Group items matching

in title, tags, annotations or url

The Peloponnesian War mesmerizes strategists and international relations scholars. When it comes to ancient Greece and the U.S.-China relationship, the most prominent comparison is the “Thucydides Trap,” made famous by the political scientist Graham Allison, which uses the relationship between Athens and Sparta to draw an analogy between a rising China and the threat felt by the United States today. But conflicts between city-states in a backwater Eurasian promontory 2,400 years ago are an unreliable guide to modern geopolitics—and they neglect a vast span of world history that may be far more relevant.

Other lessons from Greek history are strangely never mentioned; Thebes, the great power of the fourth century B.C., barely gets a mention. And no strategist has called for the formation of an elite Sacred Band of American warriors, each fighting alongside his lover so as not to appear shameful in his eyes

In all the takes on the U.S.-China relationship, the history of Chinese warfare itself—and the vast span of Asian conflict, warfare, and political contention over the last 3,000 years—goes virtually unmentioned