Graham T. Allison

North Carolina · born or raisedBorn 1940

American political scientist (1940-)

Born in Charlotte
Studied at Davidson College
Studied at Myers Park High School

political scientist, writer

Quotations with a citation

Unless Xi Jinping fails in his ambitions to ‘Make China Great Again,’ China will continue challenging America’s accustomed position at the top of every pecking order. If Xi succeeds, China will displace the U.S. as the predominant power in East Asia in his lifetime. Unless the U.S. redefines itself to settle for something less than ‘Number 1,’ Americans will increasingly find China’s rise discombobulating.

When a rapidly rising power rivals an established ruling power, trouble ensues. In 11 of 15 cases in which this has occurred in the past 500 years, the result was war. The great Greek historian Thucydides identified these structural stresses as the primary cause of the war between Athens and Sparta in ancient Greece. In his oft-quoted insight, “It was the rise of Athens and the fear that this inspired in Sparta that made war inevitable.”

In the libraries

Open Library Confronting the Specter of Nuclear Terrorism · 2006 View library record ↗ Open Library Destined for War · 2017 View library record ↗ Open Library Lee Kuan Yew · 2013 View library record ↗ Open Library Next Great War? · 2014 View library record ↗ Open Library Nuclear Terrorism · 2004 View library record ↗ Open Library Party Life · 2023 View library record ↗

Read Graham T. Allison

Next Great War? 2014 Find a copy Lee Kuan Yew 2013 Find a copy Nuclear Terrorism 2004 Find a copy Destined for War 2017 Find a copy Confronting the Specter of Nuclear Terrorism 2006 Find a copy Party Life 2023 Find a copy

Recorded without a firm citation

Kept here, labelled, rather than mixed in above.

Fifty years ago, the Cuban missile crisis brought the world to the brink of nuclear disaster. During the standoff, US President John F. Kennedy thought the chance of escalation to war was "between 1 in 3 and even," and what we have learned in later decades has done nothing to lengthen those odds. We now know, for example, that in addition to nuclear-armed ballistic missiles, the Soviet Union had deployed 100 tactical nuclear weapons to Cuba, and the local Soviet commander there could have launched these weapons without additional codes or commands from Moscow. The US air strike and invasion that were scheduled for the third week of the confrontation would likely have triggered a nuclear response against American ships and troops, and perhaps even Miami. The resulting war might have led to the deaths of 100 million Americans and over 100 million Russians.