Ever heard of the Thucydides gap?
In foreign policy discussions, this is a deadly trap first identified by the ancient Greek historian Thucydides.
As he explained, “It was the rise of Athens and the fear that this instilled in Sparta that made war inevitable.” The past 500 years have seen 16 cases in which a rising power threatened to displace a ruling one. Twelve of these ended in war.
Currently the most worrying danger of the Thucydides gap is the rise of Chinese power in opposition to that of the United States, You can read more about this development here.