In the most frequently cited one-liner in the study of international relations, the ancient Greek historian Thucydides explained, It was the rise of Athens and the fear that this instilled in Sparta that made war inevitable. Thucydides wrote about the Peloponnesian War, a conflict that engulfed his homeland, the city-state of Athens, in the fifth century BCE, and which in time came to consume almost the entirety of ancient Greece. A former soldier, Thucydides watched as Athens challenged the dominant Greek power of the day, the martial city-state of Sparta. He observed the outbreak of armed hostilities between the two powers and detailed the fighting’s horrific toll. He did not … Continue reading Thucydides’s Trap