ABSTRACT
To avoid the United States and China falling into the Thucydides trap, both nations will be served if they embrace a strategy of Mutually Assured Restraint (MAR). Political scientists argue that history shows, since the days of the ancient Greeks, that when a new power arises and the old superpower does not yield ground quickly enough, wars ensue. 1 However, the record shows that there are no historical Iron Laws. Thus, Harvard’s Graham Allison points to four cases out of fifteen since the 16th century that were not followed by war—including the rise of the US as a global power in the 1890s. 2
