Out of double trap

The US faces difficult task of managing both external competition and internal pressures

For more than a decade, strategic debate in the United States has been echoing an influential proposition: the Thucydides Trap. Popularized by Harvard professor Graham Allison and inspired by the Peloponnesian War, the concept warns that the rise of an emerging power can generate dangerous structural tensions with an established one. Despite scholarly criticism and even dismiss across continents, the proposition has often been cited in the US to interpret the contemporary strategic competition with China.

Recently, Ian Bremmer, founder of the Eurasia Group, drew on lessons from the collapse of the Roman Republic to revive the concept of the Gracchi Trap. Unlike the Thucydides Trap, which attributes the risk of conflict primarily to the structural dynamics of external power competition, the Gracchi Trap directs attention to the internal sources of a great power's decline. It argues that major powers ultimately lose their preeminence because they fail to reform themselves in the face of mounting domestic dysfunction. Political paralysis, institutional decay, widening polarization and growing inequality progressively erode state capacity and national cohesion, leaving a great power increasingly vulnerable to external competition and strategic pressure.

Taken separately, both traps offer peculiar viewpoints for understanding the internality and externality of crises. Taken together, however, they present a far more challenging picture of strategic predicament for the United States, which is simultaneously confronting both external struggles for global leadership and the internal polarization of governance and legitimacy.

The Thucydides Trap is most commonly applied by people from the US to the context of relations with China, although many Asia-Pacific researchers have pinpointed its inherent logical faults, disregard of Chinese philosophical tradition and structural mismatch with current circumstances. As China's economic, technological and military capabilities expand, Washington increasingly views Beijing not merely as a competitor but as the only country capable of fundamentally reshaping the global balance of power. Successive US administrations — Republican and Democratic alike — have increasingly viewed the bilateral relationship through the lens of the Thucydides Trap, making strategic competition with China the organizing principle of US foreign policy.

This contest now extends far beyond the traditional domains of military and security competition. It encompasses advanced technologies such as artificial intelligence and semiconductors, global supply chains, investment screening, export controls, critical minerals, maritime security and competing visions of global governance. Relations between the world's two largest economies have had resounding impact on the rest of the world as well as global development.

Such structural competition undoubtedly generates significant risks. History demonstrates that power transitions have frequently been accompanied by miscalculation, arms races and, in some cases, major conflicts. Escalating tensions and even conflict cannot be dismissed by many US personalities. Yet, hopes have been refreshed by the new vision of a constructive China-US relationship of strategic stability agreed upon by both sides during the landmark visit to China by US President Donald Trump in May this year.

The Gracchi Trap, however, shifts analytical attention away from China and back to the US itself. The concept derives from the Gracchi brothers of the Roman Republic, whose attempts to reform an increasingly unequal political system ended not in compromise but in political violence. Their failure marked the beginning of decades of instability that ultimately contributed to the decline and eventual collapse of the Roman Republic. The central implication of the Gracchi Trap is straightforward: great powers often weaken from internal dysfunction long before they are overcome by external adversaries.

In the US, the warning signs have become increasingly difficult to ignore. Political polarization has reached levels unseen for generations. Congress increasingly struggles to pass major legislation. Electoral outcomes are routinely contested. Public trust in government institutions continues to decline. Social divisions over race, immigration, inequality, identity politics and economic opportunity have become deeply entrenched. Meanwhile, mounting fiscal pressures, rising public debt and deteriorating infrastructure further complicate the prospects for effective long-term governance.

These domestic contradictions inevitably shape US foreign policy. When governments face difficult internal challenges, they often seek external sources of political cohesion and strategic purpose. Adopting a more hawkish stance toward China can serve to generate domestic political unity and reinforce an "America First" identity. Economic difficulties are increasingly attributed to competition from China, while even long-standing allies are portrayed as having taken advantage of the US. At the same time, perceived external security threats often receive greater political attention than the pursuit of necessary structural reforms at home.

This interaction between domestic politics and international strategies demonstrates why the Thucydides Trap and the Gracchi Trap should not be understood in isolation. Rather, they are mutually reinforcing dynamics. External competition intensifies domestic political pressures, while domestic political dysfunction, in turn, encourages more confrontational foreign-policy choices. The result is a self-reinforcing cycle in which external competition and internal instability become mutually amplifying forces, potentially accelerating both strategic overextension abroad and institutional erosion at home.

This has important implications beyond the US. Much of Europe has historically aligned itself with the US' strategic assessment of China, while US allies across Asia and Latin America have also adjusted their security policies in response to intensifying US-China competition. As a result, the trajectory of US domestic politics is no longer merely a national concern; it increasingly shapes the stability, direction and strategic dynamics of the broader international system.

While some observers may interpret US political dysfunction as evidence of inevitable decline, the realities of economic globalization suggest a more complex and double-edged dynamic. The relative weakening of the US should not be regarded as an unqualified strategic advantage for China, given the extensive economic interdependence, cultural exchanges and people-to-people ties that have developed between the two countries. In other words, a weaker US does not necessarily benefit China. Rather, instability in the world's largest and most influential economy could generate profound uncertainties for the global system, with significant repercussions for China itself.

Historical analogies should be applied with caution. Neither the Thucydides Trap nor the Gracchi Trap should be taken as deterministic predictions. History does not mechanically repeat itself. Rather, these concepts highlight structural pressures that policymakers should seek to resolve rather than allow to unfold.

Avoiding the Thucydides Trap requires strategic trust-building, crisis-management mechanisms and sustained dialogue between the US and China. Avoiding the Gracchi Trap requires something even more difficult for the US: restoring public trust in the political system, strengthening domestic institutions, addressing widening inequalities and rebuilding national consensus.

Throughout history, great powers rarely collapse because they lose a single external confrontation. More often, they decline gradually because internal weaknesses prevent them from adapting to changing circumstances.

The future global order will therefore depend not only on how the US manages competition with China but also on whether it can overcome its own domestic fragmentation.

The author is a Yunshan leading scholar and the director of the European Research Center at Guangdong Institute for International Strategies at Guangdong University of Foreign Studies, and an adjunct professor of international relations at Aalborg University in Denmark.

The author contributed this article to China Watch, a think tank powered by China Daily. The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.

Contact the editor at editor@chinawatch.cn.