This is the Friendsfister Debating Society.

We're in Lundinium, Germanicus and Gaius and our Centurian friends and the wine steward.

And we're having a conversation about the American way of war.

And Germanicus mentions a recent development in the contest between Beijing, the Forbidden City, and the Beltway, Washington.

In the meeting in Beijing, in a forest of ancient trees, I was amused, Germanicus, that the American desk in Beijing did not

pick up on the frightful image of Winnie the Pooh in the 100-acre forest.

I leave it alone. However, it was Xi Jinping to say out loud for the president to hear and everybody to hear in the notes by the journalists.

I don't think we have a Thucydides trap.

And Mr. Trump, the emperor, said, neither do I.

What is this lucidity's trap?

Herodotus born in Anatolia at the beginning of the 5th century BC.

Thucydides born in the middle of the century, a generation younger,

or maybe even two generations younger than Herodotus.

And then Xenophon, these are the three great historians of the fifth century and fourth

century BC. That's the battle between Sparta and Persia. Sparta emerges at the hero because of

Thermopoulos. The battle between Sparta and Athens, the Dallian League, which was the Athenian Empire.

And Athens wins that, except then one more Coda, a man named Lysander from Sparta,

defeats the Athenians.

And the Spartans turn out to be, it's just as brutal and presumptive and dictatorial as the Athenians,

everybody goes, hey, we switched one bully for another bully. So they go to Thebes,

and the Thebans, as Michael just said, defeat Sparta. Okay. The Thucydides trap was in between.

The idea here is that, and it's a modern invention, it's not ancient.

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