Viewpoint Friday: What did Xi Jinping mean by the “Thucydides Trap”?

Added: 2026-05-17

[00:00:00]Same story, different lens. Viewpoint, where perspectives shift, only on Money FM 89.3. [music] Welcome to Viewpoint. I'm Leda Lee. Now, every week we take a closer look at one story or a few stories that we think deserve more than a headline. Today, we have someone who spent decades watching how the biggest decisions in the world actually get made. Kishore Mahbubani is a distinguished fellow at the Asia Research Institute at the National University of Singapore and a former Singapore ambassador to the United Nations.

[00:00:34]Welcome to the program, Kishore.

[00:00:37]My pleasure. Thanks for having me. Now, Kishore, before we get into the big stuff, that 14-second handshake when President Xi welcomed President Trump to the Great Hall of the People, it's certainly getting a lot of attention on social media. What do you make of it?

[00:00:52]Well, I think the paradox about this meeting between President Trump and President Xi is that on the one hand it changes everything.

[00:01:02]On the other hand, it changes nothing.

[00:01:04]Let me explain the paradox.

[00:01:06]It changes everything because it is actually very important for the world and also for US and China that the leaders of the two most powerful countries in the world talk to each other regularly.

[00:01:20]And as you know, there hasn't been a summit meeting in a long time since President Trump and President Xi met in South Korea last year.

[00:01:27]So, the fact that they're meeting again is a very important for the world. It's a way of managing all their different differences, tensions in the relationship.

[00:01:36]But on the other hand, the paradoxical part is that it changes nothing because the US-China contest will still continue.

[00:01:44]All right.

[00:01:44]>> There will still be a tremendous competition between the two. That competition is not going away. So, the best we can hope for is that if they have good face-to-face meetings both sides will learn to manage the contest in such a way that it doesn't disrupt them and doesn't disrupt our world too much. And that's the best case scenario for us from this meeting. Okay.

[00:02:08]Let's track back a little bit and break it down little by little.

[00:02:13]You're saying that beneath all of that, you know, it's the first visit by a sitting US president to China in nearly a decade. We saw a state banquet, a visit to the Temple of Heaven, plenty of warm words on both sides. You're saying beneath all of that it doesn't mean anything.

[00:02:31]Well, I can assure you that a year from now, 2 years from now, the US-China contest will still be carrying on. As you know, that's why I wrote an entire book "Has China Won?" to try and explain how the US-China contest is driven by deep structural forces and not by personalities. And you know, my book came out in June 2020 when President Trump was still president.

[00:02:58]Uh and yet, even though he was replaced by President Joe Biden, a Democrat, it made no difference. President Joe Biden carried on the same policies as President Trump on China.

[00:03:09]So, that's one concrete indicator of how personalities are often not the key factors in geopolitical contests. It's structural forces that we have to worry about. But as I said, again, it's good that they meet that they met in person and to try and manage this contest in such a way that it doesn't get too disruptive. That's the best case scenario for us. Okay. For listeners who may not be following what's been happening, I think President Xi opened the summit with something which means a lot to you, I think. He invoked the Thucydides Trap, this idea that when a rising power challenges the one already at the top, history says conflict is almost inevitable. You've spent studying and writing about exactly this.

[00:03:56]When that happened, what did you make of it? What what did you make of uh President Xi choosing to open with that?

[00:04:03]Well, I think President Xi was trying to send as clear a signal as possible to the United States that it was unwise for the United States to carry on with this containment policy uh of China.

[00:04:20]And as you know, that has been um even though Washington, D.C. is a capital, is very badly divided now between the Republicans and Democrats who almost don't agree on anything now.

[00:04:31]Um but one thing they agree on, that it's time to stop the rise of China.

[00:04:35]So, as long as the United States is trying to stop the rise of China or contain China, that's going to create tensions and difficulties in the relationship. So, what what President Xi is appealing to, he's saying, "Let's rise above these forces and find ways and means of working working with each other." But I it'll be difficult because it'll be difficult to change the consensus in Washington, D.C. And I say all this because for a small country like Singapore, we must never have any illusions about geopolitics.

[00:05:09]Geopolitics is a very cruel game, very cruel.

[00:05:14]And it's the naive who get hurt by it.

[00:05:16]Uh and it's the people who understand it who try to avoid getting caught in the crossfire when giants struggle with each other.

[00:05:25]Mm. So, you know, I think what he was saying is it's a sharp challenge and and quite clever diplomacy, isn't it?

