In Defense of Thucydides
Poor Thucydides! He is being dragged onto the public stage once again, with White House acolytes vying in the press to prove their devotion. Steve Bannon is a fan, but military intellectuals such as National Security Adviser McMaster and Secretary of Defense Mattis take a back seat to no one in their esteem for the Greek historian. The NSC’s dimwitted spokesman, Michael Anton, loves Thucydides too; especially, he has been careful to tell us, in the translation by Thomas Hobbes. Recently the most insider of all insiders, Graham Allison, has written a short book, Destined for War: Can American and China Escape Thucydides’s Trap?, all about how Thucydides should be our guide for dealing with China, that is apparently getting a close read from the Administration.
I am far from being an expert on Thucydides. My Greek, even at its best, was never up to translating Thucydides’ notoriously difficult prose. I have not scratched the surface of the commentaries and analyses done by generations of scholars. Of Donald Kagan’s magisterial four volumes on the Peloponnesian Wars, I have read only his one-volume summary.
On the other hand, I have enough acquaintance, and enough respect, that I feel a certain proprietary zeal. I read and discussed Thucydides at my alma mater, St. John’s College, and again in graduate school at the University of Chicago. Thucydides surfaced regularly when I studied International Relations at the Fletcher School, and over many years as a military and political analyst. When I taught recently at the Air War College, I held a seminar on Western political thought that started with reading generous excerpts from the Peloponnesian Wars.
All of which is to say that I feel qualified enough to express deep unease with the current Thucydides enthusiasm. Thucydides is especially invoked to support no-nonsense realism and tough-mindedness. Let’s cut to the chase, is the message, and agree that relations between states are only about power. A few choice quotes about how the real reason for the Peloponnesian War was Sparta’s fear of the rising power of Athens, and a brief reference to the Melian Dialogue to demonstrate that the right stance for Great Powers is amoral self-interest, and we have established our credentials as Serious Thinkers. This appears to more or less exhaust Thucydides’ usefulness for most of the current denizens of the White House.
Plenty of commentators have skewered the astonishingly narrow nationalism of Bannon, the self-destructive America firstism of McMaster and Cohn, and Michael Anton’s Straussian pretentiousness. Are there different lessons to learn from Thucydides, lessons that can both help us today and salvage Thucydides’ reputation? Several come to mind.
First, Thucydides is a subtle observer of democracies in their more populist form, a problem about which we could all use some insight. Democracy in Athens was largely unmediated by the various institutions and restrictions that hard-won experience has taught us are needed to keep democratic systems from going off the rails, things like constitutions and representative assemblies and a free press and a robust civil society. Athens and other Greek democracies are prey to sudden changes of mood often instigated by blunt-sounding demagogues like Cleon, or spoiled celebrities like Alcibiades. This is an important lesson at a time when these mediating institutions are under attack here at home by a President and assorted henchmen who see them as unwanted checks on their power.
Thucydides admires democratic Athens when it is largely run by its “First Citizen,” Pericles, who can channel the advantages of democracy—the incredible energy, the public-spiritedness, the diversity, the inventiveness—in a productive direction. Pericles, unlike those who come after, is able according to Thucydides to “lead them instead of being led by them.” Pericles is not a populist who gains support by flattery and spectacle. He has a long career of service and sacrifice that enables him to persuade his fellow citizens to do difficult things.
Without Pericles, who dies of the plague in the war’s third year, Athens is unsure of its strategy and veers between over and under-confidence. The disastrous Sicilian War begins with the cocky promises of Alcibiades that victory will be swift, and ends with the dithering Nicias who allows himself to be paralyzed by bad omens. Alcibiades is guilty of whipping up the people into a war-frenzy, but he is a brilliant general who is nevertheless removed from command by those same people for the apparent crime of impiety and more generally for being an unabashed democracy-scorning elitist. His successor, Nicias, is well-liked and appropriately cautious—but having opposed war, he is a bad choice to lead the army.
This love-hate relation between the people and its democratic leaders has not gone away in our time. Like Athenians, Americans are habitually suspicious of their politicians, convinced that everyone who goes to Washington becomes corrupt and easily persuaded that some new ‘outsider’ will drain the swamp. Small violations of norms quickly balloon into career-wrecking scandals. Policy that rests on the findings of experts or professionals is suspect, and many reject all claims of knowledge or objectivity, if they are invoked in opposition to some popular sentiment.
