Graham Allison

In October 1962, the United States and the Soviet Union came closer to nuclear war than at any point in human history. President Kennedy’s handling of the Cuban Missile Crisis—thirteen days of intense deliberation that ended with a negotiated Soviet withdrawal rather than a nuclear exchange—has been studied by every subsequent generation of leaders and strategists. But the most influential analysis of those thirteen days came not from a participant but from a young Harvard political scientist who used the crisis to ask a deeper question: when the President of the United States makes a decision, what are we actually explaining? Is it a rational calculation by a unitary actor, a product of organizational routines that constrain and distort information, or the outcome of bureaucratic bargaining among officials with competing interests and perspectives?

Graham Tillett Allison (born March 23, 1940) answered that it is all three—and that understanding which model applies determines whether we understand the decision at all. His 1971 book Essence of Decision: Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis introduced three models of government decision-making that transformed political science, policy analysis, and the practice of governance. Four decades later, Allison coined another concept that has become equally influential: the Thucydides Trap—the observation that when a rising power threatens to displace an established power, the resulting structural stress tends toward war. Applied to the United States and China, the concept has become the dominant framework for analyzing the most consequential geopolitical relationship of the 21st century.

Essence of Decision¶

Three Models¶

Allison’s insight was that the same event—the Soviet decision to place missiles in Cuba, the American response—looked fundamentally different depending on the analytical lens applied:

Model I: The Rational Actor treats the government as a unitary decision-maker that identifies objectives, evaluates options, and selects the action that maximizes expected utility. This is the default model in international relations: “the United States decided” or “Moscow calculated.” It assumes coherent purposes, complete information processing, and strategic rationality. Under this model, Khrushchev placed missiles in Cuba as a rational response to the American advantage in strategic nuclear weapons—a cheap way to achieve nuclear parity.

Model II: Organizational Process recognizes that governments are not unitary actors but collections of large organizations—the military, intelligence agencies, diplomatic corps, bureaucracies—each with its own routines, standard operating procedures, and organizational culture. Policy emerges not from rational calculation but from what organizations are capable of doing and are programmed to do. The Soviet missile deployment followed standard military procedures for installation—which is why American U-2 reconnaissance detected the sites (the Soviets made no effort to camouflage them, following standard deployment protocols designed for domestic installations, not covert foreign operations).

Model III: Bureaucratic Politics views policy as the result of bargaining among senior officials with different positions, perspectives, and stakes. “Where you stand depends on where you sit”—officials advocate for positions that serve their organizational interests, personal ambitions, and policy preferences. The American response to the crisis was not a clean rational calculation but the product of fierce debate: the Joint Chiefs advocated airstrikes and invasion; the State Department favored diplomacy; the compromise—a naval blockade (euphemistically called a “quarantine”)—emerged from this bureaucratic struggle.

Impact¶

Essence of Decision became one of the most assigned books in political science and public policy education. Its three models provided a framework for analyzing any government decision—from nuclear crises to budget allocations—and warned against the temptation to treat complex organizations as if they were individual rational actors.

The book’s influence extended far beyond academia. Intelligence analysts adopted Model II thinking to predict adversary behavior by analyzing organizational capabilities and routines rather than imputing rational strategies. Military planners incorporated Model III insights into their understanding of how adversary decision-making actually works. And policymakers learned to ask: is this decision the product of rational strategy, organizational inertia, or bureaucratic compromise?

The Thucydides Trap¶

The Concept¶

In 2012, Allison introduced the concept that would define the second act of his career. Drawing on Thucydides’s account of the Peloponnesian War—“It was the rise of Athens and the fear that this instilled in Sparta that made war inevitable”—Allison identified a recurring pattern in international history: when a rising power threatens to displace an established power, the structural stress makes war more likely.

Allison and his research team at Harvard’s Belfer Center examined 16 cases over the past 500 years in which a rising power challenged a ruling power. In 12 of those 16 cases—75%—the result was war. The four exceptions (including the Cold War, which ended without direct superpower conflict) required extraordinary statesmanship, institutional innovation, or fortuitous circumstances.

