Thucydides - History of the Peloponnesian War: Geopolitics and the Melian Dialogue

Hello everyone, and welcome to Literary Tales. I'm your host, Paul Kraus, and in this episode, as we continue our classical conversation, we turn to Thucydides's history of the Peloponnesian War and examine the geopolitical nature of the Million Dialogue. In continuing the theme of geopolitics, which we covered in our first introductory episode on Thucydides, we now segue into the famous Million Dialogue and examine it from a geopolitical lens. Along with Pericles' funeral oration, the Million Dialogue is the most famous of dialogues, or orations, in Thucydides's masterpiece. Most people who have never read the entirety of Thucydides have probably read, or are at least familiar with, this particular dialogue. It is also a classical case study in international realism and political science. Geography, geopolitics, is intimately tied to the discourse on the law of nature that the Athenians and the Millions engage in over the course of their dialogue. The Millions, in refusing the Athenian alliance, explain that they are following the law of nature, which is self-interest. The Athenians retort that while self-interest is tied up with the law of nature, the Millions have only grasped at the periphery of the law of nature. They don't fully understand it. The law of nature is self-preservation, and self-preservation is bound up with power. When the Millions fall back on the backing of the gods for their protection, the Athenians mock them and remark that the gods favor the strong, not the weak. And it is precisely the law of strength, strength that is the law of nature, which compels the Athenians into action. Athens is direct with Melos in declaring their intentions. If the Athenians let Millian neutrality to remain, they will look weak in the eyes of their allies and their enemies. This they cannot abide by. The Athenians, then, are acting in perfect union with the law of nature by demanding Melos open their port to the Athenians and join them in their maritime alliance. This is what the law of nature demands. Unconvinced, the Millions rebuff the Athenians and remain convinced that the gods will protect them and that the Spartans will come to their aid. The Millions even appeal to the whole-world-is-watching motif. And this is a principle which affects you as much as anybody, since your own fall would be visited by the most terrible vengeance and would be an example to the world, the Millian representatives state. The Millians believe that if Athens assaults them, the Athenians will be exposed as naked brutes to the rest of the world. But the logic of the Millions is contorted and confused. The Athenians have acknowledged the law of nature is based on power, which manifests itself in the bid for self-preservation. The attack on Melos would not expose anything. It would, on the contrary, show the Athenians to be great, that they are acting in accord with the law of nature. The Athenians would, in their destruction of Melos, embody the very law of the world to the nth degree that everyone would learn from and emulate. Relating now back to the issue of geography and geopolitics, the Millions, we must remember, are an island polity. They are a maritime civilization, the same as Athens. The ill logic of the Millions becomes more visible from this geopolitical lens. The Millions are aware that the law of nature entails self-interest. Self-interest is the contingent outgrowth of self-preservation. The Millions, however, are unable to make the connection between their self-interest to self-preservation as meaning that they should be aligned with Athens, even though everything pushes them in this direction. Athens is the great sea power of Greece. Melos is a sea power. The Athenians possess the strongest navy in the Mediterranean. The Spartans would need to break the Athenian navy in order to help the Millions, something that is not only unpractical, but essentially impossible. Self-interest dictates that the Millions should embody their nature as a maritime polity and align with Athens. All over the dialogue, the Athenians continue to give the Millions this opportunity to recognize that they are a maritime polity, and therefore, their actual self-interest to self-preservation should be to ally with the Athenians. The real axis of their law of nature. The Athenians, knowing this, came to Melos with an offer of submission rather than destruction. This is often forgotten because we know what the Athenians did to the Millions. However, the Athenians did not initially come as conquerors. They were pushed into that situation by Millions stubbornness. If Melos had accepted the Athenian offer, Melos would have been spared the destruction that followed, though admittedly added under Athenian hegemony. This returns us to the lesson the Corcyrians awoke to when they petitioned Athens for her help in overthrowing their Corinthian overlords. As a seafaring maritime polity, Corcyra admitted their policy of isolation was wrongheaded. Isolation is a perfectly acceptable policy to hold as a land power, but it is untenable as a sea power. Again, because of the geopolitical nature of being a sea power, one is automatically internationalist in nature. You must have access to foreign ports. Foreign ports also need access to your ports. A great trade, a great economy of trade and international arrangements consummates because of this. Sea power is predicated on openness, trade, and expansion. Isolation is the opposite of all three features of maritime nature. The Million policy of isolation does not fit with their nature as a maritime polity. Melos, then, had to be destroyed because it was a maritime power aligned with the Continental Alliance of Sparta. The Athenians were forced into action by the law of geopolitical determinacy. The Millions had every opportunity to recognize that their geopolitical constitution pushed them to be an ally of Athens. It was Million stubbornness that caused their destruction. Thucydides's Million dialogue is more than a mere case study in international relations and realism. It is a warning against being foolish with regards to one's geopolitical nature. All throughout the dialogue, inserted both subtly and explicitly, the realities of geopolitics is at the forefront of the dialogue. The Athenians regularly and routinely give the Millions every opportunity to recognize the law of nature, of self-interest, self-preservation, and geopolitics. The Millions, for various reasons, refused to accept their geopolitical nature and were therefore destroyed by the superior power acting in accord with its geopolitical nature. The next time you read the Million dialogue, one ought to use it as a case study in geopolitics.