By Con George-Kotzabasis
The following is a comment of mine in a Seminar held at the Greek
Community Centre in Melbourne, on the 16 of March, 2017, whose theme was,
“Thucydides as Philosopher-Historian.”
The teachings of the philosopher-historian Thucydides
are taught assiduously and meticulously in the military academies of the Western
world, especially in the United States and Russia.
Thus, these academies are churning out—like Plato’s
academy generating philosopher-kings—philosopher-warriors. One such military savant
is general Petraeus, the vanquisher of al-Qaeda in Iraq; another two, are
generals McMaster and Mattis, the present occupiers respectively of the posts
of National Security Adviser and of Defence, in the Trump administration. And
it is not an aleatory action or chance event but a deliberate choice, on the
part of Trump, that he has appointed high military personnel in key positions
of his administration: In anticipatory awareness that America could be attacked
with bio-chemical, and, indeed, with nuclear weapons, once the terrorists of
Islam acquire them. Such an attack would overturn the USA in an instance from
democracy into a military dictatorship, as only the latter could protect
America and the rest of the West from this sinister existential threat that is
posed by these fanatics.
Two Thucydidean fundamental principles in warfare were,
“Know thy Enemy” and “Pre-emptive Attack.” Thus Thucydides in the
twentieth-first century, will be the saviour of Western civilization.
