SCRIPT - Geostrategy of the Peloponnesian War 1: Thucydides’ Trap (02/04/2019)

Geostrategy of the Peloponnesian War 1: Thucydides’ Trap - A Collaboration with CaspianReport

Starting in 431 BC, the ancient Greek world turned on itself as Sparta and Athens locked horns. The result of this rivalry, as is captured vividly and analysed thoroughly by historian Thucydides, was a dynamic conflict that pitted a land power against a naval power. The hostilities lasted on and off for decades, but the events fundamentally shaped the study of geopolitics. It was a war like no other. The catalyst of this conflict and steady manner in which it grew into all-out hostilities has inspired strategic concepts and thinkers throughout the ages. So, to draw parallels with the present, we must analyse Thucydides Trap’ and go over the origins of the Peloponnesian War.

My name is Strategy Stuff and welcome to CaspianReport.

 

The radical nature of Thucydides’ analysis

“The growth of the power of Athens, and the alarm which this inspired in Sparta, made war inevitable." With these famous words, Thucydides lays out his analysis for why the Peloponnesian War happened: not by accident, not by individual leaders, but instead a natural outcome of long-term power shifts, as Sparta, the traditional hegemon of the Greek city-states, found itself threatened by the growing power of Athens.

We can appreciate the radical nature of this analysis with a timeline of how the War actually began. Sparta and Athens had crossed swords barely 10 years prior in the First Peloponnesian War, but the spark this time came from a dispute between Corcyra, a non-aligned state, and Corinth, a member of the Spartan Peloponnesian League.

Competing over a peripheral town in modern Albania, Corcyra and Corinth originally kept the dispute between themselves. Eventually, however, Corcyra went to Athens for help, and the resulting alliance repulsed a Corinthian invasion. Corinth then appealed to Sparta, who then consulted with its Peloponnesian League allies and sent an ultimatum to Athens. Only after this was rejected did Sparta go to war with Athens.

So, on a purely chronological basis, we could view Corcyra and Corinth as the main drivers of the war, calling in the major powers as allies in their dispute. This is not the view of Thucydides, who argues that an Athenian-Spartan showdown had been widely expected for some time, with the Corcyran Crisis being a mere excuse to start the War.

He demonstrates this by showing how Athens and Sparta, when reacting to the Corcyran Crisis, were not really focused on the dispute at hand, but instead about how said dispute would affect the balance of power between themselves. When Athens backed Corcyra against Corinth, it wasn’t worried about the immediate consequences of Corinth defeating Corcyra, but rather, what a strengthened Corinth in league with Sparta would do to Athenian maritime dominance.

Similarly, Sparta’s final ultimatum to Athens – essentially demanding the latter relinquish its stranglehold over its Delian League allies – did not aim to resolve disputes in Corcyra or the simultaneous flashpoints of Potidaea and Megara, but instead was a wide-ranging set of demands whose collective aim was to end the Athenian Empire.

This is, therefore, the first idea contained within what has become known as ‘Thucydides’ Trap’: we have to analyse conflicts not simply on the basis of events at the surface-level, but also be aware of potential historical and geostrategic undercurrents.

We see such undercurrents in our current world as well, with geopolitical points of friction in the Balkans and the Middle East responsible for flare-ups within seemingly unconnected issues. For its time, Thucydides’ interpretation was a revolutionary step in the study of political science.

Fear and alarm in ancient Greece

“They feared the growth of the power of the Athenians, seeing most of Greece already subject to them.” If Thucydides is right, and Spartan fear was the actual driver of the Peloponnesian War, then it’s worth asking what exactly Sparta ‘feared’ about the Athens.

The standard answer is the dramatic growth of Athenian power, particularly ‘hard power’ in the form of imperial subjugation and colonization, and the military and economic power which sustained it.

And it’s not difficult to see why: in the 100 years between the Persian invasions to the Peloponnesian War, Athens grew from a second-tier power to the premier maritime force in Greece. The establishment and the expansion of its Delian League saw Athenian political influence spread beyond the city to include much of the Aegean and beyond.

By contrast, Sparta during this period was in decline. Between 480 to 430BC, its citizen population shrunk by 50%, and its economy remained insignificant. Sparta’s strategic horizons accordingly shrank too: with fewer men to spare for foreign adventures, Spartan foreign policy became even more cautious and conservative, and inevitably this allowed Athens to gain at the Spartan expense.

But we always should recognize the limits of explaining this conflict using ‘hard power’ alone. For if that were the case, Spartan-Athenian rivalry should actually be cooling off given the results of the First Peloponnesian War.

During the latter half of that war, Athens lost hundreds of ships on failed expeditions to Egypt and Cyprus. It also gave up control over Central Greece and the Corinthian Isthmus, meaning that Sparta now had an unobstructed land route to Athens. Yet not only did Spartan concerns not decrease, they were increased to a point where Sparta became determined not just to wage a war, but one that would dismantle the Athenian Empire once and for all.

So, when thinking about Thucydides’ Trap, we should look beyond mere ‘hard power’ and think about other factors that might have added to the Spartan fear of losing their hegemony.

One factor may be the growing efforts by Athens to seal its Empire off from Spartan influence. Without the manpower for constant intervention or policing duty, Spartan hegemony had to rely on webs of indirect influence to be sustainable. The key focus was on maintaining friendly governments in major allied cities, which would then exercise influence over their colonies and minor allies and so forth, resulting in Spartan wishes filtering across all of Greece. Even Athens, whose tributary allies contained colonies of Peloponnesian origin, would in such a way be exposed to Spartan influence.

Seen in this light, the Potidaean Crisis and what it revealed about Athenian intentions may actually have alarmed Sparta more than Athenian power. Potidaea was both a Corinthian colony and an Athenian tributary, so both Corinth - a Spartan ally - and Athens saw themselves entitled to influence the town. Yet in 432, Athens demanded that Potidaea expel all Corinthian personnel and let Athens monopolize its politics.

