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Thucydides and Neorealism Author(s): Daniel Garst Source: International Studies Quarterly, Vol. 33, No. 1 (Mar., 1989), pp. 3-27 Published by: Blackwell Publishing on behalf of The International Studies Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2600491 Accessed: 13/10/2010 13:33 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=black. 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The International Studies Association and Blackwell Publishing are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to International Studies Quarterly. http://www.jstor.org International StudiesQuarterly (1989) 33, 3-27 Thucydides and Neorealism DANIEL GARST University of California,Los Angeles ThePeloponnesian Warhas long been viewedas an earlyexemplarof realist thinkingin internationalpolitics.More recently,neorealistauthorshave claimed thatThucydides'historyofferstimelessinsightsinto the importance of global anarchyin shapinginterstaterelations,and thattheseinsightsanticipateneorealistargumentson order and changein worldpolitics.This articlecriticizesthe neorealistappropriationof ThePeloponnesian War. It presentsan alternative readingofThucydides'history.In thisreading,the enduringcontribution of The PeloponnesianWar lies in theinsights into power and hegemonyembedded in the speeches and debates that interruptitsnarrative.This analysisis thenused to criticizeneorealistunderstandingsof politicalpowerand hegemony. The work of Thucydides has long occupied a privileged position among theoristsof realpolitik. For example, Martin Wight (1978:24) writes,"One of the supreme books on power politics is the historyof the great war between Athens and Sparta commonly called the Peloponnesian War." For modern-day structuralor neorealist theorists,Thucydides' work constitutes,to use Karl Marx's celebrated phrase from The EighteenthBrumaire, one of those "spirits of the past" that individuals "anxiously conjure up" to borrow "names, battlecriesand costumes in order to present the new scene of world historyin time-honoured disguise" (1977:300). Thus Robert Gilpin (1984:292) maintains, "Everythingthat the new realistsfindintriguingin the interaction of international economics and international politics can be found in The History of thePeloponnesian War." Similarly, Kenneth Waltz (1979:66) argues that Thucydides' historyrepresents an early recognition of "the anarchic character of international politics," which "accounts for the strikingsameness of the quality of international life throughout the millenia"; hence, the "relevance of Thucydides in an era of nuclear weapons." And Robert Keohane (1983:507-8) claims that The Peloponnesian War can be seen as a Kuhnian exemplar within the tradition of realist scholarship that embodies a number of the "fundamental" assumptions of structuralrealism. In this article, I will present a sharply different interpretation of Thucydides' history. In this interpretation, Thucydides is seen not as the father of realism or neorealism but as a contested terrain for realist and critical approaches to international relations theory. In particular, I will argue that this tension is evident in Thucydides' insights on political power and hegemony. I will begin by showing that Author'snote: An earlier version of this article was presented at the 1985 Annual Meeting of the American PoliticalScience Association.I wantto thankTerence Ball and MaryDietz fortheirencouragementand help witha numberof earlydraftsof thisarticle.Later versionsbenefitedsubstantiallyfromthe commentsof Hayward Alker, RobertKeohane, Dwain Mefford,John Ruggie,David Sylvan,Alexander Wendt,twoanonymousreferees,and the editorsof International StudiesQuarterly. (? 1989 InternationalStudies Association 4 Thucydides and Neorealism careful scrutinyof Thucydides' approach to writinghistoryquickly infirmsthe interpretations of Thucydides' work put forward by Gilpin, Waltz, and Keohane. In particular, I will show that these readings overlook the central importance of the close interplay between Thucydides' narrative and the paired speeches that recur in the text. To provide, then, an alternative reading of Thucydides' realism, I will examine how the conventions of argument and action used to justify Athenian imperialism change in these speeches. I will focus on the following six key verbal exchanges: The Congress of the Peloponnesian Confederacy at Lacedaemon, the firsttwo speeches of Pericles, the Mytilenian Debate, the Melian Dialogue, and the debate between Nicias and Alcibiades preceding the invasion of Sicily. I will then lay out the understanding of political power and hegemony embedded in these exchanges. Finally, I will argue that Thucydides' understanding of these concepts directs attention to certain confusions underlying neorealist debates over political power and hegemony. Neorealist Interpretations of Thucydides For neorealists the major and lasting contributionof The PeloponnesianWar lies in its scientificcharacter. Hence Gilpin argues that Thucydides is "the firstscientificstudent of international politics" (1984:291). In this understanding of Thucydides' work, his famous judgement on the "real" cause of the war between Athens and Sparta-"the growth of Athenian power and the fear this produced in Lacedaemon"-is interpreted as a covering law explanation, pointing to the enduring importance of international anarchy and the quest for power in shaping the relations between states. This scientificunderstanding of The PeloponnesianWar is suspect even if one uncriticallyaccepts-as R. G. Collingwood (1956:29) does-N. C. Cochrane's (1929) argument that the chief purpose of Thucydides' historyis to affirmpsychological laws. As Waltz has always argued, regularities in international politics stem from the operation of higher-order,systemicconfigurationsassociated withthe "third image," and not from the psychological characteristicsof individuals. Moreover, Cochrane's interpretationitselfis problematic: as de Ste. Croix (1972:6) argues, "To dispel such speculations one has only to ask what those psychological laws are which it was Thucydides' chief purpose to affirm.The answer is that there are none." Though various sorts of "laws" are invoked in the speeches put forward by individual actors, Thucydides makes no attemptto explain them in the course of his narration; indeed, he rarely puts forward explicit laws of his own. This is not to deny that Thucydides, on the basis of the actions and mentalityof his characters, makes certain generalizations about human behavior. This he certainly does. But these generalizations ought not be equated with the causal laws used by scientiststo explain recurring phenomena in the natural environment. They instead correspond to what Winch (1958) has called "rule-governed" behavior. For