The ancient Greeks realized a sad fact about bullies like Trump
One of Western civilization’s oldest foreign policy lessons is that might does not make right.
Nir Eisikovits, professor of philosophy and director of the Applied Ethics Center at UMass Boston, is the author of “Glory, Humiliation and the Drive to War.”
Sixteen years into the Peloponnesian War, the devastating conflict between the Athenian and Spartan empires during the fifth century BC, an Athenian fleet came to rest outside the tiny island of Melos. The Melians wanted to stay neutral between Athens and Sparta, and the Athenians could not tolerate that stance. They thought it made them look weak.
Thucydides’ account of the conversation between the Melians and the Athenians has become emblematic of the harshest, most cynical form of realism in international relations.
The Melians protested that it was not right for the Athenians to force them to take a side. In response, the Athenians told the Melians not to speak of justice. Although it might be true that Athens did not have a just cause in the war, Melos was simply not strong enough to complain: “Right, as the world goes, is only in question between equals in power, while the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.”
It’s probably the most famous statement of the belief that in international affairs “might makes right.”
It was hard not to think about this brazen proclamation from the Athenian generals as one watched the Trump administration’s handling of the Ukrainian war.
First, there were the talks in Saudi Arabia in which the Americans and the Russians negotiated Ukraine’s future with no Ukrainians present.
Then there was Trump’s breathtaking formulation of an alternative history in which Ukraine instigated the war with Russia and the Ukrainian leader, Volodymyr Zelensky, was a dictator for failing to hold elections in the midst of war.
Next, there was the “deal” Senator Lindsey Graham orchestrated, in which the Ukrainians would give up valuable natural resources to the Americans in order for the Trump administration to take Ukrainian interests seriously in the negotiations to end the war.
And finally, there was the humiliating dressing down in the Oval Office on Feb. 28, during which President Trump and Vice President JD Vance ganged up on President Zelensky, demanding expressions of gratitude and telling the Ukrainian leader that he simply did not have the political strength — “the cards” — to resist what amounted to an unconditional surrender to the Russians.
What are the consequences of this understanding of international relations, espoused by the Athenians and the Trump administration, where force dictates law and strength determines truth?
For one thing, it encourages Vladimir Putin to engage in further acts of belligerence. After all, once he sees that there is no pushback to his expansionist adventures from the Americans (and not much more than an anemic response from the Europeans), what is there to hold the Russians back from reprising their murderous Ukraine rampage in some of the Baltic states?
Second, dismissing the idea of an international rule of law, or what is sometimes called the “rules-based international order,” encourages would-be bullies, calculating the costs of their own aggressive designs, to get off the fence. What conclusions did the Chinese draw about the prospects of invading Taiwan as they watched the deep American curtsy to Russian authoritarianism? What lessons did the North Koreans take regarding their relationship with the South?
And, of course, this view of international relations makes a mockery of the ideas of sovereignty and respect for national self-determination, precepts that it took two world wars and many tens of millions of lives to cement.
But beyond these ramifications, it might be interesting to go back to the fifth century BC and pay heed to the desperate warnings that the Melians imparted to the Athenians before the Melians made their last stand.
Claims
of justice, the Melians reminded the Athenians, benefit everyone. They
are a “common protection.” The big wheel could turn, the Athenians might
find themselves weaker in the future, and then their present cruelty
“would be a signal for the heaviest vengeance and an example for the
world to meditate upon.”
A day might come, in other words, when the Athenians would wish that they had taken the protections of justice more seriously, when they would wish they could invoke them in their own self-defense. But by then it would be too late, and all those who suffered under their domination would be pleased to kick them as they fell.
Further, what would neutral observers of the international scene take away from Athens’s behavior toward Melos? Weren’t the Athenians just sowing mistrust all around them?
Thucydides writes that the Melians asked, “How can you avoid making enemies of all existing neutrals [who will worry that] one day or another you will attack them?” Athens’s cynical view of international relations created unnecessary suspicion, dissuaded others from collaborating with the powerful city-state, and increased the chances that observers would rejoice in its downfall. How could all that amount to protecting self-interest?
The Athenian behavior and the behavior of the Trump administration, the Melians seem to be telling us over the expanse of the centuries, is shortsighted. You can get away with it for a while, but the conviction that might makes right presumes that power lasts forever. It doesn’t.
The Melians decided to fight and were wiped out. But 12 years later, the Athenians, after several more displays of overconfidence culminating in a ruinous expedition to Sicily, surrendered to the Spartans on humiliating terms. Their navy was decimated, the walls of their city torn down, their democracy disbanded. Athens lived on as an intellectual powerhouse for a while, but it never recovered political power.Many in the Trump administration bemoan the erosion of classical education and are keen on restoring the great works of Western civilization. They might want to read their Thucydides.