We wrapped up seminars for the Strategy & War Course this week at the U.S. Naval War College. The Naval Diplomat always gets a little weepy when another crew of disciplined, purposeful students moves on to one of the other core courses or graduates into post-Naval War College life. (Tell no one.) During the last week of the course we look ahead for the first time, applying insights from the great strategic theorists as well as findings from the historical case studies to current and prospective controversies—contingencies in which our graduates will take a direct hand as they ascend the ranks of the military services and other federal agencies.

We also return to the marine realm for the first time since we studied World War II in the Pacific in early January. That navies have taken a back seat to armies and air forces since World War II—in hot wars, at any rate—is an interesting finding in itself. Leyte Gulf, in late 1944, was history’s last major fleet battle. To date.

Maritime conflicts often pit “whales” against “elephants.” A whale is predominantly a sea power. Whales encountered during our grand tour of military history include classical Athens, Great Britain in the age of Pax Britannica, and the United States since the naval buildup of the 1880s. An elephant is a continental power. Classical Sparta, Nazi Germany, and the Soviet Union were elephants. To win in such an asymmetric conflagration, one antagonist has to get at the other in its element. Whales try to overcome elephants in the terrestrial arena, and vice versa. Sparta borrowed a whale, in the form of the Persian navy. Britain made a habit of renting elephants for land warfare on the European continent in the 18th and 19th centuries. Few powers can straddle the land-sea divide.

Professor Robert Ross authored an article in the late 1990s contending that an uneasy peace will prevail in the Far East well into the future. Our students read his essay during this closing week. China is a prototypical elephant. It will dominate continental Asia into the indefinite future. The United States is the Western Pacific’s alpha whale. China, prophesies Ross, will remain unchallengeable on land, America unchallengeable at sea. The result is a “geography of the peace” at the land-sea interface. Ross’s article invariably gives rise to lively in-class debates. That’s especially true in recent years, as the Chinese elephant demonstrates the ability to swim and the American whale flounders—doubtless temporarily.

But this all feels a bit artificial. Is every power a whale or an elephant? Couldn’t there be hawks soaring around out there? Interwar Italian air-power theorist Giulio Douhet and retired U.S. Air Force colonel John Warden suggest so. For Douhet and Warden, warfare is all about defeating enemy air forces and bombarding enemy societies into submission. Air power can do it all! Hawks, then, are intensely offensive creatures. What would a natural air power look like? History teaches that it’s possible for, say, an elephant to transmute itself into a whale through artificial measures. By building the Long Walls connecting Athens with the nearby seaport of Piraeus, for example, land-bound Athenians made themselves into a whale. They could think of themselves as islanders, invulnerable to land assault and free to push outward at sea.

Similarly, a hawk would possess some combination of natural and prepared defenses against attack from land and sea. Relative immunity to attack would free the air force for offensive action. The hawk would boast lethal offensive air power,enabling its air force to strike at enemy leaders, industrial capacity, infrastructure, and military forces. ‘Pears to me there is such a thing as natural air powers, rare though they may be. So get out there, air-power enthusiasts, and convince us.

How could Imperial Japan have defeated the United States during the Second World War?

I'm not much of one for alt-history; it's too much like writing fiction, a genre for which I have no gift. Prophesying about what would have happened had one of the antagonists done this or that quickly degenerates into a guessing game. Still, it is possible to identify some things Tokyo could have done to improve its chances of prevailing over an industrial giant that only needed time and resolve to build up overwhelming military power. Bottom line, the weaker side has to fight smart to win against the strong.

Herewith, my list of five ways Imperial Japan could have offset the resource disparity:

Don't fight land and sea wars simultaneously. Unable to referee between the army, which espoused war in continental Asia, and the navy, which beckoned his attention seaward, the emperor permitted both campaigns to proceed. Tokyo thus disregarded the strategic wisdom of a Carl von Clausewitz, who warned against opening new theaters that place success in the primary theater at risk. The emperor failed to adjudicate between the military services -- and thus compelled the empire to fight a far stronger power with only a fraction of its strength. Dispersing power is misbegotten strategy for the weaker belligerent.

