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Honor, Deterrence, and Peace

Power Problems

CHAPTER

The Importance of Context in International Politics

How do realists misread Thucydides? You mentioned the Peloponnesian War. It's probably a part of every IR curriculum and it's consistently misread. How? Well we could do a whole podcast on this. Let me limit myself to two examples both of which reflect a tendency by realist theorists to cherry-pick quotes or passages fromThucydides. They read them out of context and of course also to read them in English. There's something called in Hankei which is a compulsion but there's a broader point here. We pay most attention to the authorial voice. If it often tells us I argue x, y, and z we

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