Where the hegemons meet: rethinking the Thucydides Trap, from Hellas to the pacific

Graham Allison’s influential Thucydides Trap framework has dominated policy discourse on US-China relations, yet its historical foundation rests on a misreading of ancient Greek power structures. Through careful analysis of the pre-war period (480-431 BCE), this paper demonstrates four critical flaws in Allison’s framework. First, Athens was not a rising power but had already consolidated its imperial position decades before the war. Second, Sparta lacked the institutional mechanisms and strategic reach necessary to function as a comprehensive ruling power over the Greek world. Third, the outbreak of war resulted not from shifting power dynamics characteristic of power transition, but from the geographical and institutional overlap of established hegemonic spheres. Fourth, examining strategic culture and military structure reveals that the conventional role assignments should be reversed: America resembles the expansionist, alliance-building maritime power of Athens, while China exhibits characteristics more analogous to the defensive, continental power of Sparta. This essay proposes an alternative ‘hegemonic overlap’ framework that emphasises spatial rather than temporal dynamics, focusing on the overlap of influence spheres. Applied to contemporary US-China relations, this reconceptualisation suggests conflict risk derives not through inevitable power transition, but from specific regional flashpoints where American and Chinese spheres of influence overlap.