This week the not-so-unexpected news broke that Overseas Port Holdings Ltd., a Chinese state-run enterprise, has taken over management of the western Pakistani seaport of Gwadar from the Singaporean firm PSA International. The transfer of the container port facility -- whose development Beijing has bankrolled over the past decade -- has been in the works for some years now. It comes as little shock.

Still, Indian officialdom voiced concern about a Chinese presence along the subcontinent's western flank. Suitably improved, a container port can accommodate men-of-war. Accordingly, many in New Delhi fret over the prospect of a "string of pearls," a network of Chinese naval bases encircling India from the sea and cramping the nation's maritime aspirations.

A sort of cascade effect is at work in the Indo-Pacific. In the Western Pacific, China worries about being encircled; in South Asia, China is the power seen as intent on doing the encircling. In the Western Pacific, China is the rising naval challenger facing off against a seagoing hegemon, America; in South Asia, China looks to Indian eyes like the seagoing hegemon of the future. It's hardly surprising, consequently, that a hypothetical network of Chinese bases triggers some of the same reflexes in New Delhi that longstanding American primacy triggers in East Asia.

Are Indian fears overwrought? For now, yes. I first wrote about this in the 2007 timeframe, applying Alfred Thayer Mahan's framework for appraising the worth of prospective naval stations. Mahan measured the value of a base in terms of its position on the map, meaning its proximity to important sea lanes or chokepoints; its strength, meaning its natural defenses against attack or its capacity to be fortified; and its resources, meaning its capacity to supply itself from the port's environs or by shipping in supplies.

Gwadar boasts geographic position in spades, situated as it is to India's west and near the Strait of Hormuz. But it is neither strong nor well-supplied. It sits on a narrow spit of land jutting out from the Pakistani coastline, making it an ideal target for air or missile strikes. Supplies must be transported in through Baluchistan, a region plagued by a nagging insurgency. In all likelihood Mahan would disapprove of Gwadar were he -- heaven forbid -- advising Beijing.

This analysis has weathered well, but I would add a fourth parameter to Mahan's template, namely alliance relations. It's far from clear (to me) that Islamabad would grant China's navy the use of Gwadar in wartime, no matter what access it provides during routine peacetime operations. The port's potential economic value is too great. Unless the Pakistani regime sees itself as in mortal danger, it may balk at any plans for a string of pearls. The downsides are too great.

Does Beijing entertain naval ambitions in the Indian Ocean? I doubt it not. But for now, China is merely cultivating options for the future. India should keep watch while holding its fears in check. The sky may fall -- but not today.

On Tuesday, Japan's Defense Ministry reported that a Chinese frigate "illuminated" a Japanese destroyer with its fire-control radar near the embattled Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands. Lighting up an adversary ship or aircraft designates it as a target for missiles or guns, and thus constitutes a prelude to firing on that adversary. The latest incident came after Tokyo publicly contemplated empowering Air Self-Defense Force pilots to fire warning shots in the vicinity of Chinese aircraft overflying the islets or adjoining waters. Which came on the heels of repeated encounters between the Japan Coast Guard and ships from China's maritime enforcement services. Tokyo also disclosed that a Chinese frigate illuminated one of its helicopters last month.

Chilling stuff.

The back-and-forth between the rival sea powers will feel at once familiar and unfamiliar to any mariner of a certain, ahem, vintage. The U.S. Navy and Soviet Navy played more than their share of hair-raising games during the Cold War -- particularly in the 1970s and 1980s, once Fleet Admiral Sergei Gorshkov's progeny had matured into a peer competitor of the American fleet.

