In his recent study of U.S.-China relations, Harvard professor Graham Allison provocatively asks whether the two superpowers of the 21st century are destined for war. After studying similar situations over the past 2,500 years -- when a rising power challenges an existing power -- the answer is that, more often than not, war is likely. The U.S. and China certainly have a basket of troublesome issues over which they disagree -- trade imbalances, collisions in cyberspace, Chinese territorial claims in the South China Sea, North Korea and uneasy Sino-Japanese relations.
