Thucydides on Strategy: Grand Strategies in the Peloponnesian War and Their Relevance Today

A fresh look at the ancient general and scholar’s classic History of the Peloponnesian War, from the perspective of modern diplomacy and war.

Masterfully crafted and surprisingly modern, History of the Peloponnesian War has long been celebrated as an insightful, eloquent, and exhaustively detailed work of classical Greek history. The text is also remarkable for its deep political and military dimensions, and scholars have begun to place the work alongside Sun Tzu’s The Art of War and Clausewitz’s On War as one of the great treatises on strategy.

The perfect companion to Thucydides’ impressive history, this volume details the specific strategic concepts at work within the History of the Peloponnesian War. It demonstrates—through case studies of recent conflicts in Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as an examination of the Thucydides trap and the growing Sino-American strategic antagonism—the continuing relevance of Thucydidean thought to an analysis and planning of strategic operations. Some have even credited Thucydides with founding the discipline of international relations.

Written by two scholars with extensive experience in this and related fields, Thucydides on Strategy situates the classical historian solidly in the modern world of war.