Thucydides was an Athenian and his viewpoint of Athens was of a great democratic imperialism, though Athens' slaves might have complained about this "democracy." Athens conquered an empire, Sparta created alliances. Athens created colonies among the defeated to rule them, Sparta allowed only one, initially of exiles. Those Athens defeated often suffered slavery or extermination, and she warred against other "democracies," putting to lie the idea so often repeated that democracies do not wage war against each other. Herodotus was a Carian and one might say he was rather neutral in his viewpoint, but the only sympathetic voice is that of Xenophon, an Athenian, and like Thucydides, an exile. Exiled in Sparta he found little of the hypocrisy of Athens.
Of Allison's charge concerning the response of Sparta to the growingmilitary and economic strength of Athens, one has to keep in mind that Athens was aggressive and was openly engaged in conquest, her preparations for war were obvious and threatened all Greeks. As for preparations, one must recall the words of Theramenes, “…if walls make a city happy, then Sparta must be the most wretched of all as it has none.’
Sparta relied on her people and their culture, Athens to walls and warships. We must also recognize that Sparta won the Peloponnesian War, not only by the unity, dedication and skill of her people, but by her dogged faithfulness that gained the trust of her allies and, at the same time, the corruption and double dealing of Athenians. Professor Allison also makes another claim often heard of Athens, that she was the "centre of civilization." One only needs read Herodotus to see how ethnocentric was Athens' view of herself and how provincial Athens was compared to Egyptian and Persian civilization. Reference must also be made to the point that many "Greeks" lived in Asia Minor and outnumbered those of the Peloponnese. A major crisis in the affairs of Athens, however, was central to its collapse, the revolution led by Socrates' students that led to the overthrow of democracy and the massacre or exile of the popular leadership and burning of the books of the natural philosophers. In 411 B.C.E. and again in 404 B.C.E. these anti-democrats staged bloody revolutions and established short-lived dictatorships. One of the henchmen was Plato who was the major propagandist and book burner. Both revolts took place during the War. These massacres deprived Athens of some of her most brilliant minds, and like the War, were sacrifices that ended any flowering of culture and industry that might have come from a more enlightened Athenian 'democracy.' See I.F. Stone's The Trial of Socrates,(1988) and Wundt's, In Search of Adam (1956) for details concerning the struggle of the followers of Socrates and the natural philosophers.
As for the "Thucydides Trap" Allison references to the unification of Germany, please recall that German unification was seen by the allies at the Congress of Vienna in 1814 as a means of creating a continental counterweight to France after the second defeat of Napoleon, though "unification" took another 56 years to complete. Germany's "rise" was part of England's continental policy at a time when English colonies were pressing into slavery millions of non-whites. The demise of English power was the result of the exhaustion of treasure in the First World War (a tribal civil war in the estimation of some Asian historians), but also the consequence of England's failure to manage its colonies in a democratic fashion, much, one might say like Athens' failure. There is good reason for 19th century European historians (especially the British) to find kindred spirits in the Athenians. The British were, like the Athenians, capitalists, they also had slaves, conquered peoples and considered themselves cultured. C ertainly Sparta was too grey, too communal, she lacked culture and was moral and regimented. The Athenian oligarchy was made up of men who did not work, like the nobility of 19th century Europe. To them anyone who did farm labor was a serf. Toynbee argues that his sources indicate that Sparta's farmers were free, these the helots, fought in the army and shared in the spoils like all Spartans. Toynbee believed his evidence showed that the old name for Menelaos’ followers (in Homer), “men of Lakedaimon” became “Lacedaedmonian. Those of the city of Sparta were called "Lacedaemonians." It became the official name of Sparta the people outside the city were known as the helots. Pollux, an Athenian, states that the helots were free men, bound by tradition and kinship to work the land. They were not the property of other men as in Athens. Some neighbors made allies and cities and towns joined Sparta as “Perioikoi” a term meaning equal in liberties but subject to Sparta’s laws.
See Arnold Toynbee’s “The Growth of Sparta,” The Journal of Hellenic Studies, v. 33, 1913:246-275.
China is rising because her economic and social system was renovated and reinvigorated by Mao's revolution. As much as this idea pains some Western philosophers, the fact remains. The new power of China is being exercised in a world laid waste ideologically and economically by the great contest between communism and capitalism. The small wars of the past 3 years around the globe from Central America to Afghanistan still haunt the peace as does the existence of al-Qaida and the Arab Spring in the unfinished business of colonialism.
If China is a threat to the West, it is due to the failures of the West, not Chinese aggression. One needs only compare the cultural foundations that produced the mercantilist voyages of Ming China in the 15th century to the violent conquests of European voyages of "discovery" to see the outline of the future. China was defeated in the 19th century by the West, as Carlo Cipolla as noted, not because she could not respond effectively, but because she did not recognize the threat. Whose "trap" was that?
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