Robert Darst
PS 205, Winter 1997

Lecture #1: The Peloponnesian War
  1. Why should we study the Peloponnesian War -- a conflict among a confusing mix of relatively small city-states that took place in an obscure quarter of Europe over 2400 years ago?
    1. First, as I argued in the introductory lecture, one of the main goals of the course is to understand what has changed over time in international relations, and what has remained constant.
    2. By traveling back so far into the past, to a world seemingly so different from our own, we can get a better sense of the characteristics of international relations that appear to be persistent.
    3. But why the Peloponnesian War in particular? Why not the Trojan War , Alexander the Great 's campaigns against Persia, or the wars among the Incas and their neighbors?
    4. The answer is that the Peloponnesian War is important not so much for what happened -- although it was a major turning point in the development of what we now think of as Western civilization -- as for who wrote about it and how.
    5. Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War -- written in the final years of the War -- is generally recognized as the cornerstone of IR theory, and Thucydides himself is acclaimed as the founding father of modern realism.
    6. So our primary interest is not the details of the conflict, but Thucydides' explanation for it. But before we can make sense of his arguments, we need to lay out the basic outline of what happened.
  2. Cast of characters
    1. Athens: sea-based power, major trading and commercial interests, democratic political system, rapid growth over proceeding 50 years, accumulation of large empire -- you might think of it as the nineteenth-century Britain of its day
    2. Sparta: land-based power , isolationist , conservative authoritarian political system
    3. Corinth: a naval power with colonies abroad; ally of Sparta
    4. Corcyra: also a naval power; nonaligned
  3. Brief history of events
    1. Around 500 BC, Athens and Sparta had been allies in a successful war against Persia.
      1. By 465 BC, Athens had created an empire and allied with other states around the Aegean Sea for mutual protection from Persia, known as the Delian League.
        1. Athens soon required these states to pay tribute for their protection.
        2. Athens also built long walls to protect it from land-based attacks.
      2. Sparta saw both the alliance and the wall as threatening, even though both were allegedly defenses against Persia -- real goal could be to protect Athens from land-based attack while using superior navy against neighbors.
      3. So Sparta organized its neighbors on Peloponnese into defensive alliance; this lead to the break out of war in 461 BC.
      4. The war was concluded by a peace treaty in 445 BC that was to last 30 years.
    2. Unfortunately, only 11 years later, in 434, a civil war in the small, unimportant state of Epidamnus led to a conflict which initially pulled in the Corcyraeans and the Corinthians.
      1. Conflict in Epidamnus between democrats and oligarchs; democrats appealed for help to Corcyra, which had helped found Epidamnus, but were turned down. So turned for help to Corinth, which agreed to send support.
      2. This outraged Corcyraeans, who still regarded Epidamnus as "theirs"; Corcyra sent fleet to recapture city and in process defeated Corinthian fleet sent to help. Corinth in turn declared war on Corcyra.
      3. Corcyra, fearing it would not fare as well in all-out war with Corinth as it had in action near Epidamnus, turned to Athens for support. Corinth also sent delegation to head off such an expansion of scope of hostilities.
    3. Athens was reluctant to get involved, since war with Corinth would violate terms of peace treaty with Sparta and its allies.
      1. But Athenians even more worried about consequences of Corinthian victory.
        1. Only three major naval powers: Athens, Corinth, and Corcyra.
        2. If Corinth defeated Corcyra, then it would absorb its fleet.
        3. If war with Sparta then resumed, which seemed likely sooner or later, Athens would face Spartan army and the combined Corinthian and Corcyraean fleets -- unpleasant prospect.
      2. So Athens decided to get a little bit involved to head off Corcyraean defeat.
        1. Engaged in demonstration of force, sending small fleet to Epidamnus to scare Corinthians, but with orders not to fight unless attacked.
        2. But Corinth attacked anyway, and when Corcyraeans began to lose battle, Athenian ships drawn in.
    4. Athenian interference angered Corinthians, so Corinth in turn encouraged revolt in Potidaea, now an Athenian ally but with historical ties to Corinth. When revolt took place, Athens sent forces to put it down.