It was far from unusual for U.S. and Soviet warplanes, surface combatants, and especially submarines to target or maneuver around one another at close quarters. There were a variety of reasons for doing so that had little to do with indulging one's inner Maverick and Goose. For instance, goading an opponent into taking defensive measures revealed something about the tactics he would deploy in wartime. Such encounters also furnished an invaluable opportunity to collect information about the rival navy's sensors, electronic countermeasures, and weaponry. Electromagnetic emissions can be recorded and analyzed, with a view toward exposing and exploiting weaknesses. Tactical advantages can accrue.

And yet the run-ins between JSDF and PLA units feel different from their Cold War predecessors. There was a certain amount of flexibility in U.S.-Soviet brinksmanship, if only because the two sides were playing with each other for tactical reasons rather than competing over fixed geographic objects on the map. There was less to fire passions. Ideological one-upsmanship was commonplace. Being a provocateur was fun. But sovereignty -- an arena for Thucydidean motives like fear and honor -- wasn't at stake when American and Soviet units met in the nautical commons. Even so, enough near misses took place that Washington and Moscow ultimately felt obliged to negotiate an accord governing incidents at sea.

One hopes warriors on both sides -- and their political masters -- will exercise discipline in the East China Sea. A deliberate conflict would be bad enough. An inadvertent one that heightened uncertainty, narrowed options, and compressed the decision cycles in Tokyo and Beijing would prove even more parlous.

Methinks New Orleans, one of the Naval Diplomat's haunts from way back, did itself proud during Super Bowl week. Denizens of Nawlins appear to be in a buoyant mood. As well they should. Best I can tell, the city has been on the upswing ever since Hurricane Katrina seven-plus years ago. Parts of town doubtless remain to be rehabilitated. But the downtown area -- its public face -- looked splendid a couple of years back, when last I trod the streets of Jackson Square and the French Quarter.

So much for the shout-out. Several years had elapsed between that visit and my previous one, which was around this time in 2005. Sometimes you only notice obvious things about a place after being away from it awhile. One such thing I noticed about New Orleans while traipsing around downtown is that it's a Caribbean city, not a Southern one. Mobile, Houston, my adopted hometown, Pensacola -- Southern. But with its palm trees and easygoing culture, New Orleans reminds me as much of Montego Bay or St. Thomas as it does Southern icons like Atlanta or Nashville.

Why? The Mississippi River helps account for the disparity. The Miz'sipi admits shipping to the continental heartland of North America. Shipping from everywhere: the brine is a medium that places every seaport in contact with every other port across the globe. The sea lanes connect New Orleans to the Atlantic, usually via the Straits of Florida, and to the Pacific via the Panama Canal. But the greater Caribbean basin (including the Gulf of Mexico) is the city's extended neighborhood. It's hardly surprising that food from Caribbean nations is ubiquitous at such a maritime crossroads -- jerk chicken, anyone? -- or that some of the region's wackier cultural trappings, like carnival season or voodoo, are there to add zest to the city's life.

In his recent book The Revenge of Geography, international man of mystery Robert Kaplan reminds readers that there is, and always has been, a pronounced north-south axis to America's national worldview. Kaplan quips that the lyric from "America the Beautiful" -- "from sea to shining sea" -- misleads by encouraging Americans to think in purely horizontal, east-west terms.

And so it does. We forget about the vertical dimension, and indeed about geography altogether. History largely spared us the travails of fighting on our own ground or in our near abroad. So we seldom think of our hemisphere as a potential battleground, a place about which we must think strategically. You would be astounded how many knowledgeable Americans insist geography no longer matters in international affairs.

But the New World was once some of the world's most contested turf. Mineral riches beckoned Spaniards. The sugar islands were a priceless economic asset for centuries before the Panama Canal was dug. During our Revolutionary War, Great Britain's King George III ordered the Royal Navy to keep a fleet on station in the Caribbean even if it meant an invasion of the British Isles. When the canal opened, shortening voyages between Atlantic and Pacific by thousands of miles, the United States' strategic gaze took on a southerly vector to complement its perennial eastward one. Yale's Nicholas Spykman went so far as to say the republic swiveled southward on its axis.