The cases spanned centuries:

• Portugal vs. Spain (late 15th century): resolved without war
• France vs. Habsburg Empire (16th century): war
• Habsburg Empire vs. Ottoman Empire (16th-17th century): war
• Britain vs. Dutch Republic (17th century): war
• France vs. Britain (18th-19th century): war
• Britain and France vs. Germany (early 20th century): war (World War I)
• Soviet Union vs. United States (20th century): no war (Cold War)

Application to US-China Relations¶

The contemporary application is obvious: China is the rising power; the United States is the established power. China’s GDP has grown from less than 10% of America’s in 1990 to approximately 75% today. Its military has modernized at unprecedented speed. Its diplomatic influence spans every continent. The structural dynamics that Thucydides identified in Athens and Sparta—the rising power’s growing demands for recognition and influence, the established power’s fear of losing its position—are playing out in real time across the Indo-Pacific.

Allison has been careful to note that the Thucydides Trap does not predict inevitable war—it identifies a structural condition that makes war more likely unless leaders take deliberate action to avoid it. The concept is diagnostic, not deterministic. But the historical record is sobering: avoiding the trap requires overcoming deep structural pressures that have defeated most previous attempts.

Destined for War¶

Allison’s 2017 book Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides’s Trap? applied the framework comprehensively to US-China relations. The book argued that:

• Both countries are governed by leaders with ambitious agendas (Chinese “national rejuvenation,” American “making America great again”) that create flashpoints
• Taiwan, the South China Sea, and trade competition provide multiple potential triggers for conflict
• The risks are amplified by mutual misperception, Nationalism, and the absence of the institutional mechanisms (like NATO during the Cold War) that managed previous great power rivalries
• Avoiding war is possible but requires strategic imagination comparable to that which produced NATO, the Marshall Plan, and the postwar institutional order

Influence on Policy¶

Allison’s concepts have permeated the policy world:

The Thucydides Trap has been referenced by heads of state (including Chinese President Xi Jinping, who explicitly stated that China seeks to avoid the trap), invoked in countless policy documents and intelligence assessments, and become the standard framing for US-China competition in mainstream media and policy analysis.

The three models of Essence of Decision are taught at every major policy school and used by intelligence analysts, military planners, and diplomats worldwide. The insight that bureaucratic politics shapes policy outcomes has become conventional wisdom—though the lesson is regularly forgotten in the heat of crisis.

Criticisms¶

Historical cherry-picking: Critics argue that the 16 cases in the Thucydides Trap study were selected to support the thesis, and that different case selection criteria would produce different results. The definition of “rising power” and “ruling power” is flexible enough to include or exclude cases depending on the desired conclusion.

False determinism: Despite Allison’s caveats, the concept risks becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy. If policymakers in Washington and Beijing believe war is structurally inevitable, they may take actions that make war more likely—building up forces, signaling resolve, abandoning diplomatic channels—thereby creating the very outcome the theory warns against.

Oversimplification: The US-China relationship is qualitatively different from any historical case. Nuclear weapons make direct war potentially suicidal. Economic interdependence creates mutual interests in peace that had no equivalent in the Peloponnesian War. Global institutions provide mechanisms for managing competition that did not exist in previous eras. Whether historical analogies are useful guides under these unprecedented conditions is debatable.

Allison acknowledges these criticisms while maintaining that structural pressures are real and dangerous regardless of whether the historical analogy is perfect. The Thucydides Trap, he argues, is a warning, not a prediction—and warnings are useful precisely because they identify dangers that can still be avoided.

Sources & Further Reading¶

• Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides’s Trap? by Graham Allison — The comprehensive application of the Thucydides Trap framework to US-China competition, combining historical analysis with contemporary policy prescriptions.

• Essence of Decision: Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis by Graham T. Allison and Philip Zelikow — The foundational text on government decision-making models, revised and expanded in its second edition with declassified material from both American and Soviet archives.

• Nuclear Terrorism: The Ultimate Preventable Catastrophe by Graham Allison — Allison’s warning about the risk of nuclear weapons falling into terrorist hands, demonstrating his consistent focus on existential risks and their prevention.

• Lee Kuan Yew: The Grand Master’s Insights on China, the United States, and the World by Graham Allison and Robert D. Blackwill — Distilled wisdom from Singapore’s founding leader on the dynamics of US-China competition, with Allison’s analytical framing.