Thucydides is no less insightful about the problems of oligarchy. Sparta has its own problems with authority and strategy. The Spartan equivalent of Pericles at the start of the war is Archidamus, an experienced king described by Thucydides as having a reputation for wisdom and moderation. When Sparta is deliberating whether to end the treaty and go to war with Athens, Archidamus counsels caution and outlines a multi-year strategy: find more allies who can remedy Sparta’s deficiencies in naval power and money, build up domestic strength, and shift the odds in Sparta’s favor so Athens will back down. He cloaks his advice in traditional Spartan virtues, such as the conservative maxim “never underestimate the enemy.” But Archidamus, despite being a king, cannot carry the day with his countrymen; he has less real authority than his democratic counterpart. Other Spartan leaders urge immediate action—in violation of Spartan norms and the treaty with Athens requiring arbitration—to defend Spartan honor. They carry the day. In Sparta power that is personalized and unmoored from legal and traditional bounds veers towards rashness. We see this danger growing today in Xi’s China and Putin’s Russia.
The “Athens first” realpolitik that imbues the city is revealed by Thucydides to be destructive of Athenian interests, and an easy-to-don cloak for ambitious demagogues. Unnamed Athenian representatives in Sparta tell Athens’ enemies at the start of the conflict that Athens is only obeying “the law that the weaker should be subject to the stronger.” Athens’ mistake, according to these Athenians, has mainly been to treat its subjects too much like equals, which causes resentment when the underlying inequality comes to the fore. Justice doesn’t enter into it, since justice only matters between equals. The Athenians warn the Spartans with language that, with slight alteration, could be talking points for the US to use in a private meeting in Beijing: “If you were to succeed in overthrowing us and in taking our place, you would speedily lose the popularity with which fear of us has invested you, if your policy now were to be at all like the sample you gave during the brief period of your command against the Mede. Not only is your life at home regulated by rules and institutions incompatible with those of others, but your citizens abroad act neither on these rules nor on those which are recognized by the rest of Hellas.”
As the war goes on, Athens doubles down on this mindset. At Melos, mid-way in the conflict, the Melians try to persuade the Athenians that a policy of naked self-interest is counterproductive because it will alienate potential allies. Who will trust you? Who will emulate you? In modern terms, they argue that Athens is undermining its ‘soft power’ and this will, in the long-run, do more damage than anything Athens stands to gain by crushing Melos. The Athenians are unmoved and destroy Melos utterly. But as the war continues and Athens’ demands grow, its subjects resist more, relationships that had a veneer of equality become more nakedly about power, and Athen’s resources are strained by the need to fight the Spartans while keeping forces at the ready to subdue unruly partners.
It is Pericles who admits candidly that the empire was acquired unjustly, but it is now too dangerous to let it go. To do so would ruin Athens and reduce it to slavery. Whether American pre-eminence today is entirely just can be debated–just as the Athenians defend their rule by pointing out their role in defeating the Persians in the last Great War, and organizing smaller states to hold the line for decades against the Empire, so we believe others owe us for winning World War II and the Cold War. Like Athenians we complain that allies don’t share all the burdens nor appreciate our leadership. But the advantages far outweigh the costs, and to push away loyal allies because of our resentment would be fatal, both to us and our allies.
Even worse is to start fighting with former friends. The Peloponnesian War resembles less a war between modern nation-states, and more a civil war between distinct but similar cities who speak the same language and share the same culture and religion. Civil war, as Thucydides tells us, is the worst type of war. At the end Greece is devastated, and it is the Persians who are the real winners, having stoked the conflict and become the patrons of the Spartan victors. American leaders who bash our historic democratic friends and heap praise on dictators are inviting new civil wars.
Pericles’ broader advice to Athens is what should resonate today: the real danger comes from within. Even in dark times, after a devastating plague and repeated Spartan incursions, Pericles rallies the people by reminding them of the city’s underlying strengths and longterm prospects for victory. Athens has wealth, naval power, and depths of ingenuity and energy—fueled by its openness to immigrants and the outside world–that its opponents cannot match. If it stays united and mindful of its strengths, it will win. Unlike less talented successors he does not set faction against faction; he does not paint a picture of gloom and carnage to set himself up as the city’s savior; and he warns against foolish expeditions against secondary enemies that will squander resources and give openings to genuine threats. (America’s endless obsession with terrorism is the contemporary case in point, and the Iraq War our Sicilian Expedition). The people are ambivalent; they fine Pericles, but then re-elect him as their general.
