Summary of this article
Most diplomatic summits open with pleasantries. When Chinese President Xi Jinping welcomed Donald Trump to Beijing on May 14, he opened with ancient Greece and the story of how two great powers stumbled into a war neither fully wanted.
The reference was to the Peloponnesian War, fought between Athens and Sparta in 431 BC. Athens was rising fast, richer, more powerful, more ambitious than before. Sparta, the established power, watched nervously. The tension did not stay tension for long. It became war.
