking to school uphill both ways in the snow. This is not to say there is no legitimacy to such complaints, but it is to suggest they be approached without the credulity and fatality with which they are so often uttered.
All civilizations fall, in time. Sure, a civilization like China can trace back its roots for thousands of years, but its history is not so continuous as the name’s longevity suggests. Even its various dynasties did not last in a strong, coherent form as long as their names appear on the timeline. Its history is one of rises and falls in forms new and old and new again. China’s longevity as a concept does not preserve it or destine it for especial greatness. About to celebrate its two hundred and fiftieth year as a nation, neither does the US’s relative youth guarantee it a millennium to grow, nor does its unprecedented “success” set it up to fall. Civilizations are like waves. They rise and fall and rise again, undulating endlessly, with new ones arising and others disappearing into the vast sea, in a process that does not cease until they reach the shore, where they all must end. That terminus, history’s rocky shore, is somewhere out there, but beyond our vision. For now, we can see only the waves.
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