    5. Spartans spent quite a bit of time debating whether they should aid Corinth, which was calling on them to declare war and which they had promised to defend.
      1. Sparta called on Athens to pull down its long walls, but Athens, in response built them higher.
      2. While Spartans were split over the decision, they finally voted to go to war with Athens to ensure that its power did not continue to grow and Athens become the ruler of all of Greece.
    6. Sparta attacked Athens in 431 BC. The Athenians responded and war ensued for ten years before a temporary and unsuccessful truce broke out. The fighting then resumed and continued for several more years.
    7. At this point, mention Melos -- militarily insignificant chapter of conflict, but one which thanks to Thucydides has become one of most famous.
      1. Once war broke out, Athens insisted that all island city-states join empire, fearing otherwise they would join alliance with Sparta.
      2. One of these was Melos, which insisted upon remaining neutral. In 416 Athens sent fleet and delegation to order Melians to surrender; they refused, arguing that right was on their side and that Sparta would come to their aid if Athens attacked.
      3. The Athenians attacked Melos immediately. Sparta did not intervene, and within a year, Athenians forced the Melians to surrender unconditionally, killed all the men, made slaves of all the women and children, and took over the island.
      4. Melian events were peripheral aspect of war, but Thucydides' treatment of negotiations is classic of IR theory, so we'll come back to it.
    8. In 413 BC, an Athenian attempt to conquer all of Sicily, including several city-states allied with Sparta, failed miserably.
      1. The defeat split Athenian opinion regarding whether to continue the war effort.
      2. Authoritarian oligarchs overthrew republic in 411.
      3. While the war continued, Athenian power continued to decline and in 404 BC, the Athenians sued for peace.
      4. Athenians were forced to pull down their protective walls and lost their dominant position in the Greek system.
  4. Why did the war occur?
    1. On the face of it, this seems like a war that shouldn't have been fought.
      1. Athens and Sparta had signed a treaty in which they had agreed not to make war with each other.
      2. Both had experienced the devastation caused by the first war
      3. Neither side wanted war in this case, and both became involved only reluctantly.
    2. Looking back, it seems like the conflict could have been avoided if it were not for chance and misperception.
      1. Conflicts in peripheral areas were bad luck, might not have happened.
      2. Corcyra misjudged Corinth's reaction; Corinth misjudged Athens'; Athens in turn misjudged Corinth's; Athens misjudged Sparta's.
    3. But Thucydides makes a quite different argument:
      1. True, the above mentioned events were the sparks that ignited the war, but they were not the real cause.
      2. The deep cause, the logs ignited by those sparks, was the structure of the situation in which Sparta and Athens found themselves:
        1. the rising power of Athens, and the fear that it instilled in Sparta, which could not assume that Athenian intentions would remain peaceful;
        2. Athens' recognition that Sparta would not allow its growth to go unchallenged:
        3. Athens' recognition that if war with Sparta were inevitable, it could not allow the balance of military power to tip in Sparta's favor.
    4. Why couldn't Athens and Sparta find another way out of the box in which they found themselves? This brings us to the very core of International Relations theory.
  5. Anarchy, power, and the security dilemma
    1. Anarchy = no government
      1. national governments have a monopoly on the legitimate use of Force (at least in principle); no equivalent actor in international sphere.
      2. National governments can enforce compliance with laws; laws exist in International Relations, but only states can enforce them.
      3. To some degree, nations united by shared sense of community, values, loyalty, views of legitimate authority, etc.; much weaker internationally.
    2. This means that the International System is a self-help system.
      1. Who you gonna call? No police, no ghostbusters.
      2. Each state must look to its own security if it wants to preserve its independence.
      3. Since World is a dangerous place, security must be first and overriding concern for all states.
    3. This requires power, above all military power.
      1. IR is often described as "the struggle for power" and nations are in a continual state of war -- at least realists see it that way.
      2. Not always at war, but the threat of war is always owning, so that states are always preparing for it, fighting it, or recovering from it.
