Hi, and welcome to Strategy Stuff. This is a video
series I originally made for CaspianReport on the geostrategic analysis of the
Peloponnesian War. In the fourth video, we looked at how competing Athenian and
Spartan strategies finally culminated in a Spartan victory in the final phase
of the War. Now, we conclude the series by looking at how politics influenced
Athenian and Spartan strategymaking.
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I. National Character
One of the themes in Thucydides’ History
revolves around the influence of ‘national character’ on strategymaking. According
to the historian, all states share the same two goals: the desire to be free
from domination, and also the desire to dominate others. Even so, states clearly
don’t behave in the same way: throughout the Peloponnesian War, Athens campaigned
aggressively around Greece, whereas Sparta acted only under the most pressing
or favorable circumstances.
The difference is explained through national
character, which determines a state’s perception and acceptance of risk. In a
purely rational world, strategic risk can be objectively calculated from
observable facts, but Thucydides recognized that the very act of observing
reality is not entirely rational. Instead, observation is influenced by
subjective phenomena like historical memory, pre-existing biases, and the
tendency to focus on particular items. In this way, the Peloponnesian War
pitted two national characters against each other: Athenian optimism versus
Spartan pessimism.
National characters are based on geography.
Athenian optimism came about through the poverty of Athens’ home soil, which
encouraged people to be proactive in order to prosper. The result was a
national character that accepted a high level of strategic risk, celebrating
bold strategies with high potential payoffs, even to the extent of overlooking,
downplaying or ignoring the dangers that lurked in the details.
Athenian strategy was therefore aggressive,
unorthodox, and not entirely planned out, leaving practical execution dependent
on the hands of a hopefully-competent leader. Cleon’s strategic offensive
against Sparta, for example, delivered spectacular results with Demosthenes’
operational package, but under alternate leadership at Delium resulted in
ineffectiveness and defeat. On the upside – and the Athenians were conditioned
to see only the upside – such strategies could wrongfoot the enemy and generate
significant gains. But on the downside, the Athenian approach also
de-emphasized cost-benefit considerations, and relied on inspired leadership
instead of detailed planning, which, if the stars failed to align, would
inevitably lead to avoidable catastrophes like Sicily.
By contrast, Spartan pessimism came from the
fertility of Spartan lands, which fostered a national character that was not
sold on the benefits of change. Sparta’s national character therefore accepted
only minimal levels of risk, and rather than maximizing potential payoffs, they
focused on minimizing potential losses. Inaction was technically a way of
avoiding loss, and so Sparta often fell into strategic paralysis, acting only
once the potential losses from inaction – like losing hegemony – became truly unacceptable.
Even then, Spartan strategies followed
tried-and-tested formulae, like seeking quick decisive battle even before the
walls of Athens. Their predictable plans made it easy for enemies to counter or
surprise them, as Athens did throughout the first half of the War. But the flip
side of this was that Spartan strategies were well-planned and carefully
executed: they would, for example, always secure the support of a local ally
before campaigning abroad, and despite their militaristic reputation, rarely
staked the success of their campaigns on an equal-strength battle. As
demonstrated at Mantinea and throughout the Ionian War, the Spartans were
masters of the art of strategic patience, able to hold off on action until
circumstances guaranteed a low-cost victory.
In this way, national character explains why states
have different strategies; but Thucydides’ analysis goes further than that. He
sees an inherent tension in the strategymaking process: strategies that fit
with national character are naturally more likely to get adopted, but those
same strategies would also inherit national weaknesses and sow the seeds for
eventual defeat.
Instead, great strategies challenge national
character to balance out national weaknesses. Pericles’ decision to stay behind
the walls ran counter to Athenian optimism, but prevented the city from
gambling on a risky decisive battle. Brasidas’ Northeastern campaign could have
resulted in terrible loss, but it saved Sparta from the strategic paralysis it
had sunk into. For Thucydides, both men exhibited the two qualities of great
strategists: firstly, the wisdom to correctly identify national character, and
secondly, the ability to turn unpopular plans into reality.
II. Strategymaking Institutions
Moving on from Thucydides, we look at how both
Athens and Sparta structured the process of strategymaking within their
governments, and how that influenced the end result.
