Charles van Heck's Woodhull Journal

I wonder if anyone in the White House has troubled themselves to read Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War? There must be a copy lying around somewhere. If not, perhaps a staff member could request that a copy be sent from the Library of Congress. They should also request a copy of The Peloponnesian War, Donald Kagan’s account of the three-decade conflict at the end of the fifth century B.C.E. This conflict was as divisive and destructive as the wars of the twentieth century.

Following World War II, General George C. Marshall, as Secretary of State, questioned whether the fundamental issues of the twentieth century could be grasped without reading Thucydides. One of the basic, if not the primary, understandings that Marshall derived from his reading, as well as his experiences in two world wars, was that the peace between nations is uneasy and easily broken, resulting in the brutality of war, and with it an end to the code of conduct for warfare.

The long and devastating years of the Peloponnesian War (431–404 B.C.E) were costly in human life. Besides those killed in combat and by atrocities against prisoners and civilians, lives were lost due to plague, malnutrition, poverty, the destruction of agricultural lands, and the curtailing of trade. Well-established treaties that enshrined alliances and peace among the city-states for stable governance unraveled.   

Kagan observes that, with the war’s end, Sparta’s victory was followed by a reign of terror. The oligarchs appointed by the Spartans to govern the Athenians suppressed democracy. There was political and economic instability, and the collapse of institutions, as political, sacred religious beliefs and traditions were questioned. However, within three decades of their victory, the Spartan dominion over Greece was lost. They were overextended, lacking both the military and unity of purpose to maintain a protectorate.  Athens then began to restore its empire.

Peace between nations is tenuous at best. In her New York Times Opinion piece of 6^th January, Yale professor of law and political science Oona A. Hathaway writes:

“The relative peace of the last eight decades should not be taken for granted. For centuries, war was perfectly legal. It was, in fact, the main way in which states resolved their disputes. Countries could force one another into treaties at the point of a gun and then enforce those very same treaties with war if they were broken. States that won wars had the legal right to keep what they took — land, goods, people. States rose and fell, took land and lost it, and the people living in the territory over which they fought suffered the consequences.

That system of legal war began to end after World War I, when, in 1928, states renounced the act of war in the signing of the Kellogg-Briand Pact. That commitment was reaffirmed in 1945 in the U.N. Charter, which placed the commitment to renounce war at the center of a new international legal order. Territorial conquest and gunboat diplomacy, once legal, became illegal; economic sanctions replaced war as the main tool of international law enforcement; and waging war could be criminally prosecuted, as it was in the Nuremberg and Tokyo trials after World War II.”

The Trump Administration’s contempt for the U.S. Constitution and disregard for the international legal order are readily apparent. There is a consensus among world leaders that the Venezuelan government of Nicolás Maduro was corrupt and oppressive. However, like other world leaders, United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has expressed concern that the United States’ disregard for international law could have consequences for international relations.

Following President Putin and President Xi’s example, the Trump Administration is taking the United States into the pre-Kellogg-Briand Pact period. The rhetoric from Trump’s top aide, Stephen Miller is a warning of the potential dangers we face.

In his comments of 5 January, Miller stated in a CNN interview with Jake Tapper, “We live in a world, in the real world, Jake, that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power. These are the iron laws of the world since the beginning of time.” Both Trump and Miller have repeatedly asserted that U.S. strategic interests and military strength permit the seizure of the Danish semiautonomous territory of Greenland. In their opinion, Greenland belongs to the United States. Miller adds, “Nobody’s going to fight the United States militarily over the future of Greenland.”

Trumpian self-assurance and arrogance ignore a lesson of the Peloponnesian War. I am unable to succinctly summarize the complex issues and events leading up to the conflict in this opinion piece. However, one lesson from Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War is that war is a trap easily stumbled into.

For over a year, we have witnessed the betrayal of our NATO allies and Ukraine. The Administration has shown its disdain for the law, both domestically and internationally. Emphasis is placed on financial gain. Unseasoned diplomats negotiate “peace” deals focused on gaining natural resources.  Miller’s words capture the policy’s underlying rationale when he states, “The United States of America is running Venezuela and taking control of its vast oil reserves.” Iran, Cuba, and Nigeria are among other nations they threaten while pretending to have resolved eight wars/conflicts, but ignoring humanitarian crises.

In Chapter 4, Pericles Funeral Oration, Thucydides writes:

“Again, in questions of general good feeling there is a great contrast between us and most other people. We make friends by doing good to others, not by receiving good from them. This makes our friendship all the more reliable, since we want to keep alive the gratitude of those who are in our debt by showing continued goodwill to them: whereas the feelings of one who owes us something lack the same enthusiasm, since he knows that, when he repays our kindness, it will be more like paying back a debt than giving something spontaneously.”

This is an insight George Marshall learned and applied after WWII to Germany and other nations. Regretfully, it is a lesson the Trumpians ignore.

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Image Title: Representatives of Athens and Corinth at the Court of Archidamas, King of Sparta, from the History of the Peloponnesian War by Thucydides

Artist: Hans Schäufelein (German, Nuremberg ca. 1480–ca. 1540 Nördlingen)

Publisher: Heinrich Steiner (German, active 1522–47)

Source: The Metropolitan Museum of Art Drawings and Prints Gift of Harry G. Friedman, 1962

https://www.jstor.org/stable/community.18399749

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