Graham Allison hypothesis of Thucydides trap is a flawed one and it only reflects 20th century mentality by completely ignoring the factors of modern globalisation, the possibility of war is highly unlikely because of three major reasons; Firstly ASEAN provides a platform for the superpowers to engage through various mechanisms like ARF (ASEAN Regional Forum), East Asian Summit, and ADMM Plus. One of the major reasons for the previous two World Wars and the Cold war was that there weren’t enough platforms to meet and discuss the major issues that might potentially hamper the relationship but because of ASEAN’s sagacious decision to include all the major powers to discuss the issues actually dilutes the prospect of conflict.
Secondly China’s territorial and maritime issues with some of its neighbours like India, Japan and ASEAN countries does not hamper its relationship with them and Generally countries do not get into alliances unless the nature of threat and nature of benefits are absolutely clear; this is exactly where China is capitalizing and it benefits from maintaining the status quo, If China takes more of a hawkish approach on the South China Sea issue, Senkaku islands or with India, it will only embolden other powers to form a concrete alliance, soon after Doklam issue QUAD did resurface once again, and both China and India resolved it in Wuhan Summit, So far there has been no concrete alliance in the Indo-Pacific region, for example, ASEAN might join the QUAD if in case China tries to assert its claims militarily. China is assertive and not aggressive in its claims.
Finally, China and ASEAN economies are highly integrated. The trade volume between both China and ASEAN is 514 billion (2017data). China is the largest trading partner for ASEAN. Both ASEAN and China are culturally and economically more integrated. So natural proclivities for the ASEAN nations are with China than with the United States and with the new BRI initiative China will inevitably gain more influence among the ASEAN countries. Even the perception of Indo-pacific is very different from US and ASEAN countries, US perceives it as a confrontational construct and it lays more emphasis on Rule based order, freedom of navigation and over flight and ASEAN perceives it as inclusive order and it wants China to be a major stake holder.
Any nation aspiring for superpower status will inevitably try to enforce its own version of Monroe Doctrine i.e. to keep the other power out of their sphere of influence. Latin America is to the United States is what ASEAN is to China. In the year 2014 Chinese president Xi Jinping made a clarion call i.e. “Asia for Asians” but China’s interest would serve better if it did not enforce any versions of Monroe doctrine. Japan tried it in the Second World War and it turned out to be a fiasco, China cannot enforce any version of Monroe doctrines as its geography doesn’t permit it, as its proximate neighbours are more hostile and powerful like Japan and India. Only United States can have Monroe doctrine as it protected by two large Oceans Pacific and Atlantic.