Here, we tackle a specific criticism directed at
Greek institutions, namely what one scholar dubbed the “over-responsibility of
the executive”. It argues that Greek strategymaking was too centralized, both
with the home government micromanaging the planning of campaigns, and also
holding field commanders criminally responsible if the execution of said
campaigns turned out different, no matter the reason.
The criticism of over-responsibility is almost
always directed at Athenian democracy and is habit of eliminating its own
military talent. The prime example here was the Trial of the Generals after the
Battle of Arginusae in 406. After that hard-won naval victory, a storm
prevented the 8 victorious admirals from saving drowning sailors; and for that,
the enraged Athenians convicted and executed 6 of them. With such strict
rulings and harsh punishments, it is little wonder that Athenian generals often
acted politically rather than strategically, such as when Nicias wasted his
army before Syracuse rather than trusting his instinct to leave.
In thinking about this criticism, we should first
recognize that over-responsibility was probably a built-in feature of Athenian
government. When it came to strategy, the legislative branch of the Athenian
Assembly was solely in charge of planning, voting on details such as what
diplomacy to undertake and even where to campaign. Execution was the
responsibility of 10 Generals, elected by the Assembly on an annual basis. To
supervise them, each General was subject to a monthly vote of confidence and a
review at the end of their term. Failing either would get one sent before the
Popular Tribunal, where trials were not so much about the law as they were
about one’s popularity with the jury. Conviction would carry sentences up to
death. From this overview, we can see that Athenian over-responsibility was
part of a broader institutional choice to prioritize political control over strategic
effectiveness. The Assembly was the sole decisionmaker, and any field commander
who thought differently risked being politically and physically removed.
This undoubtedly led to frustrating episodes like
at the naval Battle of Sybota in 433: the small Athenian fleet was instructed
to defend Corcyra from Corinth, but not to actually join in the battle that was
already raging between the Corcyraeans and Corinthians; instead, it was to
suicidally attack the Corinthian armada only after the Corcyraeans had already
lost, and the victorious Corinthians were about to land on the island itself!
Of course, there was a good reason behind this
crazy order – Corcyra was Athens’ ally, but Corinth at this time was still
neutral towards Athens. And since angering either state would damage Athens’
geopolitical interests, the city justifiably wanted to delay making a choice
for as long as possible. This, in turn, reflects an understanding that Greece
in the 5th Century BC was an intensely competitive geopolitical
environment, where the distance between a comfortable hegemony and fighting an
overwhelming coalition was not that large. To thrive, Athens needed to make
careful choices with the bigger picture in mind – responsibilities that could
not be entrusted to a local field commander.
And it wasn’t just Athens who thought this way –
Sparta had its own version of over-responsibility. The city had 2 Kings to act
as army leaders, but responsibility for planning fell again to the legislative
branch, which in Sparta was split between 5 ephors elected annually, and an
Elder Chamber of 28 elders elected for life. The King on campaign had to
execute the approved strategy to the letter, with 1 ephor personally
supervising him to make sure. Kings could be punished for exercising their own
judgment: prior to the Mantinea campaign in 418, King Agis II, wary of Athenian
reinforcements, decided not to seek battle with Argos, and for that he was
threatened with a severe fine and the destruction of his property.
Spartan over-responsibility again reflected the
prioritization of political control over military effectiveness: the Spartan
navy might have avoided both its destructions, for example, were the Spartan
naval commander not replaced annually. But the Spartan government had good
reason to overrule its commanders: both King Archidamus’ father and co-ruler
had been exiled for accepting treasonous bribes, and Brasidas’ Northeastern
campaign saw the general callously break the alliance with Macedon and the
truce with Athens, even as Sparta’s truce with Argos was about to expire.
For Sparta and Athens, therefore, war was far too
important to be left to the generals, and the criticism of ‘executive over-responsibility’
was, in fact, an attempt to optimize strategic decisionmaking in a competitive
environment. That said, Sparta never abused its over-responsibility in so
frivolous a fashion as Athens repeatedly did, and in the next section, we try
to find the reasons why.
