For almost a quarter of a century, a war between the United States and China has been predicted and feared. It now seems less unlikely, as rivalries continue to escalate.
Pierre Grosser, a historian of international relations, looks back at the relations between the two countries over the long term. Very tense during the first decades of the Cold War, which was hot in Asia, these relations seemed to be on the rails of cooperation after the normalization of the 1970s. But differences of opinion on both sides of the Pacific have only fuelled tensions, until the current confrontation.
Drawing on the rich debates about the causes and triggers of twentieth-century conflicts, he lists the elements that could lead the United States and China into war (including a critique of the « Thucydides trap » notion, which is regularly used to emphasize the inevitability of a confrontation between the two powers), as well as the things that could prevent it from happening.