[00:05:34]Well, I mean, it's good I I'm really happy that President Trump decided to visit uh Beijing.

[00:05:41]And uh I think that will at least lead to some a few months of calm uh in the relations uh between the two sides and I hope they continue to meet uh, three more times this year.

[00:05:52]Cuz that will also help to manage, uh, the contest.

[00:05:56]And and so, the world should therefore welcome it whenever there are such meetings because, you know, look at look at the rest of the world. There are many parts of the world where the leaders can't talk to each other. I don't understand why the European leaders won't talk to President Putin Mhm. uh, on Ukraine. I don't understand, uh, why India and Pakistan don't have uh, direct communications with each other. So, it's good when countries that are contestants talk to each other. Mhm. I want to talk about, you know, his entourage. Trump brought some of America's most powerful business figures with him. Elon Musk, he had uh, he has Jensen Huang from Nvidia, Tim Cook from Apple. People whose companies are deeply tied to China. Does having them in the room, you think help the diplomacy or complicated?

[00:06:48]Well, I think it was a brilliant move by President Trump to bring along all these incredibly heavy weight figures because if you calculate the net worth of all these entire delegation, it's much bigger than most countries in the world. Much, much bigger. The net worth uh, of these, uh, you know, uh, billionaires that he brought along. So, I think that if you were looking for a symbol of American power today, it's not the aircraft carriers. It's not the F-35s.

[00:07:25]It's the incredible dynamism of the American economy.

[00:07:30]And that it can produce corporations that didn't exist 20 years ago and that are worth trillions today.

[00:07:37]To go from zero to trillions in a decade or two is a remarkable achievement by these companies and these are the great symbols of strength of the United States and that's what President Trump was trying to signal by bringing them along.

[00:07:53]Right. And one moment that stood out was President Xi's warning on Taiwan, of course. He told Trump directly that if that issue is mishandled, it could put the entire relationship in and I'm quoting here great jeopardy.

[00:08:08]You've watched this issue up close for a long time now. What was President Xi really saying there and should we be more worried about Taiwan today than we were a week ago?

[00:08:21]Well, I think it was very wise of President Xi to raise the Taiwan issue so strongly and so powerfully because the one issue that could cause a war between United States and China is the Taiwan issue.

[00:08:39]Because there's no doubt that if any Taiwanese government declares independence China will declare war on Taiwan and as you know, if China declares war on Taiwan the United States will have to decide whether or not it was going to be going to step in to support Taiwan in such a war against China. Now, by the way, in theory, the United States is opposed to the independence of Taiwan so that should not be the cause of war, but we have to wait and see.

[00:09:07]So, I think it's very important for both sides to understand how dangerous Taiwan issue is and therefore manage it very well. So, I for example I thought it was very irresponsible of the previous speaker of the house, Nancy Pelosi, to visit Taiwan because clearly this is exactly what the Chinese are afraid of that they're forces encouraging the independence of Taiwan.

[00:09:34]But if both sides understand how important the Taiwan issue and therefore handle it carefully and delicately as previous presidents have done, then I think the Taiwan issue can be managed by both sides. But both sides have to understand how dangerous it is.

[00:09:51]Right. One of the concrete outcomes of the summit Trump and Xi publicly agreeing that Iran must never be allowed to build a nuclear weapon, and the Strait of Hormuz must stay open. You've been speaking about the Strait of Hormuz for weeks now, and and what it means for energy flows for Asia, for the global economy.

[00:10:11]When you heard Trump and Xi agree on this publicly, did that change anything for you?

[00:10:17]Uh well, I think it's good that both sides declared uh discussed the uh war in the Gulf. I think it's very, very important because clearly the whole world has been damaged uh by the stoppage of uh energy exports from the Gulf to the rest of the world. And by the way, lots of countries in Asia, including major countries like India uh and in Southeast Asia, we are suffering the consequences uh of that closure.

[00:10:49]But and it's good that uh both sides agree that the closure should be stopped, and that um you know, uh that Iran shouldn't have a nuclear bomb.

[00:11:00]But it also means that you have to engage in more diplomacy to try and find a solution for this, because it's clear that neither side can have an outright victory.

[00:11:14]And frankly, if the Iranians were wise, they would use this current moment to try and achieve a compromise deal with the United States to try and normalize and stabilize their relations uh with the United States. And this is where there's one country that has influence on Iran, it is China.

