{"id":77409,"date":"2026-05-20T01:49:21","date_gmt":"2026-05-19T16:49:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2026\/may\/19\/the-thucydides-trap-how-the-greek-historians-meaning-was-lost-in-translation"},"modified":"2026-05-20T01:49:21","modified_gmt":"2026-05-19T16:49:21","slug":"the-thucydides-trap-how-the-greek-historians-words-were-lost-in-translation-letter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/?p=77409","title":{"rendered":"The Thucydides trap \u2013 how the Greek historian\u2019s words were lost in translation | Letter"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Tim Rood<\/strong> and <strong>Phil Coughlin<\/strong> on Xi Jinping\u2019s reference to the Thucydides trap in a meeting with Donald Trump<\/p>\n<p>In explaining Xi Jinping\u2019s allusion to the Thucydides trap, Kate Lamb refers to Thucydides\u2019 statement that \u201cit was the rise of Athens and the fear that this instilled in Sparta that made war inevitable\u201d (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/us-news\/2026\/may\/15\/thucydides-trap-explained-xi-jinping-donald-trump-us-china-taiwan\">What is the Thucydides Trap and why did Xi Jinping mention it in his meeting with Donald Trump?, 15 May<\/a>). That is the translation used by the Harvard political scientist Graham Allison, who popularised the phrase \u201cThucydides trap\u201d, and who attributes the translation to Richard Crawley\u2019s 1874 edition.<\/p>\n<p>It is often said that Thucydides\u2019 Greek is better translated as \u201cthe Athenians growing great and creating fear in the Spartans compelled them towards making war\u201d. That is, Thucydides was speaking of a subjective impression of necessity on the Spartans\u2019 part rather than claiming absolute necessity.<\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2026\/may\/19\/the-thucydides-trap-how-the-greek-historians-meaning-was-lost-in-translation\">Continue reading&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Tim Rood and Phil Coughlin on Xi Jinping\u2019s reference to the Thucydides trap in a meeting with Donald TrumpIn explaining Xi Jinping\u2019s allusion to the Thucydides trap, Kate Lamb refers to Thucydides\u2019 statement that \u201cit was the rise of Athens and the fear&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":327,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sns_share_botton_hide":"","vkExUnit_sns_title":"","_vk_print_noindex":"","sitemap_hide":"","_veu_custom_css":"","veu_display_promotion_alert":"","vkexunit_cta_each_option":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[50,415,3553,45,49],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-77409","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-china","category-donald-trump","category-philosophy","category-us-foreign-policy","category-xi-jinping"],"aioseo_notices":[],"veu_head_title_object":{"title":"","add_site_title":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77409","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/327"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=77409"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77409\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":77410,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77409\/revisions\/77410"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=77409"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=77409"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=77409"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}