www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Not so promising in the eyes of Cliodynamics, with a majority that has little civilization experience & a history of social capital rotting inequality in the form of Apartheid it should be no surprise South Africa's future would be grim at least in the near to medium term.

Not enough.

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Without an alien "other" to dwarf the relatively minor differences between Greek city-states, they continued to focus on fighting/dehumanizing each other with Sparta famously enslaving fellow Greek city-states & uniquely/horrifically declaring war on defenseless subjects

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Without an alien "other" to dwarf the relatively minor differences between Greek city-states, they continued to focus on fighting/dehumanizing each other with Sparta famously enslaving fellow Greek city-states & uniquely/horrifically declaring war on defenseless subjects

bsky.app/profile/scie...

The Peloponnesian league didn't fare better. After they won, Sparta tried to impose their will on the other city states which resulted in the alienation of allies such as Corinth and Thebes.

The latter would eventually break the back of Spartan power over Greece

What do you mean, it’s just a military adventure into a mountainous region with an unpopular and tyrannical local government (literally, in the Greek case) everyone assumed would collapse that ends in disaster and quagmire and whose knock on effects result in political instability back home

So I guess the invasion of Afghanistan is like the US version of the Sicilian expedition of 415-413BCE

Then he showed a slide with a picture of George Bush with the caption “picture unrelated”

Members originally had no disagreements with imperial expansion; it was an imperial nation in its first stages.

Silly, that's not why states (Which the league can be considered) rise & fall.

What happened was a smaller-scale version of this. Once the Persians were gone, Athens acted selfishly which strained & shattered the alliance.

I had a classics professor who argued the Delian League collapsed under the weight of its own contradiction. The Melian dialogues showed a polity preaching freedom and mutual defense practicing imperial politics will inevitably strain and collapse as what is and what is supposed grow further apart.

Members originally had no disagreements with imperial expansion; it was an imperial nation in its first stages.

Silly, that's not why states (Which the league can be considered) rise & fall.

What happened was a smaller-scale version of this. Once the Persians were gone, Athens acted selfishly which strained & shattered the alliance.

hard these days to see the achievement of being on people's lips after death as becoming an avatar of timeless virtue, rather than simply narcissistic self aggrandizement & the wealth to get it spoken as one wants