design of a grand strategy. Get it right and you can secure your Safety. The energy of the age can be your tool. Get it wrong and you reap the Somme, Melos, Canton, the Shangani. Recall General Liu Yazhou’s line: “A major 228 The Melians: Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War, Steven Lattimore trans., (Indi

d similar questions knowing full well the answer would be measured in blood and treasure and children. Put yourself in the place of the population of Melos, a peace-loving Mediterranean island whose destruction 2300 years ago was chronicled by Thucydides in The Peloponesian Wars. “Surely you have noticed