Overcoming the Thucydides Trap and the Logic of Empire
While speaking with President Trump during his joint press conference at the White House on Thursday, President Xi Jinping expressed the hope that while U.S.-China cooperation will not solve every problem of the world, it would certainly be hard to solve any of the world’s problems without it. President Xi also laid out that the so-called “inevitable” Thucydides Trap “can be overcome” by human decisions, not to statistical probability.
President Xi laid out his anti-imperial, pro-development outlook to President Trump just two days after his blood-curdling remarks to the UN General Assembly, where he, Trump, had threatened to “annihilate” Iran, and expressed the notion that “to the winner, belongs the spoils” in regards to his military intervention against Venezuela in the beginning of the year, along with the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran.
The world is certainly at a historic crossroads. The Xi-Trump meeting exemplifies the potential collaboration between the two countries which could guide the world for the better. Largely because of China’s role today, the world has the hope of escaping mass poverty, underdevelopment, and years of exploitation by colonial forces. China’s breakthroughs in the frontiers of technology today, including thermonuclear fusion power, where it aims to be the first country to achieve full commercial utilization by the year 2050, is a major hope to humanity and its prospects for energy development.
At the same time, forces led by London, European, and other Western nations are threatening global war by pledging increased support for Ukraine in a dangerous escalation against Russia. These same forces, centered in the City of London and threatening nuclear war against Russia and China, are also driving toward a full-scale regional war in their geopolitical playground of Southwest Asia. There, Israel has been deployed as the fuse—launching unprovoked wars against forces in the region and carrying out genocidal actions against the Palestinian population in Gaza and the West Bank—serving as a test case for a Malthusian policy of genocide against nations throughout Africa, Asia, and South America.
However, the majority of the world is rallying against this policy. As Schiller Institute Founder Helga Zepp-LaRouche has put it, there is a “whole group of nations rallying around a new principle, and that is the idea of partnership, of diplomacy, of coexistence, of the idea that the new name for peace is development, and to rule out war as a means of conflict resolution by basically saying that only diplomacy and negotiations
are legitimate.”
The role of the Schiller Institute’s initiatives today—including the weekly meetings of the International Peace Coalition, the open letter to Pope Leo XIV calling for him to convene the heads of the world’s three principal nuclear powers, and the recent intervention at the United Nations in New York City as heads of state gathered for the UN General Assembly’s opening debate—exemplifies what citizens such as yourself can be doing right now.
President Xi laid out his anti-imperial, pro-development outlook to President Trump just two days after his blood-curdling remarks to the UN General Assembly, where he, Trump, had threatened to “annihilate” Iran, and expressed the notion that “to the winner, belongs the spoils” in regards to his military intervention against Venezuela in the beginning of the year, along with the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran.
The world is certainly at a historic crossroads. The Xi-Trump meeting exemplifies the potential collaboration between the two countries which could guide the world for the better. Largely because of China’s role today, the world has the hope of escaping mass poverty, underdevelopment, and years of exploitation by colonial forces. China’s breakthroughs in the frontiers of technology today, including thermonuclear fusion power, where it aims to be the first country to achieve full commercial utilization by the year 2050, is a major hope to humanity and its prospects for energy development.
At the same time, forces led by London, European, and other Western nations are threatening global war by pledging increased support for Ukraine in a dangerous escalation against Russia. These same forces, centered in the City of London and threatening nuclear war against Russia and China, are also driving toward a full-scale regional war in their geopolitical playground of Southwest Asia. There, Israel has been deployed as the fuse—launching unprovoked wars against forces in the region and carrying out genocidal actions against the Palestinian population in Gaza and the West Bank—serving as a test case for a Malthusian policy of genocide against nations throughout Africa, Asia, and South America.
However, the majority of the world is rallying against this policy. As Schiller Institute Founder Helga Zepp-LaRouche has put it, there is a “whole group of nations rallying around a new principle, and that is the idea of partnership, of diplomacy, of coexistence, of the idea that the new name for peace is development, and to rule out war as a means of conflict resolution by basically saying that only diplomacy and negotiations
are legitimate.”
The role of the Schiller Institute’s initiatives today—including the weekly meetings of the International Peace Coalition, the open letter to Pope Leo XIV calling for him to convene the heads of the world’s three principal nuclear powers, and the recent intervention at the United Nations in New York City as heads of state gathered for the UN General Assembly’s opening debate—exemplifies what citizens such as yourself can be doing right now.