III. Athens: Strategy in a Divided Society
When we examine Athenian democracy’s more
questionable decisions, we seem to find a common characteristic running through
them: the decision made was either often quickly reversed, or the Athenians
would quickly begin to “repent” their decision. That suggests a society evenly
and deeply divided over policy – at least in practice, since the urban-dwellers
in Athens had a much easier time voting, and were therefore overrepresented
compared to the farmers living far away.
Athens’ policy divides were laid on top of socioeconomic
differences. Athenian society was officially structured into 4 classes: the
great landowners, the wealthy equestrian class, the small landowners, and the
poor. The higher the class, the more likely your income came from owning land;
the lower the class, the more likely your income came from overseas trade.
Class interest therefore incentivized a sharp
divide in strategic policy. Since war with Sparta would inevitably see its
soldiers pillage Athenian land, the higher classes naturally preferred
conciliation with Sparta, especially if it meant giving away a maritime empire
which they had little stake in anyway. By contrast, the lower classes recognized
that expanding Athens’ overseas empire would also expand the market for their
goods and services; and indeed, for the urban poor, war with Sparta was a safe
way of earning easy money in Athens’ invincible navy. And as the Athenian
empire expanded, the city would have to send more colonists to garrison
strategic and rebellious points – and coincidentally enough, the reward for
being a state-sponsored colonist was being given land and climbing up the
social ladder.
It is little wonder, then, that the aristocratic
Nicias would be a consistent advocate of peace with Sparta, while Cleon, as a
champion of the poor, would instead demand harsh measures against tributaries
and Sparta alike. But since the poor inevitably outnumbered the rich, one might
expect Athenian strategy to be uniformly skewed in a maritime and anti-Spartan
direction.
But this was not the case. When Athenian democracy
first emerged in the 500s BC, the system, by design or compromise, had various
institutional checks to prevent unfettered rule by the poor. Formally, the poor
could vote on policy, but policy execution was reserved for the higher classes,
and only the great landowners could serve in an Elder Chamber with the power to
veto anything in the democracy. Informally, because there was no remuneration
for taking time off to vote, poor turnout was suppressed and the rich were
over-represented. The result was that the rich were often able to counterbalance
the maritime tendencies of Athenian strategy, restricting expansion to what was
needed to continue the fight against Persia.
This aristocratic ‘Deep State’ naturally angered
the poor, and so they turned to none other than Pericles as their champion. By
the 450s, Pericles had successfully stripped the Elder Chamber of its political
power, let the poor serve in policy execution, and also started paying people
to vote. This was the era of Athenian ‘radical democracy’, and as policy tilted
decisively in favor of the poor, Athenian strategy accordingly raced down a
maritime and anti-Spartan path, quickly resulting in not just the First
Peloponnesian War, but also increased friction with imperial tributaries and peer
competitors alike.
Now to be fair, Sparta’s envy and fear of Athens
had been increasing even before the radical democracy, and as previous videos have
shown, Athenian leaders believed that they could neutralize whatever damage
Sparta could inflict. But by catering so exclusively to the poor’s class
interest, radical democrat strategy gave the richer classes a material
incentive to take back policy control. War might be profitable for the poor,
but for the rich, it definitely meant seeing their villas destroyed, collection
of rents interrupted, and being more heavily taxed to fund military expenses.
Under the radical democracy, the rich had no
institutional path back into power, so inevitably, they began working outside
of the system, destabilizing Athens’ strategymaking in the process. During the
Mytilenean debate, they counter-mobilized against Cleon’s policy of mass
execution, generating a 180 degree turn in Athenian policy. Right before the
Sicilian Expedition, they carried out a political hit job on Alcibiades, using
the vandalism of religious statues as their pretext. And finally, after the
Sicilian debacle, they overthrew Athens’ democracy itself in 411, throwing the city
into turmoil just as Sparta took to the seas.
Even within the system, the unbalancing of Athens’
democracy created negative strategic consequences. With the poor now the
dominant political bloc, strategic advocacy now became a matter of staking out
extreme pro-poor positions in order to win votes. Pericles’ prestige allowed
him to exercise strategic moderation, but his successors Cleon and Hyperbolus
were either unwilling or politically unable to exercise such restraint.
