The real ‘Thucydides Trap’ Beijing and Washington must avoid
These are good times to be a scholar of the classical world. Last summer, Donald Trump issued an order that all federal architecture needed to be “beautiful,” noting that the Founding Fathers “wanted America’s public buildings to inspire the American people and encourage civic virtue.” George Washington and Thomas Jefferson had therefore “consciously modeled the most important buildings in Washington, DC, on the classical architecture of ancient Athens and Rome.” It was time to go back to these principles, said Trump. From now on “classical architecture shall be the preferred and default architecture for Federal public buildings” in the District of Columbia.
