The great contemporary historian of that war, the Athenian Thucydides,
produced an analysis of its outbreak that has a terrifyingly plausible ring to
it: ‘In my view the real reason, true but unacknowledged, is that the growth of
Athenian [Chinese] power and the fear this generated in (the original
super-power) Sparta [USA] made war inevitable.’ But then — significantly — he
goes on to give ‘the apparent reasons expressed on both sides at the time’,
which had their origins much earlier.
In 446 bc the Athenians and Spartans, knowing that war between them was all
too possible, had tried to preclude it with a 30-year peace treaty. The
consequence was that Greece was basically divided into two ‘empires’ — a
land-based one, led by Sparta, and a maritime one, led by Athens. Let each side
stick to its own domain, and peace was assured.
But Athens started picking away at territory where, if Sparta had no direct
interests — the Black Sea, its approaches and Corcyra [Corfu] — one of Sparta’s
main allies, Corinth, did. Eventually Corinth could take it no more, and
appealed to Sparta to protect it (‘while Athens can get away with it because of
your inattention, they will be careful; when they know that you simply do not
care, they will go for it’). Sparta agreed, and the war began. Sparta had
technically broken the treaty; but there is little doubt that Athens provoked
it.
Thucydides saw that the ‘apparent’ reasons for war (Athens’ chipping away at
the spirit of the treaty by provoking Sparta’s allies) disguised Athens’ ‘real’
intent, i.e. to lure Sparta into breaking the treaty. If China and the US can
reach an accord, but China then starts ‘apparently’ seeing what it can get away
with, Thucydides’ analysis may become all too horribly prescient.