Introduction

The Peloponnesian War, documented by Greek general and historian Thucydides, has given us a unique perspective of what has recently been termed the Thucydides trap.1 It essentially implies a tendency for war when a rising power threatens to displace an existing power. It was most evidently seen in the existing power of Sparta as it felt threatened by a rising Athens after a Greco-Persian wars of the fifth century BCE with its democratic values and social institutions.2 It led Sparta to attack Athens, first in 459 BCE and then breaking the ‘Thirty Years’ of peace again in 431 BCE, in a war that ultimately lasted 27 years. It devastated the Greek civilisation from which the Greek World could never fully recover.3 There are similarities to the Greek circumstances that exist between the United States and China today that we may argue could lead to a war between them, but also major differences in numerous aspects that do indicate friction and heightened tensions but may not lead to an actual war.4 Meanwhile, the Philippines is stuck at the crossroads with its central geographical location in the South China Sea and evinces interest in bonding with both China and the US. But history cannot be altered, just the way the future cannot be predicted. It would still be beneficial to understand the similarity of conditions in the 21st Century to comprehend the position of the Philippines in this great power rivalry and to assess if she will be the spark that ignites the fire, just like Corcyra and Corinth did 2500 years ago.

US and China – The Tale So Far

The fall of the USSR in 1991 led to the creation of a somewhat Unipolar World Order in which the US as the lone superpower enjoyed considerable influence all across. The US dominated the world economy, shaped international relations, influenced opinions and to a great degree controlled the overall geopolitics of the world.5 But the void left by the disintegration of the USSR in 1991 was slowly but steadily occupied by another communist state, the erstwhile Middle Kingdom of China.

China emerged, from what it terms ‘its century of humiliation,’ in 1949 as the most populous communist state in the world. Another two decades of misrule through ill-conceived policies such as the Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution kept the nation in isolation from the international community as well as from realising its true potential.6 All that changed in the late seventies with the opening of the Chinese economy to the world by Deng Xiaoping and subsequent economic reforms which in the present day are termed ‘Capitalism with Chinese Characteristics.’7 In terms of military might, China already has the largest navy in the world having overtaken the US Navy and its modernisation has been astounding, to say the least.8 China has the second largest economy after the US, and may have surpassed its biggest rival in Purchasing Power Parity (PPP). In such a situation, China has aggressively embarked on its mission to do what all great powers do: increase one’s sphere of influence.

The Pursuit of Influence

The Taiwan Strait Crisis of 1996 reinforced the need for military superiority, dovetailed with economic prosperity as the vital ingredient for becoming a great power. China’s rise in the last two decades has put it at odds with the world’s established powers. As it tries to further expand its sphere of influence, it has used tools of economic coercion under the garb of assistance and challenged the sovereignty of nations through historical claims and unfair trade practices. Highlighted below are a few Chinese actions that stand out from a long list which have ruffled feathers in the international community:

  • The issue of re-unification of Taiwan with China. China has a strict ‘One China’ policy in regard to Taiwan. Although the US adheres to this position, it supports Taiwan militarily. This could be the biggest flashpoint in the South China Sea.9

  • Chinese claims of absolute sovereignty in the South China Sea within the nine-dash line that practically covers the entire region have led to several skirmishes between China and its neighbouring countries who are now contesting their maritime zones. It’s quite ironic that the US tries to assert UNCLOS which was never ratified in the US Congress, while China, though a signatory, does not honour it.

  • The Belt and Road Initiative started by President Xi Jinping is a major economic assistance development model where China provides infrastructure development through government-sanctioned loans. The legitimacy of this project has been under question as some recipient countries seem to be falling into debt burdens, commonly called ‘debt traps.’ Moreover, infrastructure projects have been seen to benefit Chinese corporations more than anyone else and overall generate more debt than revenue.10 Its flagship project, the China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) has become a prime example of the dubious value that BRI brings. Besides, since it runs through the disputed Pakistan Occupied Kashmir, overall, the BRI has been a sore point for New Delhi.

  • Other practices such as human rights violations in Xinjiang, territorial disputes with India, harsh treatment and disappearances of peaceful protestors in Hong Kong, unfair trade practices aimed at economic coercion, secrecy regarding the origins of the COVID virus that rattled the world and patent rights violations through reverse engineering, creation of military infrastructure in other countries etc, have all been under much greater international scrutiny.

