Culture October 27, 2009

The Greek historian Thucydides has long been a favorite of American secretaries of state. For George Marshall, the History of the Peloponnesian War illustrated many of the diplomatic pitfalls of the cold war. A generation later, framed on Colin Powell’s State Department desk was the more ambiguous and ultimately ironic paraphrase of Thucydides: “Of all manifestations of power, restraint impresses men most.”