Thucydides and Woolf

Revisiting The Thucydides Trap

Noah Millman | Gideon's Substack | 5th February 2025

The "Thucydides trap" describes the geopolitical situation in which an ascending power threatens to displace an established one, often resulting in war. Each action taken in the lead-up to this outcome seems individually logical but results in escalation anyway. Many characterise Sino-American relations this way. What if the answer for the US is not chasing supremacy, but "alliances of convenience"? (2,800 words)

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Don’t Close Your Teeth

Cynthia Zarin | Los Angeles Review Of Books | 17th November 2025

Virginia Woolf's diaries, begun in 1897 and ending just before her death in 1941, are a record of her life but also of fascism's rise in Europe. In 1934, she reads the news of extrajudicial killings in Germany like "an act in a play". The following year, the Woolfs visit Germany and she sees swastikas everywhere; back home, a man shouts abuse in German under her Jewish husband's bedroom window (3,300 words)