On December 17, Prof. Graham Allison, renowned international relations scholar at Harvard University, was exclusively interviewed by the WeChat public account editorial board of the Chinese People’s Institute of Foreign Affairs (CPIFA). Prof. Allison shared his latest views on China-US relations, artificial intelligence and etc.

Prof. Allison is Director of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs and Douglas Dillon Professor of Government at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government and the Founding Dean of Kennedy School. He also has served as Special Advisor to the Secretary of Defense under President Reagan and as Assistant Secretary of Defense under President Clinton.  In 2012, Prof. Allison introduced the famous concept of the "Thucydides’s Trap", which suggests that a rising power will inevitably challenge the established power, and the established power will inevitably respond to this threat, making war seem inevitable, thus sparking contemplation on whether the US and China can escape the Thucydides’s Trap.

The details of the interview are as follows:

CPIFA Editor: In recent years, you have been visiting China frequently, meeting with multiple Chinese leaders and officials. In March this year, you participated in the meeting with President Xi Jinping as a representative from the American business, strategic and academic communities. During your stay in China, you have also attended many forums and discussions, and given lectures at several universities. Has this experience led you to form any new thoughts on great power relations and the international landscape? If so, what is the most important insight you've gained?

Allison: I was honored to have the opportunity to meet with President Xi Jinping directly. At that meeting I was invited to offer an initial five-minute comment on the relationship between the US and China. In addition to commending him for what he and President Biden achieved in San Francisco in establishing a solid foundation for a stable, constructive relationship going forward, I raised a question about the metaphor President Xi had used in his discussion with Senator Chuck Schumer last October. There, he said: “The Thucydides’s Trap is not inevitable, and Planet Earth is vast enough to accommodate the respective development and common prosperity of China and the US” He went on to use an interesting metaphor to describe the US-China relationship: “I am in you, and you are in me”.

In fact, on the one hand, across nearly every dimension - technology, trade, industry, military, and global influence - the US and China are destined to be the fiercest Thucydidean competitors history has ever seen. On the other hand, because we are, in effect, inseparable conjoined Siamese twins, each nation’s survival requires cooperation with the other. War between the US and China would mean suicide for both nations. I think this is the essence of the challenge our two great nations face.

Thus, President Ronald Reagan’s incandescent truth remains as true today as it was during the height of the Cold War: “A nuclear war cannot be won and therefore must never be fought” . On a small planet with an enclosed biosphere in which either nation’s greenhouse gas emissions could make it uninhabitable for us all, we must find ways to cooperate to prevent that catastrophe. Entangled in a global financial system in which the Great Recession triggered by Wall Street in 2008 could have become a global depression had China and the US not worked together to respond with a coordinated stimulus, we are like ancient China’s Wu and Yue - in the same boat in which they found it necessary to cooperate in order not to sink. 

CPIFA Editor: Dr. Henry Kissinger made historic contributions to the development of China-US relations and played an irreplaceable role in enhancing mutual understanding between the two countries. As his student and close friend, you are deeply influenced by his thoughts. In your opinion, how China and the US can develop a correct strategic perception under the current situation?

Allison: The US and China exist in 21st century conditions in which each nation’s survival depends on cooperation from the other to address shared, existential challenges (nuclear MAD, climate change, global pandemics, etc.). That requires leaders in both countries to identify what Henry Kissinger called a new “strategic concept” that satisfies the contradictory imperatives to simultaneously compete and cooperate.

From last November’s San Francisco summit between President Xi Jinping and President Joe Biden emerged the outline of a viable strategic concept for the US and China that will allow each to achieve their long-term objectives - without war. The three pillars: fierce competition; continuous candid private communication; and intense cooperation (especially where required for each nation’s survival). I think this is the most viable strategic framework I have seen. Those of us who observed the summit from a distance do not know what the two leaders said to each other during four hours of private, candid discussion - without the glare of the press. But since San Francisco, what we can observe is that a number of trend lines in the US-China relationship that were going one way have broken sharply and are now headed in a better direction.

Both presidents recognized that avoiding war requires serious, candid conversations between themselves, their trusted assistants, and their governments to prevent misunderstandings, miscalculations, and the impact of accidents or third-party incidents from dragging them into a war neither nation wants. By establishing a foundation for US-China relations on three pillars (compete, communicate, and cooperate), they embraced the outline of a strategic concept that can allow both nations to pursue a long-term but peaceful rivalry over the decades to come - without falling into the Trap that has so often ensnared Thucydidean rivals in unintended war. 

The clues and pointers that President-elect Trump has offered us suggest that he will build on this foundation - but with greater ambition. As he said this week at his first press conference since his landslide victory, “China and the US can together solve all the problems of the world” .

