American foreign policy delusions

«For 30 years American foreign policy has struggled with delusions that the end of the cold war meant the world was somehow overcoming history. It has turned out, to Washington’s sorrow, that the internet and capitalism did not make liberal values self-actualising in China or Russia. They did not guarantee democracy in Afghanistan or in Arab countries, even when backed up by American might. Now it appears that some nations still harbour revanchist ambitions. That was as true in the second world war as it was in the first, and in the Peloponnesian war, too. Only a fool would choose to keep learning these hard lessons all over again.»

What America can learn from Sparta