Thucydides and American Grand Strategy: War is an Option not a Trap

The Moynihan International Affairs Seminar Series presents Michael Desch. Why should we read the fifth century BC Greek historian Thucydides’ chronicle of the great war between Athens and Sparta?  Thucydides famously wrote his work “as a possession for all time” (I, 22.4) and statesmen and thinkers since then have found great wisdom in his history.  Most recently, Harvard Professor and former Defense Department official Graham Allison held up the changing power relationship between Athens and Sparta as a model and cautionary tale concerning contemporary U.S.-China relations.  Are rising and falling great powers in danger of falling into a “Thucydides trap” of war or is this a misreading of Thucydides’ history?

Michael C. Desch is Packey J. Dee Professor of International Relations at the University of Notre Dame and Brian and Jeannelle Brady Family Director of the Notre Dame International Security Center. He served two terms as chair of the Department of Political Science. He was also the founding Director of the Scowcroft Institute of International Affairs and the first holder of the Robert M. Gates Chair in Intelligence and National Security Decision-Making at the George Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M University from 2004 through 2008. From 1993 through 1998, he was Assistant Director and Senior Research Associate at the Olin Institute. He spent two years (1988-90) as a John M. Olin Post-doctoral Fellow in National Security at Harvard University’s Olin Institute for Strategic Studies, among other positions. He received his B.A. (With honors) in Political Science (1982) from Marquette University and his A.M. in International Relations (1984) and Ph.D. in Political Science (1988) from the University of Chicago.