A Clash of Ideologies and the Thucydides Trap

For a long time now, the US has got accustomed to being at the top of every pecking order in the world. It is greatly discomforting for them to be seen lagging behind another country. Graham Allison analyses in his 2017 book, Destined for War, 16 instances of the so-called ‘Thucydides Trap.’ In twelve of those 16 instances, the outcome was war. This adds up to a staggering 75%! Might it mean that a war between the US and China is inevitable or is there something more to it?

Is a Clash Really Inevitable?

In the sixteen instances analysed by the author, Graham Allison, it has also been observed that both the rising as well as the already risen power never quite wanted to go to war despite serious issues between them. Instead, they have always been drawn into a conflict due to a third party. In the Peloponnesian War, it was the conflict between Corinth and Corcyra, while in the First World War, it was due to the aftermath of the killing of Archduke Franz Ferdinand by a Serbian mercenary in circumstances where fundamental issues between Slavic urge to break away, Russian support for Slavs, the Austro-Hungarian Empires dominance over the Balkans, etc always formed the basis of serious tensions. Ferdinand’s assassination proved to be the enabling trigger, almost with inevitability. In today’s case, the most likely third-party would be Taiwan or the Philippines in the South China Sea, both of which have rival claims against the nine-dash line. These outcomes are likely, but not inevitable. There are some strong indicators which go against the Thucydides trap in the case of the US and China.

  • Trade. US and China today are involved so deeply in trade that a conflict could unravel respective societies. While China is the third largest trade partner of the US, it is the number one destination for Chinese exports with bilateral trade amounting to over US $550 billion.11 Economic prosperity therefore will play a key role in deciding whether the two states go to war undermining their trade relations. Another factor is the overall impact on the world economy. If the Russia-Ukraine war could disturb the global economic balance, when neither of the countries is a major economic power, a clash between the top two world economies could be disastrous, to say the least.

  • Nuclear Powers. Both states are nuclear powers. Thus far, the only instance of nuclear weapons usage was in World War 2. Liberal thinkers of International Relations have argued that the presence of nuclear arsenals in nations today has contributed to peace rather than confrontation, due to the realisation of ill-effects of escalation and near-total destruction.12

  • International Community. Decisions taken by states today are, to a great degree, influenced by other nations. In such a scenario, dissuasion by the international community could play a significant role in conflict prevention.

  • Public Opinion. In democracies, and to some extent even in totalitarian regimes, governments are more accountable to the public and their policies are often shaped by public opinion. The decision to go to war, therefore, does not only lie with the political leadership, but its rightful justification to the public will reduce the chances of a conflict.

Philippines - Caught at the Cross Roads

The Philippines has had a troubled past, an uneasy present and faces an uncertain future. The country was first ruled by the Spanish for more than three centuries and then by the US for about five decades before finally gaining independence on 04 July 1946. The US has had a long-standing Mutual Defense Treaty (sic) with the Philippines signed in August 1951. It not just allowed military support by the US in case the Philippines was attacked but the Visiting Forces Agreement allowed the stationing of US troops in the islands. However, the enemy was not external but from within. The country has been mired in internal security operations, countering the communist insurgents in the northern island of Luzon, while Islamic extremism spread in the southern island of Mindanao. For more than six decades, the focus of the Armed Forces of the Philippines has been towards Internal Security Operations leaving them grossly unprepared against the expansive maritime claims of China in the South China Sea, or what the Filipinos like to call the West Philippine Sea.13

Considering the last three administrations’ attempts at balancing US-China interests in the Philippines will give the reader a better understanding of the precarious position that the island country is trapped within elements of great power rivalry. China is the Philippines’ biggest trading partner while the US is its strongest military ally. Successive governments in the Philippines have had varying approaches towards their warming up to the US and acting against the Chinese threat in their maritime zones given their strategic dilemma - how should a militarily weak Philippines deal with an ever more powerful China? Ultimately, Arroyo (President from 2001-2010) and Duterte (2016-2022) crafted their strategies based on an acceptance of Philippine’s inferiority; Aquino (2010-2016), on the other hand, devised his by seeking ways to overcome it.

