Thucydides trap averted: China speed, dodgy data and the Houthis

Humanity may have lucked out. China speed, dodgy data and the Houthis may just have derailed the 21st Century Thucydides trap.

While Athens and Sparta careened unstoppably towards the Peloponnesian war, each powerless to arrest rising tensions, today’s Sparta should consider itself lucky: It cannot win the 21st Century Peloponnesian War and, as such, will not press for one.

The most consequential military development of the past few years – and there have been legion – is empirical proof that expeditionary navies are obsolete. China proved it in the South China Sea. Ukraine proved it in the Black Sea. And the Houthis (the Houthis!) proved it in the Red Sea.

Like the Blitzkrieg field-tested during the Spanish Civil War and Azerbaijan’s drone warfare against Armenia, recent littoral challenges against expeditionary navies will prove more consequential in a completely different theater. But in a good way – more to preclude future conflict than as a field test for future tactics.

Contrary to popular belief, China does not covet the South China Sea for mere scraps like oil, natural gas or fish. China is more than happy to negotiate with other claimants to exploit South China Sea resources. What China wants in the South China Sea are airstrips, missile sites, naval bases and electronic listening posts, extending the southern maritime security perimeter.

What China really wants in the South China Sea is a theater, far away from anything of real value (Taiwan, for example), to demonstrate US Naval impotence for all of Asia to witness.

China does not make a move unless strategic advantage has been established and escalation dominance is assured. China started large-scale island building in the South China Sea’s Spratly Islands in late 2013.

This was a declaration of two things:

• that China was going to take its 9- (now 10-) dashed line claims seriously, and
• that the PLA Rocket Force’s anti-ship ballistic missiles (ASBMs) had been thoroughly tested and were deployed and operational.

Without a missile shield providing escalation dominance, the US Navy could have stopped island construction with the mere presence of a carrier strike group (CSG).

In 1996, before China could threaten American aircraft carriers, President Clinton sent two US Navy CSG into the Taiwan Strait as the PLA was conducting missile tests to sway Taiwan’s presidential election. Out-flexed by the US Navy CSGs, China’s intimidation tactics failed with President Lee Teng-hui, the despised “separatist,” handily winning reelection.

China developed ASBMs to prevent the US Navy from besting the PLA in future showdowns. Given the PLA Rocket Force’s missile umbrella over the South China Sea in the 2010’s, China was able to construct and militarize seven artificial islands unchallenged. 

On April 22, 2022, Ukrainian fighters launched two R-360 Neptune cruise missiles at the Moskva cruiser, Russia’s Black Sea fleet flagship. It was the largest Russian ship to sink since WWII. The Moskva carried S-300F missiles which provided long-range air defense for the Black Sea fleet then bombarding Ukrainian positions.

Ukrainian fighters have subsequently sunk or damaged additional Russian ships and a submarine with a combination of missiles and naval drones. Russia has since relocated its Black Sea fleet east, from Sevastopol to Novorossiysk, largely taking it out of the fight.

In 2024, with the PLA Navy having grown from 255 to 400 ships over the past decade while the US Navy shrank from over 300 to 299 ships, China began aggressively enforcing its claim on an atoll occupied by a purposely shipwrecked Filipino vessel. China Coast Guard (CCG) ships harassed Filipino boats supplying the handful of marines stationed on the crumbling wreck.

The world saw dramatic footage of large China Coast Guard cutters water hosing and ramming small Filipino supply boats. In one incident, Chinese Coast Guard personnel boarded a Philippine supply boat and engaged in melee combat using handheld weapons. A Filipino soldier lost a thumb.

The US Navy’s response was to redeploy the carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt and its escorts from East Asia to the Middle East. This left the Western pacific without a CSG at the height of South China Sea tensions involving a US treaty ally. Thus it was revealed that 1) the US Navy was spread very thin and 2) the US Navy was not going to be maneuvered into a showdown with China’s brand-new navy and rocket force by the Philippines.

In May of this year, President Trump reached an unsatisfying ceasefire agreement with the Houthis after intensive bombing operations proved ineffective and were marred by mishaps. US Navy operations against the Houthis have resulted in the loss of three F/A-18 fighters (one to “friendly fire” and two to “accidents”), more than a dozen MQ-9 Reaper drones and more than $1 billion worth of ammunition.

