Thucydides.

This is coolbert:

From a book review as seen at the Jungle Trader Internet web site:

"Destined for War: America, China, and [the] Thucydides's Trap" by Graham Allison

"War with China is much more likely than anyone thinks."

"When Athens went to war with Sparta some 2,500 years ago, the Greek historian Thucydides identified one simple cause: a rising power threatened to displace a ruling one. As the eminent Harvard scholar Graham Allison explains, in the past 500 years, great powers have found themselves in 'Thucydides's Trap' sixteen times. In twelve of the sixteen — from war between the French and the Habsburgs in the sixteenth century to the two world wars of the twentieth — the results have been catastrophic. Today, the same structural forces propel China and the United States toward a cataclysm of unseen proportions, even as both sides insist that such a war could never occur."

"In 'Destined for War', Allison compares the U.S.-China conflict to its closest parallel: World War I. There, a rising Germany threatened the supremacy of the British Empire."

THAT SUPREMACY OF THE BRITISH EMPIRE AT THAT EXACT MOMENT [PRIOR TO WW1] BASED ON SEA POWER. THAT CORRECT COMBINATION OF NAVAL WARSHIPS AND MERCHANT VESSELS THE GEO-POLITICAL STRENGTH AND CAPACITY WHICH WAS UNDISPUTED!!

One hundred years ago it was dreadnoughts, coaling stations, far-flung empire.

Today it is aircraft carriers, submarines, South China Sea, String of Pearls.

Thank you Jungle Trader.

coolbert.