A powerful asymmetry is evident in the Greek civil war: there is a strong oligarchical faction in Athens (which surfaces especially towards the end, when Athens is on the ropes) but no real democratic faction in Sparta. Sparta and Persia can appeal to Athenian elites behind the backs of the people. Throughout the Peloponnesian war, cities are torn apart by contending oligarchical and democratic factions. Until recently most observers would have judged that there is a strong potential democratic faction in China, and no corresponding oligarchical/authoritarian faction in the US. This may no longer be true. Elements of the American right have become enamored of strong leaders overseas, especially Putin. Steve Bannon admires Sparta, not Athens. Sparta after all was the winner, which for some is apparently all that counts.
Of course, a lot depends on what is meant by ‘winning.’ Comparing Athens and Sparta at the start of his story, Thucydides offers a prescient and melancholy observation. If centuries from now someone looked for the remains of the two cities to understand their greatness, they would inevitably judge the power of Athens to be greater than it was, and Sparta’s less. Future archeologists would find impressive ruins at Athens—great temples, statues, public buildings—while at Sparta there would be next to nothing. Thucydides doesn’t mention them, but the picture would be similar if you looked at science, poetry, drama, history; all raised to new heights in Athens, and never encouraged in Sparta.
Thucydides may be taking a swipe at Athenian pride—real power comes from steady discipline, not outward show. But maybe not. I expect Thucydides knows that if either Sparta or Athens are remembered in the future, it will be because of his book and the work of others like him. The heroes of Troy are known because Homer wrote about them, not because they were the most worthy of remembrance, and Thucydides is very clear that he sees his history as supplanting Homer. The democracy-fueled arts of Athens will in the end decide who and what gains the eternal fame that the Greeks desire. Sparta wins this battle, but Athens wins the war.
How should we understand the argument at the heart of the “Thucydides Trap”analogy that Allison and others want to apply to today’s China-US rivalry? The underlying question is whether Thucydides presents his particular story as one of inevitability—rising powers always end up fighting with established ones—or contingency—on this occasion and these circumstances, the actors chose war, but might not have. Are there points where we see decisions that made war more or less likely? Or where conflict, once started, could have been ended or damped down? Why were those particular decisions made or not made, and by whom? For Thucydides to spend time compiling his detailed and meticulous account would make no sense if human actions were entirely determined by impersonal forces or structural conditions or internal drives. The rising power of Athens and its effect on Sparta is a necessary but not sufficient condition for war—war would not occur without it, but is not fated.
Allison’s judgment rests on his Thucydides Project, which has examined sixteen historic cases and tries to draw meaningful patterns. This political science approach is not Thucydides. Still, the broad picture that Allison draws is, I think, consistent with Thucydides: the rising vs. established power dynamic often leads to war, but not always. War can be averted; if it breaks out, it can be limited
After the fact, all actions tend to look determined. I think the point of Thucydides’ famous speeches, the arguments that his principal actors make to persuade other leaders and citizens what course to take, is to shake this fiction of determinacy. He shows convincingly that before major decisions there are frequently moments of deliberation where people argue for and against different paths. The reader is thrown in the midst of the debate, and is often perplexed—each argument has its merits, each has its risks. Listening is hard. Choosing is hard.
Thucydides shows these debates occurring all over Greece; not only in democracies like Athens, where we would expect them, but in Sparta and other oligarchies. This may tell us something about the common character of the Greeks—would there be similar speeches in Persia? Under an absolute emperor or Great King? Spartan decisionmaking is still a deliberative process with a variety of voices. We know that one of the common weaknesses of dictators is that they don’t allow debate and don’t receive alternative views. States with personalized autocrats are the most unpredictable, dangerous, and impulsive. Today Russia and North Korea are more dangerous than China, which has habits of collective leadership; if these erode under Xi, China will be harder to deal with.
Genuine debate is one of the great strengths of democracy, but it can be stifled there too. Leaders who value loyalty over honesty, see opposing views as lies or disinformation, and mistake a single election for an absolute mandate, throw away what makes democracy work.
I think reducing Thucydides to short maxims misses and distorts his purpose. It is by reading and living with his book that he seeks to affect the reader. In this he is similar to his fellow Athenians Socrates and Plato, Aeschylus and Sophocles. None are reducible to bullet takeaways; all try to carry the attentive reader or listener into the midst of thinking, judging, choosing. Like Thucydides they are frequently critical of democracy and its impulsiveness, shallowness, and poor judgment. But without democracy they would not exist. I like to think Thucydides would respect our modern modifications, many of them invented by close readers who learned about democracy’s strengths and weaknesses from the Peloponnesian Wars. And he would warn us—do not take your position of strength for granted. Debate. Listen. Listen again. Choose carefully.