The Lesson Trump Can Take From Herodotus’ Paradox

Foreign Affairs Strength is best manifested in cooption, not force. Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images “If you cross the Halys River and attack the Persians, you will destroy a great empire.” According to Herodotus, when Lydia’s King Croesus asked the Oracle at Delphi whether to make war on Cyrus the Great, he heard only what he wanted to hear, crossed the river and lost. The empire he destroyed was his own. Today’s oracles are far less discerning. When pastors gathered in the Oval Office this past March to lay hands on the president and pray for war, not one paused to warn him of the cost. Yet this modern hubris was not born in a vacuum. The crisis was a decade in the making. The first Trump Administration’s 2018 withdrawal from the Iran nuclear agreement all but guaranteed that Tehran w