CPIFA Editor: Artificial intelligence is a strategic technology that will lead the future. As leading countries in the global development of artificial intelligence, dialogue and cooperation between China and the United States in the field of AI development and governance are of great significance. What suggestions do you have for promoting dialogue and cooperation between the two countries in the field of artificial intelligence?

Allison: In one line, my suggestion is to consult history. As surely as the US and Soviet Union each did everything in its power to achieve nuclear superiority over the other, the US and China are now competing for supremacy in AI - whatever that means. As Kissinger put it: “Never in history has one great power fearing that a competitor might apply a new technology to threaten its survival and security forgone developing that technology for itself.”

But should the US and China also be exploring possibilities for AI arms control? Many in the US argue that so early in the development of AI when American strategists are struggling to get their own heads around the challenge, attempting to talk to the only other AI superpower – China - in the hope of finding areas of agreement is a fool’s errand. 

In contrast, as Kissinger and I wrote in our Foreign Affairs article “The road to AI Arms Control,” which was the last piece Henry published before his death, they should consult history. The US and the Soviet Union were among the deadliest adversaries the world has ever seen. In their Manichean struggle, each saw the other’s ambitions as a mortal threat to its survival. Nonetheless, in their early conversations about an unprecedented technology that was rapidly advancing in ways neither understood, they discovered a number of islands of shared interests. For example, while each would have preferred to be a nuclear monopolist, their next best choice was to be duopolists, and after that, oligopolists. Thus, they found common cause in preventing the spread of the most dangerous technology, acting both unilaterally and cooperatively to create what became the nonproliferation regime.

At this moment, there are just two AI superpowers: the United States and China are the only countries with the talent, research institutes, and mass computing capacity required to train the most sophisticated AI models. This offers them a narrow window of opportunity to create guidelines to prevent the most dangerous advances and applications of AI. President-elect Donald Trump’s incoming administration should pick up where Biden’s left off in discussions with China about the risks posed by AI, what each country is doing to prevent applications that pose catastrophic risks, and how each country is ensuring that domestic companies are not exporting risks. Work on AI in the US and China should begin with national efforts to prevent the technology’s most dangerous and potentially catastrophic consequences. These initiatives should be complemented by dialogue between scientists engaged in developing large AI models. Formal governmental negotiations should seek to establish an international framework, along with an international agency comparable to the International Atomic Energy Agency.

However frightening the risks posed by AI, and however confused the current conversation is about how to address it, we should reflect on what earlier generations thought and did. The fact that we have been able to live our entire lives without World War III, without uses of nuclear weapons in war, and without a nuclear anarchy in which nuclear wars would be a recurring feature is a largely unrecognized but almost unbelievable accomplishment. So as we face the challenges posed by AI today, the history of the nuclear age and the ideas of the statesmen who thought about constraining and harnessing the power of a transformative new technology can serve as a source not only of insights but of inspiration.

CPIFA Editor: The Chinese People's Institute of Foreign Affairs(CPIFA) was founded at the initiative of Premier Zhou Enlai and has served as the first people-to-people diplomacy organization of New China, with Premier Zhou serving as honorary president for a long time. This year marks the 75th anniversary of the CPIFA. Since its establishment, the CPIFA has been committed to promoting mutual understanding and friendship between the peoples of China and foreign countries. As the founding dean of the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, you have been invited to visit China by the CPIFA multiple times, and you have had two lengthy conversations with President Wang Chao this year. How do you view the significance of student and think tank exchanges between China and the United States, and what do you hope for in the future?

Allison: I believe in people-to-people diplomacy. I believe by establishing relationships between leading Chinese and Americans we can minimize the misperceptions, misunderstandings, and misjudgments that have so often in history mislead nations into unnecessary wars. Harvard University and its Kennedy School of Government are proud to play a part in this grand effort, honored to welcome many remarkable students from China each year. The work that CPIFA and its leaders, including President Wang Chao, do in promoting candid conversations between American and Chinese counterparts makes a huge contribution to realizing Zhou Enlai’s aspiration. 

The defining challenge for both the US and China is to find a way to escape Thucydides’s Trap. Students and scholars in both countries should study history carefully and recognize that even though there were huge benefits to Germany and Great Britain in the period from the 1880s until the outbreak of war in 1914 as they became each other’s most important trading partner and primary source of foreign investments, they were both heavily invested in each other; they both exchanged a lot of students who were educated in the other country; their leaders were relatives who celebrated holidays together. Nonetheless, when you have a meteoric rising power seriously challenging a ruling power, you find a syndrome seen repeatedly in history, since Athens rose and challenged Sparta. Most Thucydidean rivalries end in war.

I fear this will go the way of history. But if it does not, it will be because statesmen reach beyond history as usual, and beyond strategic imagination as usual. Leaders in the US and China will have to stretch for better ideas. That is why student and scholarly exchanges between the US and China are important to both countries’ future.