While it won't have the same Copernican impact on Americans' outlook, the canal is undergoing a refit and expansion in time for its 2014 centennial. Gulf Coast seaports like New Orleans and Houston stand to benefit enormously once that waterway can accommodate mammoth freighters and tankers. Shippers may well offload their wares down South and ship them overland rather than journeying on to East Coast ports, with all the additional costs longer voyages exact. Having grown up along those shores, I can only say -- yippee! Look south, America.

Has the hour of offshore balancing struck? Sometimes you get that sense. U.S. defense budgets are on the wane, and with them the wherewithal to undertake ambitious foreign ventures. Sentiment does seem to be coalescing behind the idea that the United States should draw down expensive Eurasian entanglements, many of which provide little obvious return on the investment. If Washington cuts its commitments, it can cut down on the resources it uses to uphold those commitments. Ends will remain aligned with reduced ways and means. And to be sure, the logic of offshore balancing is seductive. If America no longer carries as big a stick as it once did, it must make doubly sure to speak softly -- avoiding overextending itself and stoking needless antagonisms.

A central assumption for proponents of a more offshore posture is that the international system is mainly self-regulating. If China becomes a domineering great power, that is, lesser neighbors will make common cause. They will augment and aggregate their diplomatic, economic, and military might, constituting an ample counterweight. Only in extreme -- and highly improbable -- circumstances will they need outsiders to step in to tip the military balance against a would-be hegemon. Some offshore balancers just want to quit the Eurasian continent, retiring to (relatively) nearby bases like Japan and Guam. Purists clamor to bring the boys home and balance from North America. Not only can the United States pull back from the Eurasian rimlands, in their view; it can do without undue risk. The weary titan can set down his load at last.

Great-power balancing lies at the core of the realist school of international relations. There’s doubtless considerable truth to it. The inexorable logic of self-help -- and self-preservation -- impels societies to join against overbearing antagonists. As Benjamin Franklin quipped before signing the Declaration of Independence, you can hang together or hang separately. But does the logic of balancing warrant the confidence offshore balancers vest in it? Not necessarily. International-relations theory derives in large part from studying 19th-century Europe, where coalitions among roughly comparable great powers indeed offset one another until the rise of a far greater power in Europe's midst, Imperial Germany, upset the system. The United States ultimately had to add its weight to the European balance -- twice. So much for a self-administering European Concert.

How about the Western Hemisphere? Who balanced against the United States during its ascent to regional primacy? No one, really. Unable to outmatch the U.S. Navy in its own backyard, and with a naval arms race to run in the North Sea, Great Britain and its Royal Navy beat a quiet retreat from the Americas toward the end of the 19th century. That left Latin America -- chiefly the powers ringing the Caribbean Sea, where most U.S. interests resided. Governments there showed little sign of balancing behavior. They showed no sign of effective balancing -- even during the banana wars, when Washington repeatedly landed troops in Caribbean nations for reasons good and ill.

Neither the European nor the American experience, then, lends much credence to the notion that regional balances are self-enforcing. Will the Far East prove different? Maybe. But neither history nor the lopsided distribution of power among Asian nations justifies assuming the region can shift for itself. Whether offshore balancing represents a feasible U.S. strategy will depend on whether China's neighbors look to their defenses effectively, and on how well they coordinate policy and strategy. Baby steps in that direction on the part of Japan, Australia, and India provide some cause for hope. But as we all know, hope is not a strategy.

Ranking apples against oranges is always a slippery process. How does one maritime battle rise above others in importance? One benchmark is whether an encounter saw one fleet crush another. We could put Lord Nelson’s face on such a list. The Battle of Trafalgar (1805) delivered astounding tactical results. Yet the Napoleonic Wars raged on for another decade after Trafalgar, until Europeans finally banded together to put a stop to the little emperor’s marauding. It was indecisive. So why not rank battles by the magnitude of the issues they decided? Which sea fights yielded the most fateful results, reshaping the Asian order?