From the Spartan point of view, this would have looked like the beginning of an Athenian attempt to break the ties linking its tributaries with their Peloponnesian mother cities and to seal off even the most indirect Spartan influence. Left unchecked, the end result would have been an Athenian zone impervious to Spartan diktat, making a mockery of the latter’s claims to hegemony. It was inevitable, therefore, that Sparta would take drastic measures to stop this process, regardless of the actual power Athens possessed.

If Potidaea demonstrated that Athens was seemingly committed to eroding a cornerstone of Sparta’s hegemony, then the Megarian Decree would have again shown the city’s commitment to bypass yet another one.

The Megarian Decree was issued by Athens in response to Megarian insults, banning the Spartan ally from trading with or sailing to any port in its Delian League. And since the Athenian Empire was Greece’s commercial and maritime hub, such an embargo sent the Megarian economy into freefall, placing immense pressure on Megara to concede to Athenian demands.

Athens may have seen the Decree as a way to defend its rights without going to war with Sparta. But if that was the intention, it was a complete failure, because the titanic potential of a weaponized Athenian economy could only have been seen as an attempt to bypass Spartan military dominance. By threatening economic destruction, Athens could force Greek cities to do its bidding without risking its military in battle, and clearly, that would end Sparta’s ability to be the only one calling the shots.

So here we come to the second idea in Thucydides’ Trap, which is that: we need to analyse the Trap beyond mere comparisons of material power. Growing power remains a major contributor to fear, but at the same time, the questions of how states use their existing power and what they intend to do with their additional power remain relevant.

This may answer one of the key problems in Thucydides’ Trap: the question of why some Trap relationships, like the UK and US, didn’t lead to conflict while others, like the UK and Germany, did. In the case of Athens versus Sparta, we can say that Athenian growth may have been the major contributor to Spartan fears, but the city did itself no favours by acting in a way that suggested, rightly or wrongly, a sustained attempt to overthrow Sparta’s hegemony.

The role of third parties

“Do not sacrifice friends and kindred to their bitterest enemies, and drive the rest of us in despair to some other alliance.” So far, we have analysed the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War from the viewpoint of the leading powers, Athens and Sparta. Now, we go full circle and refocus on the role of the minor players, particularly Corcyra and Corinth, in the story.

Now, of course, we already said that Thucydides’ analysis debunked the idea that the minor states were the main drivers of the War. But that doesn’t mean that they were passive bystanders to the unfolding drama. Instead, we should view them as ‘enablers’ of conflict, latching onto the Athenian-Spartan rivalry for their own ends.

After all, it was Corcyra and Corinth, not Athens or Sparta, that first linked their dispute with the broader rivalry in order to ‘sell’ their cause. In seeking an alliance with Athens, Corcyra linked Corinthian success back to Sparta, claiming that Athenian refusal would mean fighting against ‘the united fleets of Corcyra and the Peloponnese’. This argument was made despite the fact that Corinth had vetoed a Spartan attack on Athens 10 years ago.

And in appealing to Sparta, Corinth listed the many times Sparta failed to support its allies, how these failures had benefited Athens and further warned that refusal this time would mean the city’s defection from the Peloponnesian League. So not only were both cities linking their dispute to the rivalry, but they were also increasing the pressure on the said rivalry, threatening to tip the balance in one direction or another unless their demands were met.

Public policy theory has a concept known as a ‘focusing event’: a crisis that cuts through the normal process of policy deliberation and demands drastic and immediate action impossible under regular circumstances.

We can characterize the Corcyra Crisis as a ‘focusing event’ especially for Sparta: without it, the conservative nature of Spartan foreign policy may never have reached a point where an all-out attempt to destroy the Athenian Empire would have become the likely policy outcome. Thucydides may even be hinting at this, when he contrasts the Spartan King Archidamus’ detailed and logical reasoning against immediate war, versus what was essentially ‘rah-rah’ nationalism by the Spartan statesman Sthenelaidas.

But the key point here is, unlike most ‘focusing events’ which are the result of accidents or error, the stakes over the Corcyran Crisis were deliberately raised by Corcyra and Corinth in order to further their own goals, and in this they were both hugely successful in removing obstacles that, in less pressured circumstances, might have restrained Athens and Sparta from war.

This is an important idea that sometimes gets lost in discussions about Thucydides’ Trap: the danger does not just come from the attitudes of the two major powers, but also from third parties who latch on, exploit and stoke the rivalry for their own ends.

In fact, the latter is far more dangerous, because while it is often in the major powers’ self-interest to react in a way that avoids a ruinous war, or at least one they are unprepared for, it is instead in the minor powers’ self-interest to turn up the heat as quickly as possible to force allied intervention.

This is the third idea within Thucydides’ Trap. While we can still characterize the Trap as a relationship between two major powers, ignoring third-party dynamics threatens to cut out what is potentially the most dangerous aspect of that phenomenon; for example, the role of Serbia, Austria-Hungary or even France in World War I, and the role of Cuba and China during the Cold War.

Study of conflict

In this study of the origins of the Peloponnesian War, we have drawn attention to several strategic ideas within Thucydides’ Trap. First is the radical nature of Thucydides’ analysis. Second is the idea that the Trap is not just about hard power considerations, but also about state intentions. Last, we reintroduce the role that third-parties play in escalating the Trap.

I have been your host Strategy Stuff, and this was a collaborative video series between CaspianReport and my channel. If you would like to see more content of geostrategy, visit the link in the description. Also, special thanks to our contributors on Patreon for making this report possible. Check out patreon.com/caspianreport for more information. For now, thank you for watching and take care.