[00:11:38]Mhm. So, I'm hoping that secretly behind the scenes both sides were discussing ways and means of trying to find a solution to this to this problem. But, of course, none of this will ever be revealed to us publicly.

[00:11:53]Right. So, basically agreeing the strait must stay open is the easy part.

[00:11:58]Everything else, not so much, huh?

[00:12:01]Well, you won't He's not going to be easy. You got to find You see, in diplomacy what most people don't understand is that you need to find face-saving ways to ensure that neither the United States nor Iran are made to appear as the party that were defeated and lost.

[00:12:19]But, you know, diplomacy can be very, very creative.

[00:12:23]There are many ways of uh disguising things.

[00:12:26]So, I hope with creative diplomacy both sides will declare that they won, and then both sides will agree to some conditions for allowing the normal flow of energy through Strait of Hormuz, and of course, certainly ending the war in Iran, and possibly also lifting some sanctions on Iran.

[00:12:46]Now, while the two presidents were meeting in Beijing, something very different was happening in Ukraine.

[00:12:52]Russia launched what analysts are calling the largest aerial assault of the entire war now. More than 30 hours of continuous strikes, over 1,500 drones, dozens of missiles, apartment buildings collapsed in Kyiv. At least, I don't know, dozens people killed. And here's the detail that makes that particularly disturbing. This came immediately after a 3-day ceasefire that Trump himself had brokered. Ukrainian officials say Russia used that pause not to pursue peace, but to stockpile weapons. What does that tell us?

[00:13:26]Well, I mean, certainly the Ukraine war is a tragedy and there's no question that the Russian invasion of Ukraine is illegal under international law and we should condemn that invasion. All that is very clear.

[00:13:40]But at the same time, as someone who was a diplomat for over three decades, it is never the case that in any contest one side is completely wrong and the other side is completely right. So, when European leaders keep saying that the Ukraine war was unprovoked, every time they use the phrase unprovoked, they're insulting first the intelligence of the rest of the world who could see that the expansion of NATO was provoking Russia. And they're also, frankly, really people who people have minds questions in their minds about the intelligence of European leaders who say the war was unprovoked. Right?

[00:14:20]>> Mhm. So, at the end of the day, we want the war in Ukraine to end. But for the war in Ukraine to end, you have to arrive at a compromise formula that both sides can live on. And here I must say uh I'm glad that President Trump made it a priority to try and stop this war in Ukraine. He tried, as you know, as soon as he assumed office, but he couldn't get uh a compromise deal.

[00:14:45]But at the end of the day, it's also clear now that Russia cannot win this war. Russia cannot conquer all of Ukraine and Ukraine also cannot win the war. Russia Ukraine cannot repel Russia from the territory it has taken.

[00:15:02]So, for a start, if both sides can agree on a ceasefire and and agree to stop hostilities, that would be a huge relief to the rest of the world. All right, Kishore, we're running out of time. Before we wrap up, you've spent your entire career thinking about how Asia navigates a world shaped by great powers. And right now we have a US-China summit, a war in the Middle East disrupting energy flows, and Ukraine just enduring the worst attack of the conflict so far, all in the same week. For someone listening to all of this and trying to make sense of it, what's the one thing you think should really take away from this moment? That they should really take away from >> for for a small state like Singapore, we have to understand that geopolitics is back with a vengeance.

[00:15:52]And so we have to understand geopolitics very well. Now, one of Singapore's biggest advantages is that our founding fathers, Mr. Lee Kuan Yew, Dr. Goh Keng Swee, and Mr. S Rajaratnam, and I had the great privilege of working with all three of them as I document in my memoirs, living the Asian century, they were geopolitical geniuses.

[00:16:15]And the reason why Singapore is one of the few countries in the world that hasn't enjoyed any kind of external conflict for 60 over years is because of the geopolitical geniuses we had as leaders, you know? And so we actually have to figure out what is the what is it in the DNA of our system that has been put in by our leaders that enables us to have so many years of peace. Whatever wisdom they gave to us, we must capture it and preserve it for future generations.

[00:16:52]So much to talk about, so little time.

[00:16:54]We will have to leave it there, Kishore.

[00:16:56]Thank you so much. I appreciate your time and your invaluable views today.

[00:17:03]Thank you for having me on. Kishore Mahbubani, that's Viewpoint Friday. I'm Lin Li. Stay tuned to Money FM 89.3.

[00:17:11]Money FM 89.3 [music]