Part 5: Thucydides Trap vs Kindleberger Trap

Current Harvard University Professor Joseph S. Nye Jr. who served as the Chairman of the National Intelligence Council between 1993 to 1994 under the Clinton Administration and subsequently as Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs between 1994 to 1995, wrote in early Jan 2017 in an article in ProjectSydicate.org before the inauguration (20 Jan 2017) of current US President Donald Trump about what history has in store for him ... The following are extracts from that article:

"As US President-elect Donald Trump prepares his administration’s policy toward China, he should be wary of two major traps that history has set for him. The “Thucydides Trap,” cited by Chinese President Xi Jinping, refers to the warning by the ancient Greek historian that cataclysmic war can erupt if an established power (like the United States) becomes too fearful of a rising power (like China). But Trump also has to worry about the “Kindleberger Trap”: a China that seems too weak rather than too strong.
Charles Kindleberger, an intellectual architect of the Marshall Plan who later taught at MIT, argued that the disastrous decade of the 1930s was caused when the US replaced Britain as the largest global power but failed to take on Britain’s role in providing global public goods. The result was the collapse of the global system into depression, genocide, and world war. Today, as China’s power grows, will it help provide global public goods?
In domestic politics, governments produce public goods such as policing or a clean environment, from which all citizens can benefit and none are excluded. At the global level, public goods – such as a stable climate, financial stability, or freedom of the seas – are provided by coalitions led by the largest powers."

As many foreign ministers and public servants working in foreign affairs would be aware, the current international political system of nation states has existed since the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648. Another renowned Harvard University political scientist at the John F Kennedy School of Government Professor Graham T. Allison Jr. observed in his 2017 book "Destined for War: Can the Americans and China avoid Thucydides Trap?" that since the late 15th century, there were about 16 historical case studies of Thucydides' Trap out of which 75% of them (12 cases) ended up in wars and the remaining 25% (4 cases) avoidance of wars.

In 2015 when China President Xi JinPing met the then US President Barack Obama, President Xi noted in his speech: "The US and China need to work together to avoid Thucydides Trap - destructive tensions between an emerging power and established powers: should major countries time and again make the mistakes of strategic miscalculation, they might create such traps for themselves."

On that, former US President Barack Obama said: "I don't agree with the interpretation of Thucydides Trap that an established power must have conflict with an emerging power. Major powers like China and the US must prevent conflicts as much as possible. I believe the two countries are capable of managing the disagreement."

Alas, when current US President Donald Trump was elected, the first "act" he did was to "shred" the TPP agreement "into pieces" ...

Could US President Donald Trump still have gone ahead with his recent trade walls he erected against several countries' imports ranging from solar panels, refrigerators, steel, aluminium etc if he did not oppose TPP at the outset?

Post by Concerns of a Heartland Sinkie