      3. Moreover, force is a legitimate means of settling disputes in the International System: states that long ago outlawed dueling and vendettas are more than willing to use private force to settle disputes with other states.
    4. Power is different from money. Pick students:
      1. Which of the following would you prefer:
        1. you get $5, he gets $5
        2. you get $10, he gets $50
      2. now which of the following:
        1. you get a knife, he gets a knife
        2. you get a rifle, he gets an armored personnel carrier with a machine gun
      3. Difference is absolute vs. relative gains
    5. Intentions don't matter: can be deceptive or can change. So you can't trust anybody.
    6. Now reexamine Athenian decision to support Corcyra (matrix)
    7. Security dilemma
      1. Problem, of course, is that moves which one state views as defensive are viewed by others as offensive, or at least potentially so.
      2. So other states must take countermeasures, which in turn are perceived as threatening by the first state.
      3. Never-ending spiral.
  6. Melian dialog
    1. Thucydides' other great contribution to International Relations theory is the Melian dialog, which more than any other single text captures the realist view of the place of moral arguments in international affairs.
    2. the Melians base their argument on justice: it is wrong for Athens to attack Melos without just cause.
    3. In one of the most quoted lines from Thucydides, he has the Athenians telling the Melians, who they are about to attack to make them part of their empire unless they surrender peaceably, that "Right is in question only between equals in power, while the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must." This is basically the "might makes right" thesis applied unabashedly to international affairs. Indeed, the Athenians argue that they are only acting out a general rule: that "of the gods we believe, and of men we know, that by a necessary law of their nature they rule wherever they can."
    4. Not surprisingly, the Melians respond that they will not submit to being subjects of Athens without a fight. They go on to note that if Athens would leave them alone, they would gladly remain neutral, but if Athens attacks they will fight tooth and nail, despite the fact that Athens is indisputably more powerful by any regular measures of power. They argue that Sparta will come to their aid and hence balance the Athenian power. The Athenians attempt to convince them that to fight will prove futile. They note that "the Spartans are most conspicuous for believing that what they like doing is honorable and what suits their interests is just," and will therefore prove unlikely to come to the Melians' aid. The Melians respond, that even if true, they would rather take their chances fighting than roll over and play dead.
    5. Result: Sparta sits by while the Melians are slaughtered; although Thucydides clearly has respect for the Melians' virtue, he also clearly believes that they acted foolishly.
    6. Modern examples:
      1. Poland vs. Nazi Germany, 1939
      2. Finland vs. the USSR, 1939
      3. Kuwait vs. Iraq, 1990 -- why the difference? What would Thucydides say?
  7. Sum up: lessons of the Peloponnesian War
    1. Deep vs. proximate causes of war.
      1. Note that structure is not the only possible "deep" cause; liberals would ascribe many wars to the domestic characteristics of the warring states. We'll back to this next week.
    2. Capabilities, not intentions, matter.
      1. Capabilities are relative, not absolute (though nuclear weapons may be an exception).
      2. States must be concerned with changes in relative capabilities that might occur; if war seems likely, better to fight when balance is in your favor, or if it is already against you, before it tips any further in your opponent's favor.
    3. Security dilemma
    4. Right prevails only when it is backed by might.
      1. Realists quite openly maintain a double standard: viciously violent acts that would unquestionably be unacceptable at home are eminently acceptable tools of international politics.
      2. States may pursue moral goals if they wish, but they had best look to the accumulation of power first -- otherwise they will accomplish nothing.
      3. Expecting others to come to your assistance on moral grounds is foolishly and dangerous, as is any expectation that other countries will be constrained by moral principles.
    5. Note that liberals see the world somewhat differently.
      1. The international system is indeed anarchical, but it is not devoid of organization: there may be some degree of governance without government.
      2. Absolute as well as relative gains matter.
      3. Intentions matter: some states are more trustworthy than others.
      4. The security dilemma is not inescapable; states can climb out of it, especially if they expect to live with each other for a long time.
      5. Moral arguments matter; and while it helps to have might on your side, norms can also exert independent influence even when not backed by force or the threat of it.