Neighbour First Policy

The Philippine military was never a priority for President Arroyo. One can argue whether that was a cause or effect of the series of military mutinies that dogged her administration. In either case, nearly a decade of neglect significantly weakened the Philippine military’s capacity for external defence. Without any effective capability to protect the Philippines’ maritime claims, Arroyo appeared to make an implicit bargain by exchanging a managed erosion of Filipino claims for economic development assistance from China. To that end, she devised an accord called the Joint Marine Seismic Undertaking (JMSU) that permitted the national oil companies of China, the Philippines, and Vietnam to cooperatively explore energy resources in their disputed waters. The accord was structured in a way that suggested that Manila recognised the legitimacy of the other countries’ South China Sea claims, an admission that Beijing had long sought.14 Meanwhile, she signed some 65 bilateral agreements with China in all. Unfortunately for Arroyo, the JMSU never went into effect, running afoul of the Philippine constitution, which bars any compromise of national sovereignty.

When Duterte became president, he seemed to take a page from Arroyo’s strategic playbook, albeit with visions of grander deals, given the advent of China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and the China-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. Duterte quickly sought to befriend China. He ended Aquino’s confrontational stance and “set aside” the PCA’s ruling, which offered greater international recognition to Philippine claims in the South China Sea as little more than “a piece of paper.”15 And like Arroyo, he sought a deal with China to jointly explore energy resources in the South China Sea. He even signed a memorandum of understanding with Beijing to that end in 2018, once again raising the prospect of joint energy development, however legally unfeasible, in the disputed waters.

To further demonstrate his shift towards China, Duterte announced a “separation” from the United States. He ended joint Philippine-US maritime patrols of the South China Sea and, for a time, joint Philippine-US military exercises. He also ordered American troops stationed in the Philippines to leave. Finally, in early 2020, he cancelled the Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA), which had allowed American troops to be deployed in the Philippines under special dispensations like Status of Forces Agreements. Although the cancellation was revoked just four months later, Duterte made no secret of his overall aim: he wanted the Philippines to have a foreign policy that was truly independent of the United States. Yet, one might wonder whether his tight embrace of China would achieve anything more than swapping one great-power benefactor for another.

Limits of Confrontation

President Aquino may be best remembered for presiding over the Philippines’ legal victory over China at the PCA in 2016, but he conceived several other notable efforts as well. He expanded the security relationship between Manila and Washington beyond their long-time mutual defense treaty by concluding the ten-year Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (sic), which permitted not only a semi-permanent American military presence in the Philippines for the first time since the early 1990s, but also extended the two countries’ cooperation to maritime security, maritime domain awareness, and humanitarian assistance and disaster relief. Perhaps his most ambitious and least appreciated achievement was his effort to resurrect the Philippine military’s external defence forces. To do so, he secured the passage of legislation to reform the Philippine government’s defence procurement process and gained support for a 15-year plan to acquire the equipment that the Philippine military would need to mount a “minimum credible deterrence” against Chinese incursions.

In the short term, however, Aquino believed he needed to forcefully respond to China’s increased aggressiveness. Lacking any military capacity of his own, Aquino leaned on the Philippines’ Mutual Defense Treaty with the United States. No doubt, having the world’s strongest military power as a treaty ally is useful, but complete dependence carries its own problems because for Manila to effectively leverage its treaty relationship with Washington, it must be sure that the United States interprets the terms of their treaty in the same way. For example, whereas the Philippines might view the treaty’s terms as covering all its South China Sea claims, the United States might view them as including only the Philippines’ internationally recognised borders.16 Hence, Manila has long pressed Washington to clarify its interpretation of their treaty. The Americans, thinking that ambiguity could help to restrain Manila from taking provocative actions, have been slow to act. Given their country’s dependence on the United States, Philippine leaders have little leverage to push it to act any faster, a fact that has grated on them, whether pro-China or not.

Hopes for the Future

With Ferdinand Marcos Jr, having taken over as the President in July 2022, South East Asian geopolitics is set to be re-shaped depending on the path he takes: alignment with China like Arroyo, or confrontational like Aquino. In any case, he is believed to have benefitted from Duterte’s example of having to distance himself from China towards the end of his presidency seeing no benefits of alignment in the initial years. The massive investments that Duterte claimed after his many meetings with Chinese leaders failed to materialise. The only two notable BRI projects in the Philippines are small. One involves a couple of bridges in Manila and the other, a controversial dam which could seriously harm a nature preserve. In the meantime, China has neither tempered its pressure on Philippine-claimed features, like Whitsun Reef, in the South China Sea nor reduced its military presence in the region. Such actions have made Duterte’s accommodative policy look ill-considered.

