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Thucydides and American Grand Strategy: War is an Option not a Trap

Eggers Hall, 220

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The Moynihan International Affairs Seminar Series presents Michael Desch. Why should we read the fifth century BC Greek historian Thucydides’ chronicle of the great war between Athens and Sparta?  Thucydides famously wrote his work “as a possession for all time” (I, 22.4) and statesmen and thinkers since then have found great wisdom in his history.  Most recently, Harvard Professor and former Defense Department official Graham Allison held up the changing power relationship between Athens and Sparta as a model and cautionary tale concerning contemporary U.S.-China relations.  Are rising and falling great powers in danger of falling into a “Thucydides trap” of war or is this a misreading of Thucydides’ history?

Michael C. Desch is Packey J. Dee Professor of International Relations at the University of Notre Dame and Brian and Jeannelle Brady Family Director of the Notre Dame International Security Center. He served two terms as chair of the Department of Political Science. He was also the founding Director of the Scowcroft Institute of International Affairs and the first holder of the Robert M. Gates Chair in Intelligence and National Security Decision-Making at the George Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M University from 2004 through 2008. From 1993 through 1998, he was Assistant Director and Senior Research Associate at the Olin Institute. He spent two years (1988-90) as a John M. Olin Post-doctoral Fellow in National Security at Harvard University's Olin Institute for Strategic Studies, among other positions. He received his B.A. (With honors) in Political Science (1982) from Marquette University and his A.M. in International Relations (1984) and Ph.D. in Political Science (1988) from the University of Chicago. 


Category

Social Science and Public Policy

Type

Talks

Region

Campus

Open to

Public

Organizer

MAX-Moynihan Institute of Global Affairs

Contact

Juanita Horan
315.443.4927

jmhoran@syr.edu

Accessibility

Contact Juanita Horan to request accommodations

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To mark our centennial in the fall of 2024, the Maxwell School will hold special events and engagement opportunities to celebrate the many ways—across disciplines and borders—our community ever strives to, as the Oath says, “transmit this city not only not less, but greater, better and more beautiful than it was transmitted to us.”

Throughout the year leading up to the centennial, engagement opportunities will be held for our diverse, highly accomplished community that now boasts more than 38,500 alumni across the globe.