IR theorists misrepresent Thucydides
Thucydides himself did not invent the ‘trap’ named after him nor did he advocate ruthlessness in interstate relations
Current China-US tensions have been explained in terms of a ‘Thucydides trap’. The ancient Athenian Thucydides wrote about the Peloponnesian war against Sparta. A distinguished academic, Graham Allison, has extrapolated from his text the principle that war between an established power (such as the United States) and an up-and-coming rival (China) is more likely than not.
What next
The Chinese have noticed Allison’s theory: President Xi Jinping has said the Thucydides trap must be avoided and a new model found for relations between major powers. If they do not go to war, it would be another exception, weakening the theory.
Subsidiary Impacts
- Military academies will continue teaching Thucydides, as junior officers value his interest in tactics and morale.
- With fewer students studying ancient Greek, academics will rely more on others’ translations of Thucydides.
- Thucydides’ insistence upon establishing the truth and his study of decision-making in Athens’ direct democracy will retain their relevance.
Analysis
Thucydides intended his study of the Peloponnesian war of 431-04 BC to be useful for the clear understanding of "what has happened and of such or similar things that will happen again, human nature being what is is". He wanted it to be "an asset for ever".
Thucydides writes that he embarked on his project expecting the war to be the most remarkable yet in Hellenic or indeed human history. A rhetorical trick to grab attention, this claim is followed by a comparison of recent events with the 'heroic age' of the Trojan war, including the observation that societies must be settled for resources to be accumulated and power acquired.
So his approach appears early on: this is more than a narrative; it is a scientific study that will draw inferences from evidence. However, the inferences always arise from the particular circumstances: Thucydides is interested in why specific things happened as they did, not in general principles.
Trap for the unwary
Thucydides nowhere suggests that 'history' (a term he avoids, saying instead that he had "written up" the war) repeats itself or offers 'lessons'. He shows such statesmen as Themistocles or Pericles having understanding or right judgment of affairs, making sensible decisions and being good at forecasting.
Thucydides is interested in the specific not the general
Allison thinks it was Thucydides' "powerful insight" that the rise of Athens shifted the balance of power with Sparta and threatened the established system in 5th century Greece. However, this is not exactly what Thucydides says.
Fear is the key
Thucydides twice gives his explanation of the underlying cause of the war. Early in his account, he says Athens and Sparta had their differences in 431 BC, but the real reason was that "the Athenians, becoming great, and causing the Spartans fear, forced them into the war". Later, when having conferred with their allies, the Spartans declared the 446 BC peace treaty broken, Thucydides says the Spartans "feared the Athenians might become yet more powerful, seeing that much of Greece was already under their thumb".
Fear is a recurrent motive for Thucydides. The Peloponnesian war fits Allison's theory to this extent, that power had shifted. However, the crucial point is when it shifted.
Thucydides now digresses into Athens' development over the 50 years after the Persian invasion, from leading free allies to heading an empire of mostly subject cities. Sparta was the dominant power and natural leader of the Hellenes when the Persians arrived, he says. That would provide a parallel with the US position in the early 21st century.
Following this, the parallel breaks down: after Persia's defeat, Sparta and Athens together were the greatest powers in Greece, differing only in the form their strength took, one by land and the other by sea. Moreover, they had already fallen out before 431 BC, fighting a war in 460-46 BC.
The notion that Athens was Sparta's up-and-coming rival in 431 BC is therefore unhistorical: they had long been competitors. What Sparta feared now was not being displaced as Greece's leading power, but being surrounded and overwhelmed, with the defection to Athens of the significant naval power of Corcyra (modern Corfu) north-west of the Peloponnese.
No 'Concert of Hellas'
Moreover, the notion that ancient Greece had an 'international system' to be disrupted is similarly unhistorical.
There was almost a constant state of war somewhere: Thucydides often alludes to minor conflicts being fought in parallel with the major war between Athens and Sparta; such ancillary conflicts became relevant when one combatant appealed to one of the major powers for support.
Thucydides the 'realist'?
Thucydides has long been seen as the 'founding father' of international relations (IR) studies and in particular an advocate of 'realism': that states are engaged in a ruthless struggle for power in which humanitarian sentiments are irrelevant.
At important decision points, Thucydides introduces paired speeches, which he tried (he says) to make as close as possible to what was actually said, while presenting the arguments called for by the situation. The speeches serve to elucidate decisionmakers' motives -- the drivers for a particular decision.
Melos and Mytilene
One such case is an incident later in the war, when the Athenians try to coerce the island of Melos into their empire. It appears as a dialogue between the two negotiating parties: argument and counter-argument. The Athenians enunciate the principle that the strong do what they want and the weak accept it -- a 'locus classicus' for IR realist theory.
Apparently 'realist' arguments are advanced elsewhere, against arguments for fairness and justice. Yet Thucydides nowhere indicates that he thinks such an approach to human affairs is a good idea; he merely chronicles what happened.
However, Thucydides sometimes does indicate a view: for example, he clearly disapproves of Cleon, an Athenian populist demagogue and poor policymaker. That it is Cleon who heads the argument for ruthlessness in the 'Mytilene debate', when the Athenians had second thoughts on handling Mytilene harshly for revolting early in the war, hardly suggests Thucydides was an advocate of a policy of 'frightfulness'.
Moreover, Thucydides is clearly pleased that the ship carrying the message that Athens had changed its mind managed to arrive just in time, with the general on the spot reluctant to carry out the original order.
Modern misunderstandings
Thucydides is narrating a war, not compiling a handbook for statecraft: he notes that war is a hard teacher and that brutal events such as the attempted coup in Corcyra or the devastating plague that struck Athens in 430 BC changed many people for the worse. He analyses how people behave in stressful circumstances.
When it is a war that is being studied, it influences the sort of lessons drawn
IR has flourished as an academic discipline since the early 20th century. Particularly since 1945, there has been a drive to make it more of a social science.
The Thucydides trap is part of this: Allison lists 16 'case studies' from history, in twelve of which he says the competing powers went to war. This sounds like an impressive collection of data, but not all of the 16 may fit the template: apart from Athens and Sparta, it is doubtful, for example, whether the Napoleonic wars show a revolutionary France rising to threaten Britain; the two countries had been rivals for more than a century.
Reading Thucydides is highly instructive, not least for the detachment that characterises his work. His writings require a nuanced evaluation taking account of his purpose and respecting the historical context and different ancient assumptions of how to behave.