Herewith, my list of the Top 5 Naval Battles of the Asia-Pacific:

5. Battle of Yamen (1279). Sometimes dubbed “China’s Trafalgar,” this clash between the  Mongol Yuan Dynasty and the beleaguered Southern Song determined who would rule China. It was far more decisive than Nelson’s masterwork. Over 1,000 men-of-war crewed by tens of thousands of men took part in the engagement. Yuan commanders deployed deception and audacious tactics to overcome at least a 10:1 mismatch in numbers. Most important, Yamen claimed the life of the Song emperor, clearing the way for Kublai Khan’s dynasty to rule for nearly a century.

Vietnam is important enough to U.S. diplomatic and military history to warrant a second post. Boiled down to its essence, insurgency and counterinsurgency is a contest for political legitimacy -- a bareknuckles struggle for the acquiescence, the affections, and ultimately the allegiance of the populace. Popular approval cements the winner's rule.

Scholar Timothy Lomperis posits a three-layered model of legitimacy. A regime earns "interest"-level legitimacy by hoisting an umbrella under which people can fulfill their everyday needs. This is a transaction. The government supplies the basics -- security, infrastructure, what have you -- and the people assent to its rule. If the government stops holding up its end of the bargain, the people may stop holding up theirs. They may withdraw their support. And if the insurgent offers a better alternative, many will take the deal. Interest-based legitimacy is necessary but far from sufficient to perpetuate a regime for the long run.

The next level up is "opportunity." The regime that commands opportunity-based legitimacy makes stakeholders out of passive supporters. It makes land available to a broad swathe of the populace, opens civil-service jobs to all qualified comers, you name it. The regime entrenches itself through giving a critical mass of the people a stake in its success. If it falls, the fortunes of the people collapse with it.

Atop Lomperis's hierarchy perches "belief"-level legitimacy. The people affirm that such a regime rules by right, not just by delivering the goods. Belief-level legitimacy manifests itself in tokens such as the divine right of kings, the Mandate of Heaven, or the American Declaration of Independence. Convictions reinforce interest and opportunity, helping sustain the regime for the long haul. But legitimacy takes upkeep. The danger for rulers who enjoy belief-level legitimacy is apathy toward workaday functions -- hey, if you rule by divine sanction, why bother with the peasants? -- combined with some event that shatters the belief. Such a regime can lose its popular standing almost instantly.

Here's the point behind this excursion into political theory. In a sense the insurgent and the incumbent government follow different tracks to victory. Think about it. Admiral J. C. Wylie classifies campaigns as sequential or cumulative. As the term implies, sequential campaigns unfold in stepwise fashion. Each tactical engagement leads to the next. Oftentimes you can plot such a campaign on the map using lines and arrows. In a cumulative campaign -- not just insurgent but submarine or aerial combat -- tactical engagements are unrelated to one another. Individual events look like pinpricks on the map. Rather than pound away at him in linear fashion, the aggregate effects wear out the loser over time.

In people's wars the counterinsurgent typically starts out sequential and moves toward the cumulative approach. Insurgent forces will often offer conventional battle at the outset in hopes of scoring a quick, decisive victory. If so, they generally lose. That's what happened to Aguinaldo's Philippine army following the Spanish-American War, and to the Vietnamese communists at Ia Drang in 1965. Sequential victory goes to the counterinsurgent, who deploys overpowering material advantages. At that point the regime must turn to cumulative tasks like clearing and holding territory and rebuilding a legitimate society and state. The basics -- the functions on Lomperis's interest level -- come first. Security, sanitation, and public health take priority.

The insurgent does just the opposite. After losing on the battlefield (or if he refuses battle) he has to start cumulative -- waging guerrilla warfare while recruiting manpower, building a regular army, and erecting a shadow regime -- and proceed toward the sequential. If successful, the insurgents prevail by unleashing a conventional counteroffensive. That's Maoist theory to a T. The patterns differ sharply, imposing different demands on each belligerent. Having fought cumulatively for a long time, regime forces may well succumb when the campaign reverts to its sequential character.

