I actually suspect that no-one seriously believes in the existence of the "Thucydides trap": not the Chinese, not the West, and probably not even Graham Allison, the author of the concept (he's too smart for this).

Heck, even Thucydides himself, in the original text, doesn't believe it: as he shows in his history of the Peloponnesian War, Sparta - the established power the "trap" says should have been the aggressive one - was in fact the reluctant party. Its own king argued against war, the provocations came from rising Athens, and Sparta was dragged into the war reluctantly.

Funnily, Xi himself publicly called the Thucydides trap "hearsay, paranoid or self-imposed bias" in a speech in Seattle in 2015: "We should strictly base our judgment on facts, lest we become victims to hearsay, paranoid or self-imposed bias. There is no such thing as the so-called Thucydides trap in the world. But should major countries time and again make the mistakes of strategic miscalculation, they might create such traps for themselves."

What everyone has now obviously come to believe, however, from Trump to Xi to Carney, is that it's actually a very politically convenient concept: a shared, face-saving vocabulary that benefits everyone.

From the U.S.'s standpoint they can justify their inability to contain China as not falling into a trap: "yes, we're in a real rivalry and history says this is the dangerous part - so we need to be strategic enough to not fall into this trap and avoid WW3"

From China's standpoint they can say: "our rise isn't the threat, your fear of it is. If you resist it you're walking right into the trap Thucydides warned about."

And for third-party countries like Canada - the allegorical grass that would be trampled when elephants fight - they can frame self-preservation as a noble cause: "as a middle power, we have a special duty to help the great powers avoid the trap."

It's actually pretty ironic: Xi, as per his own words, initially rejected it because he believed the narrative could be self-fulfilling - driving the very war it predicts. But now it's being used by everyone - including China - as a face-saving reason to avoid one.

Which is actually a good sign: regardless of whether it's true, in practice it makes peace more likely.

Arnaud Bertrand is an entrepreneur and China analyst. Can be found on X @RnaudBertrand. Bertrand founded HouseTrip, a leading European vacation rental marketplace, and is founder and CEO of Me & Qi, a premier English-language platforms for Traditional Chinese Medicine. He is also a graduate and honorary professor of Founder & CEO of Me & Qi, one of the premier English-language platforms for Traditional Chinese Medicine. He is also a graduate and honorary professor of Ecole Hôtelière de Lausanne in Switzerland.