It is better to be the predator than the prey. This intuition is no doubt on the minds of many in Donald Trump’s Washington, as well as other world capitals right now.
But there is one very important caveat to this logic, one that is especially salient for those few nations powerful enough to call the shots for (most) everyone else. This caveat derives from ecology—or the logic of groups rather than individuals—and the fact that, as a community, predators are strictly limited by the amount of prey that is available.
A group of creatures cannot grow in calorie terms beyond their food supply. Similarly, a tribe of raiding nomads is bound by the number of villages they can plunder. In contrast, nations can grow beyond their prey. Ancient empires like Rome and dynasties like in China expanded to the limits of the known world. To do so, they had to morph from predators into creators and facilitators.
What ancient empires came to understand was that more wealth and power could be had by cooperating with their neighbors—proscribing their predation—than by seeking to plunder them. The “pax Romana” was not woke; it was wise. Shrewd leaders of great powers do best by making good use of an important asset: trust.
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