The Belfare Center for Science and International Affairs has a nice report (https://www.belfercenter.org/thucydides-trap/case-file) indicating this is a good predictor for conflict (and lists examples that you can use).

Although, I'll definitely agree with you that all points in history are unique. Thucydides Trap shouldn't be understood as predicting the future using the past (that's absurd by definition). That would be a reductio ad absurdum, but it isn't what foreign policy scholars are actually arguing here.

Instead, it's a description of set of incentives that shape the relationship. What the individuals in power choose to do with those pressures/incentives on the relationship is absolutely a different question. The point the "foreign policy elite" in the United States are making is that it has strong incentives to agitate for a fight with China, before it becomes an competitor (as opposed to a "near peer competitor" or "pacing challenge" - the current language).

I suppose its worth clarifying. Do you deny that there are such structural elements of the Sino-American relationship? Or is your argument wrt Thucydides Trap that it isn't deterministic? Or something else?