The United States and China Are Leaving a Dangerous Vacuum in Global Leadership
The reluctance of the world’s two foremost powers to uphold the international order risks a repetition of past traumas.
U.S. President Donald Trump tours the Hall of Prayer of Good Harvest with Chinese President Xi Jinping, May 14, 2026, at the Temple of Heaven in Beijing. Credit: The White House via Flickr
“Can China and the United States overcome the ‘Thucydides trap’ and establish a new paradigm for relations between great powers?” Chinese leader Xi Jinping put this question to his American counterpart, Donald Trump, when the two leaders met in Beijing in May. Thucydides, an Athenian general and historian, wrote a seminal account of the Peloponnesian War, which destroyed the Greek city-state system by the end of the fifth century. He traced the conflict to two factors: the rise of Athens
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Concrete outcomes are hard to discern, but Xi Jinping will see the treatment he received from Trump as a sign that China is now a peer of the United States.
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