WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump blamed his predecessor Joe Biden for making the United States "a nation in decline" after Chinese President Xi Jinping invoked the name of an ancient Greek general to discuss U.S.-Chinese relations.
Xi, speaking to Trump on May 14 during their high-stakes Beijing summit, warned of the "Thucydides Trap," a political theory that war is the likely result when an emerging world power threatens to displace an existing power.
"Can China and the U.S. cross the so-called 'Thucydides Trap' and forge a new paradigm of great power relations?" Xi said through a translator. "Can we work together to tackle global challenges and inject more stability into the world?"
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The phrase "Thucydides Trap," popularized by American political scientist Graham Allison, refers to an observation of the Ancient Greek historian and commander Thucydides. "It was the rise of Athens and the fear that this instilled in Sparta that made war inevitable," Thucydides wrote in his late-5th century book, "History of the Peloponnesian War, that
