They are reading Thucydides in the White House, or so Politico informs us. Who? Trump? More likely Steve Bannon and pals are reading Graham Allison’s new book Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides’s Trap? in which he argues “When a rising power threatens to displace a ruling one, the most likely outcome is war..” Indeed, we are told, Thucydides showed that in such circumstances, war might be inevitable. If policy makers believe that, we are indeed in a trap of self-fulfilling expectations. Allison’s core idea depends on the translation of one sentence in Thucydides, (1.23.6), the one highlighted in the promotion of his book on the Belfer Center at Harvard’s Kennedy School web site:“It was the rise of Athens, and the fear that this instilled in Sparta, that made war inevitable.”Are the strategy wizards of the White House reading that sentence and concluding war with China is inevitable?It’s perfect for Twitter-brains, but, look, if the strategists in the White House decide that war is inevitable, it will be inevitable. Can’t you hear them, “Since it is inevitable, why waste time and energy on negotiations? Forget diplomacy. Let’s get it over with war while we still have the lead in power. “
So it’s important to get that little sentence of Thucydides right.
Otherwise people die.
If we look closely at the Greek, we can see that Thucydides was not putting forth the idea of inevitability, “ in order to exculpate from responsibility the Athenian statesman Pericles, whom he much admired,“ as followers of Donald Kagan claim. In fact, he wasn’t arguing that the war was inevitable in any rigorous sense. He was not propounding a Law of History. but exploring the psychology of decision making.
That is clear, first off, from his choice of words. It would have been easy enough for Thucydides to assert inevitability, if that were what he meant. He could have used the word aphykton, inescapable. Instead he chose a verb with a wide range of meaning, from exert psychological pressure on someone , to apply physical force. It’s related to words for the drives for food, sex etc. that are part of the Greeks’ understanding human nature. It’s the right word to choose when exploring the powerful, but not unavoidable effects of fear in human affairs.
What’s more, Thucydides’ Greek keeps away from any simple assertion that the Spartans were compelled to wage war. His phrasing is more complex and more cautious and again ambiguous. He adds a preposition and uses a grammatical construction (infinitive with the definite article the) in which wage war is the object of the preposition, not a free standing verb. The Spartans, Thucydides says, were driven, into or towards the waging of war. That grammatical construction is the sort of expression one might well use when a boss compels subordinates or a master forces slaves to do what they would not choose to do (cf. Thucydides 2.75.3). But, of course, workers can shirk their duties and slaves can run away. The phrasing doesn’t entail inevitability.
A close reading of the Greek, then, doesn’t come out where Allison would like. The difference may seem a tiny one, but it’s important to get it right. Otherwise, war becomes more likely,and people more likely to die
A reliable translation of the sentence would preserve the range of possible meaning of Thucydides’ word choice, for example “... the Athenians by becoming great and causing fear drove the Spartans towards waging war.”
The phrasing of Thucydides’ Greek, .then, shows that he was not propounding a law of history or tweeting an opinion, but raising questions about how policy is best formulated I situations where a change in power relationships engenders fear in one of the parties.
One can’t answer those questions by stopping here just a a dozen pages into the text, and putting it under the philologist’s equivalent of an electron microscope. Once one sees the range of possible meanings in this passage, one must read on
Try that and a careful literary strategy emerges that brings the reader to Sparta at the time of the crucial debate (chs 68 – 87) on whether to go to war or not. Was there still any alternative to war? Of course there was. Cautious, intelligent King Archidamus laid out exactly such an approach in his speech:
Deliberate therefore of this a great while as of a matter of great importance .... Consider before you enter how unexpected the chances of war be .... (1.78, tr. Thomas Hobbes)
Archidamus’ approach was narrowly rejected after being assailed byby the rabble-rousing words of his fire-brand opponent, Sthenelaidas. .
The alert reader can detect just under the surface of this debate the fear that no red-blooded warrior wants to admit, but was there, nonetheless, pushing Sparta toward war. It was a powerful force, but Sparta still had a choice. Even after the vote in Sparta war was not inevitable; there were still ways out, if sufficient political will could be mustered to try them.
So, read on, White House strategists and Harvard savants. Push ahead, mighty policy wizards, Don’t stop with the alleged assertion of inevitability, and, for heaven’s sake, don’t be stampeded by the growth of Chinese power; don’t let rabble rousing fire-brands push you into war. We still have the vestiges of the incredible shrinking State Department; use it before it disappears entirely. .
But, above all, keep reading Thucydides, carefully. Get it right. Otherwise, people die.
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Several Thucydideans have helped me think through these issues. I am especially grateful to Donald Lateiner, Hunter Rawlings, Daniel Tompkins. They may not agree with me, but they sure have helped me think.
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