Professor Baumann explores the penetrating work of Thucydides' "The history of the Peloponnesian War", providing deep insight into both political practice and philosophy.

"China and the United States are heading toward a war neither wants. The reason is Thucydides's Trap, a deadly pattern of structural stress that results when a rising power challenges a ruling one. This phenomenon is as old as history itself. About the Peloponnesian War that devastated ancient Greece, the historian Thucydides explained: "It was the rise of Athens and the fear that this instilled in Sparta that made war inevitable." Over the past 500...