Saagar Enjeti

It stems back to the war between Athens and Sparta.

And the idea was that Athens was like the rising, sorry, Athens was the established commercial power and Sparta the rising war state.

And that eventually culminated in a war which weakened both powers.

And that's the trap.

The trap, the idea that war was inevitable between the two states and that made it so that a war that was actually bad for both powers ended up becoming the trap itself.

This has actually long kind of been part of Chinese strategic thinking.

It's something they emphasize a lot.

I also remember this.

The Chinese are the master, not of doublespeak per se, but when they say things like we oppose militarization of the Straits of Hormuz, there's two militarizations.

military powers in the Straits of Hormuz.

There's a blockade of the Straits of Hormuz and Iran.

So you may read that as, oh, well, they oppose Iranian.

They're like, no, no, no, no, no.

That's not what we said.

What we said is we oppose militarization in the Straits of Hormuz.

They also, they love this language where they'll call it like mutual respect.

Well, mutual respect means we don't tell you what to do.

You don't tell us what to do.

It's not as relevant now under the Trump administration.

Nobody's finger wagging over human rights in China.