54th book of 2020. ** tl;dr: ** Read the cover, read the appendix, skip the rest.

‘Destined for War’ introduces the Thucydides trap, named after Thucydides’ recording of the war between Sparta and Athens. In this pattern, rising powers (e.g. Athens) can end up at war with dominant powers (e.g. Sparta) even though the outcome is against the interests of both parties. According to Graham, in 12/16 cases over the last 500 years, similar shifts in power balance have led to war. The book relies on practical history, using past examples to try predict future events. Indeed, this method seems to be the most effective means at predicting political outcomes, and is so simple that it’s baffling we don’t see more of it. Tetlock’s book on political predictions has good evidence on how this method is one of the best ways to make predictions about complex systems (i.e. politics), with repeatably better outcomes than what specific expertise (i.e. professors at Harvard) can achieve.

The book is divided into 3 sections: historical analogs, China overview, and avenues for change. Historical analogs covers in brief Athens vs. Sparta, the arms race of battleships in the early 20th century. The Athens Sparta conflict summary is a good model of the pessimistic scenario for Sino-American relations, England v. Germany less so. The China overview is sadly a few clippings from the Economist over the last 20 years mixed with a healthy dose of threat construction and orientalism. The one bright spot is an outline of past and future scenarios that did or could lead to war.

Previous conflicts between China and great powers:

  • Korean War: 1950-53
  • Sino-Soviet border: 1969 (reminiscent of India<>China border clashes)
  • Taiwan Strait Crisis 1996

Potential future conflicts:

  • Accidental collision at sea, near disputed islands
  • Taiwanese independence
  • North Korean collapse
  • War provoked by third party (North Korea, Japanese nationalists)
  • Economic conflict to military war (Japan WW2 analog)

The final section, learning from examples where war did not break out was interesting. The most relevant was the peaceful handoff of superpower status from the UK to the US in the late 19th and early 20th century. The Monroe doctrine, if applied to Sino-American relations today could very likely lead to war. The cold war, for all its failures, is also a successful example insofar as no hot war developed.

So why would you skip all this? The appendix has all 16 history cases with nice summaries and conclusions. Reading them it is easy to draw the parallels and differences, and to draw your own conclusions. There isn’t enough new information about China to justify reading the rest of the book, and since there is almost no discussion about which examples should apply to the present, you’ll have to do such thinking on your own anyways.