Ultimately, of course, whoever wins has to do the cumulative thing to consolidate its rule. Wylie confines his writing to wartime military strategy, but his sequential/cumulative paradigm applies equally to peacetime functions of government. Routine law enforcement, fire safety, and all the chores unextricable from constructing and maintaining a working state and society are cumulative in nature. They're also open-ended. Common crime and fire hazards never end. Sustaining legitimacy is different from, arguably trickier than, and demands more patience than overturning an incumbent regime.

This helps explain why many successful revolutionaries make execrable founders and statesmen. After promising the world to win the sympathies of the people, the victor must deliver. Few do. George Washingtons -- soldier-statesmen whose gifts span wartime and peacetime pursuits -- are rare in history. Few would portray insurgent chieftains like Ho Chi Minh (and his successors) or Mao Zedong as praiseworthy state-builders. Lomperis and Wylie open a window into conflicts that rage where politics intersects with warfare, linear with nonlinear endeavors. Check 'em out.

This week is Vietnam week in the Strategy & War Course, and the philosopher Isaiah Berlin provided an oddball way to get the conversation started. Precisely six decades ago, in 1953, Berlin published an essay titled “The Hedgehog and the Fox.” In it he draws on a cryptic passage from the classical Greek poet Archilochus that reads, “The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.” Taken figuratively, he opines, the disparity between the two beasts signifies “one of the deepest differences which divide writers and thinkers and, it may be, human beings in general.”

Temperament and worldview differentiate the fox from the hedgehog. Berlin postulates that a “great chasm” separates those “who relate everything to a single central vision” or “single organizing principle” from those “who pursue many ends, often unrelated and even contradictory ... related by no moral or aesthetic principle.” The fox thinks “on many levels” without “consciously or unconsciously” trying to fit all things and all experiences into “any one unchanging, all-embracing, sometimes self-contradictory and incomplete, at times fanatical, unitary inner vision.” While these metaphors can be pushed to the point of absurdity, he admits, contrasting the two archetypes nonetheless furnishes “a starting-point for genuine investigation.”

And so it does. The seminars tried classifying key personalities on the American side. General Westmoreland—hedgehog or fox? The U.S. commander appeared loath to transform the U.S. Army into a counterinsurgent force for fear of leaving it unprepared for its chief mission, namely beating back a Soviet invasion of Western Europe. That sounds pretty single-minded, for good reasons or ill. Hedgehog! (In my view.) In Berlin’s taxonomy, President Johnson was a misbegotten creature. LBJ was a hedgehog, but two big ideas impelled him, not just one. He wanted to help South Vietnam endure, but his first love was for the Great Society—that is, for transforming domestic politics. Preoccupied with the War on Poverty, he was deeply conflicted about the war in Indochina. Nixon? From ardent anticommunist in league with Joe McCarthy to pragmatist willing to parley with Mao Zedong. Sounds like a fox to me—a scowling fox, if such a thing is possible. Or you can repeat the exercise for leading figures on the redteam, grouping Ho Chi Minh or General Giap under one archetype or the other.

Like any good philosopher, Berlin opens a window into complex phenomena while provoking debate and refusing to supply pat answers. A hypothesis: being a hedgehog driven by an overriding purpose may be a good thing, provided you’re also the beneficiary of a fox-like gift for tactical innovation.

