“What is the threshold beyond which a conflict becomes inevitable
In the contemporary political-economic scenario, China and the United States seem projected towards a war that neither of them wants. The reason is Thucydides’ trap: when an emerging power threatens to overthrow the dominant one, the most plausible outcome is war. This is the dynamic that has always marked history. Speaking of the Peloponnesian war, which devastated ancient Greece, the historian Thucydides explains that it was the rise of Athens and the fear that her ascent instilled in Sparta that made war inevitable. In the last five hundred years these conditions have recurred sixteen times. And in twelve cases they led to a violent conclusion. In the seventeenth case, China’s irresistible advance risks colliding with an immovable America. ”
The aforementioned is the synopsis of the book “Destinati alla guerra” by Graham Allison (Fazi Editore, 2018) in which the Harvard professor emeritus illustrates, looking to the past, what steps are now necessary to avoid future disaster.
But another volume seems to set the date of the inevitable confrontation. Just read the title “2034: A Novel of the Next World War”. This is a novel, sure (published for the Penguin Press types). But judging by the authors and the reviews it takes a bit of a scare. Also thinking about the fact that George Orwell published his “1984” 35 years before that date (I started it the year before, that is 1948 from which, with a simple inversion of the numbers, the definitive title was born).
The authors areElliot Ackerman , a 40-year-old highly decorated writer with eight years in the Marine and Special Forces (worked in Iraq, Afghanistan and the Middle East) and one year in Barack Obama’s administration as a White House Fellow. And Admiral (retired) James Stavridis , former head of the US European Command and NATO forces in Europe, today on the board of the Carlyle Group after being among the eligible candidates for Hillary Clinton ‘s vice president in 2016 but also secretary of state of Donald Trump in the same year.
“The war with China is the most dangerous scenario for us and for the world,” writes General Jim Mattis, former defense secretary during the Trump administration. “In the absence of a strategic method to manage our differences, the gruesome novel by Jim Stavridis and Elliot Ackerman presents a realistic series of miscalculations that lead to the worst consequences. A story that makes you think and warns about today’s times ”, he adds. “The novel is a warning for our times and a reminder of how quickly events can spiral out of control, even before 2034,” wrote a predecessor of Mattis, Robert Gates , head of the Pentagon during the George W. Bush .
When the war broke out, China strengthened its ties in the world (Iran is a trusted ally) thanks to the Silk Road. The United States, on the other hand, is led by a woman, who ran for the White House as a “third”, that is, beating the traditional Democratic and Republican parties.
Three interesting elements emerge from the reviews and previews. The first: the fact that the clash is set in the South China Sea, that is, in the Indo-Pacific, increasingly at the center of the US agenda even with Joe Biden at the White House. The second: the “global” intertwining of the protagonists. In the Hollywood cast of the novel there is, in addition to a Chinese official who munches m & m’s and a general of the Pasdaran with three fingers, a deputy National Security Advisor at the White House, whose family ties in the motherland, India, influence the course of the war. The third: the centrality of the cyber dimension in the developments that lead to conflict.
Why write such a novel
To warn the world, the authors say. “Among the reasons we never ended up dropping nuclear bombs during the Cold War is that we imagined how terrible it would be, how devastating and destructive it would be for society,” Stavridis told Washington’s Today’s WorldView. Post.
