Joseph S. Nye warns against "two major traps" that history has set for Trump. While the "Thucydides Trap" would be Trump's headache, the author says he should also look out for a "Kindleberger Trap."

The "Thucydides Trap" is a popular expression that depicts a stressful situation in which a rapidly rising power - like China - causes fear in an established rival like the US, that escalates to war. Indeed, China wants a bigger say in how the world is managed and the US holds onto the status quo.

The "Kindleberger Trap" is a term coined by the author, who says China "seems too weak rather than too strong." Charles Kindleberger, "an intellectual architect of the Marshall Plan" explained in his book, "The World in Depression 1928-1939" that avoiding a crisis - and when failing to avoid one, successfully exiting from it – requires leadership. This requires leadership by a country with the power of the purse and the willingness to use it.

Nye says the "disastrous decade of the 1930s" was the reluctance of the US - after "replaced Britain as the largest global power," failed to provide leadership and helped resolve the crisis. "The result was the collapse of the global system into depression, genocide, and world war." Nye's question is whether China, the rising power would "help provide global public goods?" Some do worry that Beijing "will free ride rather than contribute to an international order that it did not create."

Before Xi Jinping came to power, China used to see itself as a developping country. But now it certainly sees itself as America's equal partner on the global stage. While Beijing seeks to challenge the current liberal world order - Pax Americana - created after World War II, it has hugely benefited from the global public goods - "a stable climate, financial stability, or freedom of the seas" the US and its allies provide. The author fears if the US turned inward, China might not be able to take the helm, which would lead to a world of chaos.

America may scale down its role as provider of global public goods under Trump, who as a businessman hates free riders. He made it clear during the campaign that US allies and other small countries would have to pay for it. The author believes, "if pressed and isolated by Trump’s policy, however, will China become a disruptive free rider that pushes the world into a Kindleberger Trap." Regardless of free riding mentality among smaller countries, the author points out the danger of having global public goods "under-produced. When Britain became too weak to play that role after World War I, an isolationist US continued to be a free rider, with disastrous results."

The other threat is the Thucydides Trap - "a China that seems too strong rather than too weak." The 2,500-year-old Greek historian, Thucydides wrote: "What made war inevitable was the growth of Athenian power and the fear which this caused in Sparta." The author illustrates several examples in history that relate to the "Thucydides Trap" - tensions among imperial powers in Europe, that led to World War One.

The author highlights "the danger that Trump confronts with China today. He must worry about a China that is simultaneously too weak and too strong. To achieve his objectives, he must avoid the Kindleberger trap as well as the Thucydides trap. But, above all, he must avoid the miscalculations, misperceptions, and rash judgments that plague human history." The problem with Trump is that he lacks the intellect and political acumen. He is thin-skinned and impetuous.

No doubt Xi Jinping will show Trump what leadership is all about. In his speech in Seattle in September 2015, he tackled the threat of the two nations' strategic rivalry head on:

"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."