O joy O joy, another crew in the White House orgasming over ancient Greek "perpetual war" & such
Remember when Classics professor Victor Davis HANSEN was trekking over to CHEENEE's office to thrill the face-shooter with tutoring over glorious war from the ancient of days? Well, him or another of those geeky dudes who salivate over nekkid warriors is at it again, with a similar cast of characters: The dotty "Commander in Chief" who has to be clued in by his zany crew looking for a pretty dressing of ugly plans.
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http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/06/21/why-the-white-house-is-reading-greek-history-215287
Why the White House Is Reading Greek History
The Trump team is obsessing over Thucydides, the ancient historian who wrote a seminal tract on war.
By Michael Crowley
.... The subject was America’s rivalry with China, cast through the lens of ancient Greece. The 77-year-old (Graham) Allison is the author of a recent book based on the writings of Thucydides, the ancient historian famous for his epic chronicle of the Peloponnesian War between the Greek states of Athens and Sparta. Allison cites the Greek scholar’s summation of why the two powers fought: “What made war inevitable was the growth of Athenian power and the fear which this caused in Sparta.” He warns that the same dynamic could drive this century’s rising empire, China, and the United States into a war neither wants. Allison calls this the “Thucydides Trap,” and it’s a question haunting some very important people in the Trump administration, particularly as Chinese officials arrive Wednesday for “diplomatic and security dialogue” talks between Washington and Beijing designed, in large part, to avoid conflict between the world’s two strongest nations. ....
That’s a lot of Greek history for any administration, never mind one led by our current tweeter-in-chief. “Most people in Washington have almost no historical memory or grounding,” Allison says. “Mattis reads a lot of books. McMaster can quote more central lines from more books than anybody I know. And Bannon reads a huge amount of history. So I think this is an unusual configuration.” Allison also left a copy of his new book, Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides’s Trap? for Anton, in whose West Wing office it now resides. Another copy went to Matthew Pottinger, the NSC’s Asia director, who invited Allison to address his colleagues last month. ....
But Trump might approve of the ancient Greek scholar’s sway over his senior strategists. Thucydides is considered a father of the “realist” school of international relations, which holds that nations act out of pragmatic self-interest with little regard for ideology, values or morality. “He was the founder of realpolitik,” Allison says. This view is distilled in the famous Melian Dialogue, a set of surrender talks that feature the cold-eyed conclusion that right and wrong means nothing in the face of raw strength. “In the real world, the strong do what they will and the weak suffer what they must,” concludes an Athenian ambassador—a Trumpian statement 2½ millennia before The Donald’s time. ....
The conservative military historian and Thucydides expert Victor Davis Hanson knows McMaster, Mattis and Bannon to varying degrees, and says they can apply useful lessons about the Peloponnesian War to a fracturing world. “I think their knowledge of Thucydides might remind them that the world works according to perceived self-interest, not necessarily idealism as expressed in the General Assembly of the U.N.,” Hanson says. “That does not mean they are cynical as much as they are not naive.” ....
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