Instead, they advocated for more war, both to buy the support of the poor and
to demonize their opponents as unpatriotic. Under such an environment,
strategic discussion in the Assembly became little better than an echo chamber:
in particular, during the Sicilian Expedition and the Trial of the Generals,
dissenting Athenians were compelled to shut up instead of voicing opposition,
for fear that the Assembly would turn against them as well.
To sum up, therefore, we can trace the strategic
failures of Athens back to Pericles’ decision to remove the aristocratic checks
on Athenian democracy, which, through internal self-radicalization and external
turmoil, fatally compromised the city’s ability to make good strategy. To think
about what could have been done differently, we consider what Thucydides saw as
the best government in his lifetime, the moderate oligarchy of ‘The 5,000’.
‘The 5,000’, more likely than an actual number, probably
referred to the class of small landowners and farmer-soldiers, who served as
hoplites in times of war and probably dominated this government. Perhaps
because of this, Thucydides saw them as representing a disciplined and
patriotic ‘Golden Mean’ between the selfish treason of Athens’ wealthiest and
the irresponsible decisionmaking of Athens’ poorest.
The brief record of the 5,000 seems to justify
Thucydides’ assessment. As Athens’ democracy was replaced by oligarchy in the
411 coup, some of the richer oligarchs wanted to bolster their rule by inviting
Sparta into Athens. Seeing this, the moderate oligarchs of the 5,000 turned on
their former allies and prepared to take over the city. One way of doing so
would have been to summon the Athenian fleet back to the city, but that would
have resulted in what was left of the Athenian Empire defecting wholesale to
Sparta. Instead, the 5,000 took up arms themselves against the extremist
oligarchs, while the Athenian fleet under Alcibiades was allowed to pursue the
Spartan fleet until the latter’s destruction at Cyzicus in 410. Having
stabilized Athens’ strategic situation with that victory, the 5,000 seems not
to have retained power for long, instead handing power back to the radical
democracy in an uneventful transition.
For Thucydides, the disciplined moderation of the
5,000 allowed them to make clear-headed strategic decisions, self-sacrifice for
the greater good, and wield power only for public benefit. Again like in the
previous section on national character, a balanced temperament, whether in
person or as a collective, is key to good strategy.
IV. Sparta: the Perils of Over-Mobilization
As we think about the impact of politics on Spartan
strategymaking, a good starting-point would be to re-interpret King Archidamus’
recommended strategy – reforming Sparta’s economy, opening up to foreigners and
especially flooding Sparta with money – as, in fact, a veiled warning, meant to
demonstrate that Sparta could not defeat Athens without corrupting the values that
lay at the heart of Spartan communalism. The mobilization required to fight
such a prolonged war would inevitably introduce changes to Spartan politics,
Spartan strategy and, eventually, Spartan society.
Traditional Spartan society was famous for its
exclusiveness. People living outside Sparta were either helot serfs or subjects
without rights, but to be an actual citizen even within Sparta itself, one not
only had to trace ancestry back to a founding citizen, but also had to be rich
enough to contribute to the communal granary.
This exclusivity was the root cause of Sparta’s
perennial headache – the persistent decrease in the citizen population. This
was not just a question of childbirths, but also a politico-economic issue.
Spartan conservatism naturally recoiled at the prospect of using government to
smooth out social inequalities, but the result was that Sparta’s great
landowners gradually squeezed out smaller farmers, causing the latter to fail
their granary obligations and thus lose their citizenship. And because citizens
formed the core of Sparta’s military and governance structure, their decline
meant that Sparta’s ability to project power shrank by the year.
But from a strategic viewpoint, this was not a
wholly negative outcome. As mentioned in the earliest videos, Sparta was not a
typical hegemon that ruled by virtue of a dominant economic base. Instead,
Sparta’s hegemony came from its superior army, and its ability to deploy said
army in a targeted fashion, so as to force or convince much larger cities to
accept its rule. In practice, this meant that Sparta had to be restrained in
its use of force: constant fighting would not only erode the army’s qualitative
edge, but also make other states wary of Sparta and less inclined to view its
hegemony as something benign and distant. Happily for Sparta, the leaders of the
gradually-weakening city were naturally incentivized to look beyond military
force as a solution to their strategic problems.
