Thucydides, who lived in ancient Greece around 2500 years ago, is the author of History of the Peloponnesian War, which recorded the conflicts between two Greek city-states Sparta and Athens. Thucydides’s work set the foundation of the realist tradition.

It is assumed that the most well-known argument in Thucydides’s masterpiece should be that the root cause of the great conflict between Athens and Sparta was the rising of Athens and the fear this caused in Sparta.

In other words, Athens and Sparta were caught in a security dilemma or security trap, which, as many have thought, made the war inevitable. Some also name the security trap as “Thucydides Trap”.

Then to argue for the inevitability of the war between the two Greek city-states, some observers have intended to use a scenario of “Prisoner’s Dilemma” to depict the security dilemma faced by the two Greek powers.

Here is a possible scenario of “Prisoner’s Dilemma” - two criminal suspects jointly committed a crime, were arrested and put into two different cells of the same prison by the police. To make a fair charge, the police need to get enough information from them. The amount of information uncovered would directly lead to three possible results: If the two suspects all stay in silence, both of them would possibly get a lighter punishment; if one of them stays in silence while the other uncovers the criminal information, the one keeping in silence would be more heavily charged; if both of them choose to uncover their deeds, they would get the same degree of punishment. What is most likely to happen, under the pre-condition that there is no chance of communication between the two suspects, should be that both of them would attempt to cheat on the other in order to get a lighter punishment. Therefore, the two prisoners finally are trapped in a security dilemma, and this kind of dilemma cannot be overcome.

By connecting the scenario of “Prisoner’s Dilemma” to the security situation faced by two states, an ultimate conflict between two states, as many may have maintained, would be inevitable.

The purpose of this analysis is to rethink of the “Thucydides Trap” argument by assessing whether it is appropriate to put an analogy between two states and two prisoners in terms of the dilemma faced by the two different groups; then it will try to understand the “Thucydides Trap” argument in today’s world to examine whether and how it could be possible for state actors to surpass it.

To answer the above questions well, this piece assumes that the starting point is to re-check briefly of what had happened 2500 years ago during the Peloponnesian War among the Greek city-states, through which, to see whether there could be any limits and deflections in Thucydides’s assessment on the root cause of war.

For the full text of this research analysis, please click the following link:

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