Thucydides on Strategy

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 and demonstrates, through case studies of recent conflicts in Kosovo, Afghanistan, and Iraq, 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.

Author Biography

Athanasios Platias is Professor of Strategy at the University of Piraeus, the President of the Council for International Relations, Greece, and a coordinator at the Mackinder Forum. He has been a Ford Foundation fellow at Harvard University, a research fellow at Cornell University, and a MacArthur fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Constantinos Koliopoulos is Professor of International Relations and Strategic Studies at the University of Piraeus, and a former Fulbright scholar. He has been a professor in Strategic Studies at the Hellenic National Defence College, and a master of the Greek Chess Federation.