Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War, 1.68-69, describes the Corinthians addressing the Spartans to complain about how Athens had attacked its colonies, violating its promises under the treaty to end the war.:

1.68 “Lacedaemonians! … Time after time was our voice raised to warn you of the blows about to be dealt us by Athens … instead of calling these allies together before the blow fell, you have delayed to do so till we are smarting under it.

69. “The true author of the subjugation of a people is not so much the immediate agent, as the power which permits it having the means to prevent it. … We ought not to be still inquiring into the fact of our wrongs, but into the means of our defence. For the aggressors with matured plans to oppose to our indecision have cast threats aside and betaken themselves to action. … you alone wait till the power of an enemy is becoming twice its original size, instead of crushing it in its infancy. … against Athens you prefer to act on the defensive instead of on the offensive.”

88. The Lacedaemonians voted that the treaty had been broken, and that the war must be declared, not so much because they were persuaded by the arguments of the allies, as because they feared the growth of the power of the Athenians, seeing most of Hellas already subject to them.

            This reproach can be said by Europeans with regard to Germany, by Muslims with regard to Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Republics and Egypt with regard to their hesitancy to protect Gaza’s Palestinians against Israeli genocide, and even by Global South countries urging China to see the futility of trying to act as an intermediary making peace with the United States. China’s answer no doubt is that it is seeking time to build up and institutionalize an organized alternative to the U.S. neoliberal order.