Individuals and their ideas comprise institutions, so it seems fair to apply Berlin’s template to institutions like the U.S. armed forces as well. Big, bureaucratic organizations incline toward the hedgehog side of the spectrum. They transcribe assigned missions into bureaucratic procedures and perform these routine functions over and over again, the same way every time—much as machinery does. Indeed, monotony is the genius of bureaucracy according to theorists like the 19th-century German sociologist Max Weber. Maybe so. But the tendency toward “routinization” inhibits an institution’s ability to reassess the surroundings as they change and adapt its practices to emerging realities. Designed to fight big wars reminiscent of World War II, the U.S. military found it hard to cope with the hybrid regular/irregular conflict it found in Southeast Asia. It was slow-footed like a hedgehog when it needed to be fleet-footed like a fox. Making institutions nimble while preserving their capacity to execute standard tasks is the challenge before leaders.

Comparing mythical beasts? Hey, you take your wisdom where you find it.

Founding foreign policy and strategy on romantic ideas about destiny or a pecking order among nations smacks of whimsy. Dangerous whimsy: not for nothing does Sun Tzu start his famous manual of statecraft by cautioning sovereigns and generals about the hazards of armed strife. Geopolitical competition is an arena of national life and death. Statesmen should never enter lightly into ventures that might sap the nation’s vigor, bankrupt its treasury, or needlessly sacrifice the lives of its sons. They should also beware of the advice they solicit and how they interpret it. Take it from Herodotus, a scribe who knew a thing or two about the vagaries of fate. They call Thucydides the father of history. If Thucydides is history’s patriarch, then Herodotus, who chronicled the great Persian invasion of Greece (think of the stand of the 300 at Thermopylae), is its crazy uncle. He mixed the deeds of gods into tales of human endeavors, supplying moral instruction alongside empirical fact.

Consider the strange case of King Croesus, the ruler of Lydia, a kingdom in Asia Minor. Croesus was a prideful man, perpetually on the lookout for opportunities to expand his power and thwart his enemies. Herodotus notes that he conquered the Greek cities along Asia Minor’s Aegean coast. Croesus sought counsel while contemplating his next move. When the Athenian lawgiver Solon visited the Lydian court, the king asked him who was the Mediterranean world’s happiest and most prosperous man. He was fishing for flattery. The Athenian annoyed him by declining to list him among this rarefied elite, his wealth and military laurels notwithstanding. Solon protested that it was impossible to say whether Croesus—or any other living person—belonged to the ranks of those blessed by fortune. Pronouncing judgment was premature because the end of his story had yet to be written. Advises Solon, “We must look to the end of every matterto see how it will turn out. God shows many people a hint of happiness and prosperity, only to destroy them utterly later.”

How’s that for foreshadowing? A few years later, alarmed at the rise of Persian power under Cyrus the Great, Croesus resolved to strike before being struck. He sent emissaries to Delphi to consult the oracles. “Both oracles concurred in their reply,” recalls Herodotus. They agreed “that if Croesus were to wage war against the Persians, he would destroy a great empire, and they advised him to find the most powerful Hellenes [Greeks] and to make them his friends and supporters.” Lydia struck an alliance with Sparta, the preeminent Greek city-state. Though warned by a sage named Sardaris not to undertake an enterprise fraught with such peril, Croesus launched an expedition against Syria before engaging the Persians on the battlefield. After an indecisive encounter, the Lydians retired to their capital of Sardis and summoned the allies to join them, hoping to renew the campaign in greater numbers the following spring. But Cyrus’ army marched on Sardis immediately, sacking the city before Sparta or the other allies could march to its rescue.

Croesus wrecked a great empire, all right—his. I’m looking at you, China. Keeping ambition in check is prudent statecraft.  Acting imperial, not so much. Fate is fickle. Oracles are pranksters who speak truth but couch it in riddles. Ironic reversals of fortune commonly befall the ruler who acts rashly after misinterpreting oracular prophecy, or whose reach exceeds his grasp. One hopes there’s a Solon or Sardarisin Beijing to discourage strategic hubris—and that China’s leadership heeds hisgood advice. Fortune has smiled on China in recent decades. But then, it favored Lydia too before King Croesus squandered its gifts on his not-so-excellent adventure.

Come to think of it, Croesus’ folly is a parable for all of us.