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The Paranoia of the Powerful: Thucydides on World War III

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 November 2022

Richard Ned Lebow
Richard Ned Lebow*
Affiliation:
Cornell University
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Extract

In the sixteenth year of the Peloponnesian War, an Athenian expedition descended upon the small island of Melos, about 90 miles south of Athens in the Aegean Sea, and demanded that the Melians join in alliance or be destroyed. Although a Spartan colony, Melos had remained scrupulously neutral in the war. Her citizens, unwilling to renounce their independence, sought unsuccessfully to dissuade the Athenians from attacking them. The Athenians explained that an independent Melos situated in the very heart of the Athenian imperium encouraged other island allies to aspire toward independence. Their failure to put an end to the anomaly of Melian independence would therefore be seen by friend and foe alike as a sign of weakness on Athens' part.

The really intriguing question about the Melian dialogue is not the Athenian decision to invade Melos but rather Athenian toleration of Melian independence for the first sixteen years of the Peloponnesian War. For surely, if Melian independence constituted a threat to Athens in 416 B.C. it must have done so in 430 B.C., the year in which the war broke out, and in all of the years in between. Why then did Athens wait so long to impose its hegemony over the island? The answer, implicit in Thucydides' narrative history of the Peloponnesian War, contains an important insight into the nature of aggression, one, moreover, that is particularly germane to contemporary international relations.

The Athenian reply to the Melians stresses the subjective nature of power; if others think of you as powerful, you are powerful and vice versa. For this reason, states must be concerned about their image abroad and must from time to time offer vivid demonstrations of their capability and resolve. The Athenian invasion of Melos, unnecessary for any strategic reason, was envisaged as such a display.

Type
Security and Confrontation in the Nuclear Age
Information
PS: Political Science & Politics , Volume 17 , Issue 1 , Winter 1984 , pp. 10 - 17
Copyright
Copyright © The American Political Science Association 1984

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References

1 Lebow, Richard Ned, Between Peace and War: The Nature of International Crisis (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1981).Google Scholar

2 Horelick, Arnold L. and Rush, Myron, Strategy, Power and Soviet Foreign Policy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1966), p. 141 Google Scholar; Hilsman, Roger, To Move a Nation (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday and Company, 1967), pp. 200–202 Google Scholar; Tatu, Michel, Power in the Kremlin, trans. Katel, Helen (London: Collins, 1969), p. 231 Google Scholar; Allison, Graham T., Essence of Decision: Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis (Boston: Little, Brown, 1971), pp. 52–56 Google Scholar; George, Alexander and Smoke, Richard, Deterrence in American Foreign Policy (New York: Columbia University Press, 1974), pp. 461–462 Google Scholar; Lebow, Richard Ned, “The Cuban Missile Crisis: Reading the Lessons Correctly,” Political Science Quarterly 98 (Fall 1983), pp. 431–458.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3 For an elaboration of this argument, see Lebow, Richard Ned, “The Soviet Response to Poland and the Future of the Warsaw Pact,” in Broadhurst, Arlene Idol, The Future of European Alliance Systems: NATO and the Warsaw Pact (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1982), pp. 185–236.Google Scholar

4 See Bialer, Seweryn, Stalin's Successors: Leadership, Stability and Change in the Soviet Union (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980).Google Scholar