The new US-EU trade deal has spawned a legion of critics who allege European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen cravenly capitulated in the face of American pressure. They would have known this was the likely outcome had they simply understood the teachings of an ancient Greek historian.
Thucydides was an Athenian nobleman writing in the late 5th Century BC. His landmark history of the Peloponnesian War between that era’s two great powers, Athens and Sparta, remains one of the greatest documents that golden era produced.
It gains its enduring reputation from its unerring insight into power politics and human psychology. Thucydides grasped as perhaps no writer before Machiavelli how human beings behave when faced with the temptations and perils of geopolitics.
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