Please enable JavaScript.
Coggle requires JavaScript to display documents.
Thucydides, "The Melian Dialogue," In Conflict After the Cold…
Thucydides, "The Melian Dialogue," In Conflict After the Cold War, 4th ed. Edited by Betts.
Dramatized dialogue between the Melians and Athenian envoys where each side lays out the case for their actions. Background is that Melians are a colony of Lacedaemon (Sparta) who were initially neutral in the Peloponnesian War, but were hostile to Athens. Athens has amassed an Army (Navy?) outside their island and demand surrender of Melians and that they claim tribute to Athens. p. 69
-
Key Quotes (Melians):
How can you avoid making enemies of all existing neutrals who shall look at our case and conclude from it that one day or another you will attack them? And what is this but to make greater the enemies that you have already, and to force others to become so who would otherwise have never thought of it? p. 70.
It were surely great baseness and cowardice in us who are still free not to try everything that can be tried, before submitting to your yoke. p. 71.
But we trust that the gods may grant us fortune as good as yours, since we are just men fighting against unjust, and that what we want in power will be mad up by the alliance of the Lacedaemonians. p. 71
We trust to their respect for expediency (the Lacedaemonioans) to prevent them from betraying the Melians, their colonists, and thereby losing the confidence of their friends in Hellas. p. 72.
Justice, hope, fear of disgrace, "right" do not matter in the face of a state with superior military force who is determined to exert it's power over other states.
What insights might this offer on situations like the war in Ukraine, or possible conflict between China and Taiwan?
Putin is clearly a realist determined to exercise his state's superior military power (real or perceived) against a weaker state in order to expand his territory and recapture the honor Russia lost following the fall of the USSR. I would suppose that Chinese leaders also follow a more realist world view.
-
Should pursuing what is right be an important measure for American policies and strategies today? I think yes. World is too interconnected to "go it alone". perception of legitimacy ensures global support and additional resources.