Text Study: Thucydides’ Peloponnesian War
Read a history of the war between Athens & Sparta to reflect on the permanent questions of political life.
In the first week of the Security Studies Program, fellows will examine the empirical basis for America’s extensive global commitments, guided by readings from founders of classical geopolitical theory. From the turn of the 20th Century through World War II, these thinkers offered cautionary and realistic analyses of the requirements of security even as many western statesmen repeatedly embraced optimistic visions of a world kept peaceful through the power of international law. (The peak of such aspirations was arguably when, in 1929, the U.S. Senate ratified the Kellogg-Briand Pact, which outlawed war.) Hopes for mutual disarmament then motivated Cold War policymakers in both Republican and Democratic administrations—and ambitions for collective security, robust arms control, and in general the beating of swords into ploughshares remain very much alive today.
Those holding such optimistic views risk being mugged by geopolitical reality. To understand how liberal visions of peace through mutual understanding are undermined by human nature and by geography itself—and to organize our thinking about a realistic contemporary basis for America’s global policy—fellows will read substantial portions of Halford Mackinder’s Democratic Ideals and Reality, Nicholas Spykman’s America’s Strategy in World Politics, and also his The Geography of the Peace–foundational studies that remain relevant today. Spykman argued that that control of the Eurasian “Rimland” is the key to global security, an insight that has driven American grand strategy ever since, with varying degrees of self-consciousness. Fellows will work to apply this framework to understanding today’s endemic instability, from a land war in Europe to the threat of Chinese expansionism in the Pacific. What does classical geopolitical analysis prescribe for America’s challenges today?
Aaron MacLean on Why Study War
This course is part of our residential Security Studies Program. Fellows participate in morning seminars and meet national security leaders and experts over afternoon and evening sessions. Up to 16 fellows will be selected.
Faculty
Aaron MacLean
Aaron MacLean is a senior fellow at Hudson Institute and the host of the School of War podcast. Previously, he was senior foreign policy advisor and legislative director to Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas. Aaron served on active duty as a U.S. Marine for seven years, deploying to Afghanistan as an infantry officer in 2009–2010.
Aaron MacLean
Aaron MacLean is a senior fellow at Hudson Institute and the host of the School of War podcast.
Previously, Mr. MacLean was senior foreign policy advisor and legislative director to Senator Tom Cotton (R-AR). He served on active duty as a United States Marine for seven years, deploying to Afghanistan as an infantry officer in 2009–10. Following his time in the operating forces, he was assigned to the faculty of the US Naval Academy, where he was the 2013 recipient of the Apgar Award for Excellence in Teaching.
Mr. MacLean received a B.A. in philosophy and the history of math and science from St. John’s College, Annapolis, and an M.Phil. (Dist.) in medieval Arabic thought from the University of Oxford. He has been a Boren Scholar and a Marshall Scholar and lives in Virginia, where he was born.