The ceasefire fell well short of President Trump’s promise to “completely annihilate” the Houthis. The Yemeni fighters have only agreed to refrain from attacking US Navy ships. They have continued their operations against Israeli-connected shipping. The ceasefire neutered the US Navy in the Red Sea. They could be there. Or they could not be there. It doesn’t make a shred of difference.

That the Houthis fought the US Navy to a draw can only be seen as a humiliating defeat by Asia. Compare Japan (and South Korea/Taiwan/Australia) to the Instagram model who just watched her bodybuilder boyfriend get beat up by a skinny migrant worker.

According to press leaks, Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Elbridge Colby pressed Japan and Australia to clarify their intentions in a Taiwan contingency. Leaking Colby’s demand shuts down Washington’s pressure tactics by airing them to domestic political opprobrium in those countries. The leak was unsurprising given the US Navy’s less-than-stellar performances in the Red Sea and the South China Sea, demonstrating Japan’s and Australia’s lack of confidence in US resolve and capabilities.

Why would anyone commit to defend Taiwan if the US itself refuses to do so? Why would Japan and Australia commit to helping a navy that hung the Philippines out to dry only to get humiliated by the Houthis? China’s anti-ship missiles and drones are likely to be more effective than those used by the Houthis.

What we are witnessing is the US attempting to do hegemony on the cheap. Alliances in this situation are structurally brittle. Alliance partners want to free ride while a fading hegemon tries to buck-pass. When the hegemon has not demonstrated the resolve and cannot demonstrate the capability to shoulder all the costs, there is not much incentive for the hangers-on to help lighten the load. And without commitments from alliance partners to enter the fray, US resolve to go it alone is diminished as well.

The Thucydides trap theorizes that war is likely when a rising power challenges a dominant established power. The fear inspired by a rising power causes the dominant power to attempt to suppress the challenger, resulting in ever-increasing tensions and an inevitable path to war.

With this backdrop, many Western media reports on China begin with the stock phrase, “China, the world’s second largest economy .…” While this bit of data-delusion has hamstrung efforts to contain China, it could very well prove to have been a great boon for humanity, short-circuiting the Thucydides trap with its every utterance. 

Vaclav Havel said China’s economic rise was so fast that “we had not yet had time to be astonished.” Calling China the world’s second largest economy is a media tick that the West has yet to abandon. Any proper accounting of China’s productive and consumptive powers results in an economy twice the size of the US (see here).

Taking liberties with the UN System of National Accounts, China has flown under the radar, delaying the moment of proper Western astonishment. China is no longer the rising power but the established power. All efforts to contain China from tech sanctions to trade wars to media slander have been ineffectual if not counterproductive.

China’s manufacturing sector is twice that of the US in exchange rate terms and three times that of the US in purchasing power parity terms. On most indices (i.e. top journals, citations, patents), China’s scientific and technological output is well above if not multiples of the US and increasing exponentially. China’s human capital pipeline is a juggernaut, producing 6-8 times the STEM graduates as the US.

Ancient Greece was not dealing with an Athens suddenly twice Sparta’s size. The Peloponnesian War could very well have been averted if Athens rose so quickly that Sparta “had not yet had time to be astonished” and we would never have heard of Thucydides because his “History of the Peloponnesian Peace” would have been a tedious snoozefest.

Over the past few weeks, modern Sparta appears to be coming apart at the seams. Japan angrily denounced American efforts to dictate its defense budget. South Korea elected a China-leaning president. Spain’s intelligence agency awarded its communications contract to Huawei. The French Parliament produced a report pushing the EU to realign with China. Brazil will explore building a transcontinental railroad with China. 

When nations realize that expeditionary navies are obsolete and their breath catches up to China’s astonishing growth, the speed of the realignment will be just as astonishing. It will resemble nothing short of a rout.

This should benefit everyone involved, from put upon Europeans to the bonsai-ed Japan and South Korea (see here) to LGBTQIAS2S+-ed Taiwan (see here) to Legalist Qin-esque PRC able to finally relax into its Confucian Tang-esque form. Most of all, it will benefit the United States of America, which can finally come home, circle wagons, lick wounds, plant trees and recover from eight decades of shouldering the costs of hegemony.