Pearl Harbor and the fallacy of inevitable war: The Thucydides trap
More than 2,500 years ago, Greek historian Thucydides summed up the origin of the Peloponnesian War (431-404 B.C.) in a single sentence: βIt was the rise of Athens and the fear that this inspired in Sparta that made war inevitable.β
I contemplated that last word β inevitable β during a recent visit to the Arizona battleship memorial at Pearl Harbor.