This whole system, however, would come under
unbearable pressure as Sparta struggled to respond to Athens’ aggressive
strategy under Cleon. Unwilling to risk any more Spartan citizens after
Sphacteria, Sparta began mobilizing hitherto-unused segments of its society.
Now, Sparta had always utilized non-citizens – particularly ex-Spartans – in
its army, but now, the gates were opened further to allow helots and ex-helots
to become soldiers, most famously in Brasidas’ Northeastern campaign, but also
in the relief of Syracuse, and in Sparta’s new fleet. Almost overnight, despite
the long-term damage this did to Sparta’s economy, the city’s ability to
project power across Greece had seemingly rejuvenated.
The obvious result arising from this mobilization
of non-citizens was the creation of a new political force within Spartan
politics. As non-citizens earned prestige through military service, they
inevitably began to demand rights comparable to that of proper citizens. In
this, they were most notably assisted by Lysander, a non-citizen himself, who
established his own power base by appointing non-citizens as military governors
over the former Athenian Empire. Lysander was even willing to sacrifice Spartan
interests to get his way, persuading Persia to cut off funds to the Spartan
fleet when a traditionalist was appointed as his successor, resulting in its
destruction at Arginusae. Others attempted to contribute by destabilizing the
Spartan system, most notably in the assassination and coup attempt of the
Kinadon Conspiracy of 399.
That said, political intrigue was nothing new in
Sparta and if a new faction was the only result from Spartan mobilization, the
system could probably have managed it in due course. However, increasing
Sparta’s ability to use force also loosened the constraints that prevented
Sparta from resorting to force. And this, combined with the aforementioned
political competition, would prove to be the downfall of the Spartan hegemony.
Freed from the pressures of geopolitical
competition, Sparta’s leadership began externalizing its internal political disputes.
Leadership contests that, in previous years, might have assumed the form of
corruption charges or some other non-military process, now took the form of
invading other states in order to build up political capital. To counter
Lysander’s great prestige, King Pausanias allowed Athenian democrats to
overthrow Lysander’s oligarchy in 403, while King Agis II invaded Elis in 401.
To counter these counters in turn, Lysander successfully convinced Sparta to
fight Persia from 397-94, and when the political result was not to his liking,
he and King Pausanias invaded Thebes in 395, sparking off the next round of
hegemonic wars in Greece.
Lost in all of this political infighting was the
fundamental geostrategic understanding that Sparta’s overtaxed economic base
could not afford all these wars, nor fend off the increasing hostility of the
Greek cities who now saw Sparta as an interventionist bully. Sparta’s
mobilization of non-citizens during the Peloponnesian War should have been
temporary; instead, prolonged over-mobilization accelerated Sparta’s economic,
and by extension citizenship, decline. In 425, about half of Sparta’s soldiers
were still citizens; by 371, only 10% were. In the meantime, Sparta’s hegemony
would be propped up thanks to Persian support, but the stage was set for its
sudden collapse at the hands of Thebes.
V. Conclusion
In this video, we’ve looked at various ways in
which Greek politics influenced strategy during and after the Peloponnesian
War. In Thucydides’ concept of ‘national character’ and his assessment of
Athenian politics, we see a characteristically Greek approval of moderation,
whether for a person, a strategy or for a political system. One thing that
Greek states were certainly not moderate about, however, was in their
insistence on centralized control over strategy, justifiable given the need to
tread carefully in a competitive environment. But centralization also exposed
strategymaking to the turbulence of domestic politics – Athens’ unbalanced
radical democracy was the root cause of much of the city’s strategic mistakes
and instability, while Sparta’s over-mobilization eventually saw its leadership
lose sight of the fundamental principles that made the city a power in the
first place. If Athens lost the Peloponnesian War, then Sparta similarly lost
the resulting peace; and hegemonic wars would continue to plague Greece until
the rise of Macedon.
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If you liked this video, please do give a like and
subscribe. If you have any questions, I’ll be happy to answer them in the
comments section. This is the final video of a longer video series I originally
made for CaspianReport. Also check out my Facebook page, where I review the
literature and post some additional thoughts regarding the video.
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