Furthermore, Marcos may even have an opportunity to clarify the terms of the mutual defence treaty between the Philippines and the United States, given that the Biden administration seems to be continuing its predecessor’s harder line towards China. Washington has already made it clear that an armed attack against a Philippine naval or coast guard ship would provoke a response from the United States.17

Even so, the best way for the Philippines to ensure its sovereignty is to meaningfully invest in its own national security. That means going beyond “minimum credible deterrence.” Doing so would not only give China greater pause but also allow the United States greater confidence in its mutual defence treaty with the Philippines. No doubt, such an investment will not be easy to make, nor will it yield results overnight. Marcos could push Congress towards investing two per cent of its GDP akin to other ASEAN states into its external defence forces against less than the one per cent that it does now.18 If this is achieved, then the Philippines will be able to better support its military modernisation plans. At the very least, it will enable Manila to control its own destiny better and reduce the need for dependence on any great power.

Conclusion

The world today is at a crossroads, shifting from bipolar to unipolar to possibly multipolar. US and China are soon going to be joined by rising powers like India, Brazil, Russia and South Africa which will play a greater role in world politics, further complicating the web of alliances that exists today. Each of these states could find themselves in some version of a Thucydides trap. Could their rise in stature on the world stage, lead to conflicts and wars of varying magnitude?

History has shown us quite a few instances, as does the Peloponnesian War, that errors of judgement and/or the result of inaction may lead to serious consequences. As rational thinkers, it is upon us to learn the correct lessons from the examples available and save ourselves from becoming a case study for future generations. Even if we do, it must be a model to be emulated and not one to be avoided. The Peloponnesian War led to the complete destruction of one of the most advanced societies in the world of its time, with democratic institutions combined with significant trade. That a civilisation which had united just a few decades earlier against the Persians, could fight within its constituents in the manner it did, speaks volumes about the need for balancing interests, communication and finding common ground to seek solutions. The responsibility of peace falls squarely on the shoulders of the biggest powers today, the US and China and those growing along similar lines to prove history wrong by learning from it and avoiding iterations of the Thucydides Trap. Countries such as the Philippines, likely to be trapped in the crossfire, should craft their national policy for a balancing act and avoid finding themselves in the situation that Corcyra was in 2500 years ago.

Endnotes

  1. Graham Allison, Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides’s Trap? (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2017), 15-16.

  2. Donald Kagan, The Peloponnesian War (UK: Penguin Books, 2004), 08-10.

  3. Rex Warner, History of the Peloponnesian War (New Delhi: Penguin Classics, 1974), 6-7.

  4. Ma L, “Ways for China to Solve Thucydides Trap,” 4th International Conference on Culture, Education and Economic Development, Atlantis Press, January 2020.

  5. George Friedman, “Beyond the Post-Cold War World,” Worldview, 02 April 2013. https://worldview.stratfor.com/article/beyond-post-cold-war-world.

  6. Clayton D. Brown, “China’s Great Leap Forward,” Asian Studies vol. 17, no. 3 (Winter, 2012).

  7. Yasheng Huang, Capitalism with Chinese Characteristics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008).

  8. David Axe, “Yes, China Has More Warships Than The USA,” Forbes, 05 November 2021.

  9. J Robinson, “What is the One-China Policy?” The Economist, 14 March 2017.

  10. Subrata Majumdar, “Debt Burden and BRI,” Millennium Post, 26 April 2019.

  11. Noah Berman and Anshu Siripuapu, “The Contentious U.S.-China Trade Relationship,” Council on Foreign Relations, 02 November 2022.

  12. Andrew Moravcsik, “7 Components of Liberalism,” Norwich University Online, 02 October 2017.

  13. Sannie Evan Malala, “What The Philippines Must Do To Defend Itself From China,” Journal of Political Risk vol. 7, no. 9 (2019, September).

  14. Felix K. Chang, “Hot and Cold: The Philippines’ Relations with China (and the United States),” Foreign Policy Research Institute, 07 July 2021.

  15. CNN Philippines, “Duterte says PH Arbitral Win vs China ‘Just’ a Piece of Paper, Trash to be Thrown Away,” CNN Philippines Staff, 06 May 2021.

  16. Doug Bandow, “The Philippines “Mutual” Defense Treaty Isn’t Really Mutual at All,” CATO Institute, 19 April 2019.

  17. “US warns China Over ‘Aggressive’ Moves on Philippines,” Al Jazeera, 08 April 2021. “Philippines GDP – Gross Domestic Product,” Countryeconomy. https://countryeconomy.com/gdp/philippines.

  18. “Philippines GDP – Gross Domestic Product,” Countryeconomy. https://countryeconomy.com/gdp/philippines.