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Brigadier General Peter B. Zwack {Ret.}

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: β€œIt was the rise of Athens and the fear that this inspired in Sparta that made war inevitable.”

I contemplated that last word β€” inevitable β€” during a recent visit to the Arizona battleship memorial at Pearl Harbor.

What Pearl Harbor Still Has to Teach Us

Thinking about Pearl Harbor and avoiding inevitable war, I recently revisited the solemn Arizona battleship memorial at Pearl Harbor while on a brief layover in Hawaii, after spending two enlightening weeks traveling deep within the complex Russian Far East.