The Peloponnesian War (431–404 BCE) ostensibly arose because of the fear that a rising Athens would threaten Sparta’s power in the Mediterranean. The idea of Thucydides’ Trap warns that all rising powers threaten established powers. As China increases its power relative to the United States, the theory argues, the two nations are inevitably set on a collision course toward war. How enlightening is an analogy based on the ancient Greek world of 2,500 years ago for understanding contemporary international relations? How accurate is the depiction of the history of other large armed conflicts, such as the two world wars, as a challenge mounted by a rising power to displace an incumbent hegemon?Thucydides’s Trap?: Historical Interpretation, Logic of Inquiry, and the Future of Sino-American Relations offers a critique of the claims of Thucydides’s Trap and power-transition theory. It examines past instances of peaceful accommodation to uncover lessons that can ease the frictions in ongoing Sino-American relations.

Examines the enduring myth of Ghanaian exceptionalism and neoliberal freedom.

What is the legacy of the African Revolution today? Black Studies scholar and anthropologist Bayo Holsey addresses this question by examining the twenty-first-century relationship between the United States and Ghana, a nation that was once associated with a powerful vision of Black freedom. In Tyrannies of Freedom, she demonstrates that the period that saw the expansion of the US counterterror state also witnessed attempts to discredit this vision of freedom and replace it with another—one that centers the agency of US politicians, media pundits, and development experts.

Analyzing international development discourses, the anti-trafficking regime’s representational economy, and the expansion of Ghana’s branding as a homeland of the African diaspora, Holsey interrogates the operation of a millennial neocolonial assemblage that asserts, in various ways, that the United States is the guarantor of Ghanaian freedom while simultaneously implementing policies of surveillance, endangerment, and exploitation. At the same time, Holsey shows how Ghanaians and other Black subjects have contested these projects. Tracking the transformation of the Ghanaian nation from a beacon of Black freedom and Pan-African possibility to a battleground over the meanings of African sovereignty in a post-9/11 world, this important book addresses pressing questions concerning the operation of US power in Africa and the production and legitimation of a racialized global hierarchy.