example, when the Athenian Emissary argues during the Congress of the Peloponnesian Confederacy at Lacedaemon that by "law" the strong rule over the weak, they preface the remark by observing that they have done "nothing contrary to the common rule of mankind[emphasis mine] in accepting an Empire when it was offered to us" (I:76:44).1 Because they are grounded in shared conventions and beliefs, Thucydides' psychological laws do not entail a singular and well-defined set of counterfacI All qulotationsfromThePeloponnesianWarare fromtbe Cr-awley translation,revisedand updated byT. E. Wick (New York: Modern LibraryCollege Editions, 1975). DANIELGARST 5 tual conditions in the way that law-like generalizations in the natural sciences do. Their explicans and explicandums refer, as it were, to the same object. The same can be said for the generalizations Thucydides makes concerning the social and natural environments in which individuals are situated. While Thucydides makes note of recurring events and patternsof behavior, he does not commit himself to drawing specificcausal connections between them. This is evident in the introduction to the History, when Thucydides insists that the Peloponnesian War was the greatest recorded because of the earthquakes, droughts, famines,plagues, and other catastrophes that accompanied it. Thucydides notes that such things had been reported in earlier wars, but this hearsay was insufficientlyconfirmed by the facts. Now, Thucydides argues, these "[o]ld stories of occurrences handed down by tradition, but scantily confirmed by experience, suddenly ceased to be incredible" (1:23:14). Nowhere does Thucydides explain why events like eclipses, earthquakes, droughts, and other natural disasters should be more frequent at times of war in Greece, even though he felt that the evidence indicated that they were. He merely notes that these events occurred at the same time. As Cornford (1907:103) aptly puts it, Thucydides "shows a completely scientificspirit, and also an equally complete destitutionof a scientificview of nature."2 Thucydides records these events and the growth of Athenian power that preceded the conflictso that posteritymight readily identifysuch patterns of events should they recur in the future. Human knowledge of the surrounding social and physical environment and ability to effect changes withinit is anchored in the realm of praxis, of practical experience and observation.3 A second and more serious defect in the scientificreading of Thucydides by neorealists is its inabilityto account for the speeches and debates that recur in The PeloponnesianWar. Gilpin and Waltz make no comment on Thucydides' use of the speeches, despite the fact that any modern reader must be struck by the central position they occupy in The PeloponnesianWar. Keohane does make note of their use by Thucydides, arguing that the speeches and debates exemplify the method of "rational reconstruction." Both Thucydides and Morgenthau, Keohane argues, understand the actions of states by imagining themselves as rational individuals in authoritative decision-making roles, and by reflectingon what they would do when confronted with the same problems faced by actual statesmen. Thus Keohane claims that both Thucydides and Morgenthau "assume that states will act to protect their power positions, perhaps even to the point of seeking to maximize their power." And both authors, he claims, "go beneath the surface of events to the power realities that are fundamental to state action" (1983:507). Keohane maintains that Thucydides' "reconstruction"of the speeches parallels Morgenthau's insistence that understanding foreign policy necessitates the analyst putting herself in the position of a statesman and using the concept of the national interestdefined as power to look over his shoulder, retrace his steps, and in so doing understand his thoughts and actions. The main difficultywith this reasoning, when applied to the speeches in The Peloponnesian War, is that it conflicts with Thucydides' insistence that the verbal exchanges of his historyare accurate accounts of actual speeches given on particular occasions. To be sure, Thucydides does state that difficultiesof recollection forced 2 This is even more evident in Thucydides' discussion of the plague. He records the symptomsof'the disease frompersonal observationso that posteritymay recognize the disorder shouLldit bh-eakout again (11:49:115-16). But he does not make any effortto explain what caLlsedthe plague (11:48:115). Indeed, Thucydides observes,"As a rule . . . ther-ewas no ostensiblecause" (11:49:115). The originsof theoryand theoristgo back to the post-Homericwordsof theoria, and theoros. Originally, theoremn, a theoros was an ambassador sent by the polis to another city-state to witnessreligiouls and athleticfestivals(Euben, 1977:33-34). Thus, in the context in which Thucydides writes,theoreticalknowledge derives from practical activityratherthan contemplation. 6 and Neorealism Thucydides him to make the speakers say what, in his view, the circumstances of the various situations demanded they say. But it must be asked just what sort of advice Thucydides is giving his readers in this passage and surrounding comments in Chapter 22 of Book I. Thucydides emphasizes that he adhered "as closely as possible to the general sense of what they [the speakers] really said" (1:22:13). Thucydides then states that his description of events is not simply derived from the firstsource that came to hand but instead "rests partly on what I saw myself,partly on what others saw for me, the accuracy of the report being always tried by the most severe and detailed tests possible" (1:22:13). What Thucydides tells us in these statementsis that he has been as careful and accurate as possible in the acquisition and verificationof his information. If it is true that the speeches cannot be recollected in the exact form in which theywere originallydelivered, it is also the case that even first-handreports of events are incomplete and biased. The historicityof the speeches in Thucydides' work enables us to dispose of two possible objections to the kind of analysis of The Peloponneisan War that will be undertaken in this article. The firstis that certain speeches were never given at all, or were never given in the form in which theyappear in the history.The shaky empirical basis of this frequentlyleveled charge against Thucydides has been discussed in detail by Donald Kagan (1975). Beyond that,a more fundamental difficultywith this allegation is raised by Marc Cogan (1981:xi), who argues: "Inasmuch as Thucydides presents the speeches simply as speeches, and gives no indication that he has fabricated them in any material way, he has given the speeches the same guarantee of their historicitythat he has given to every other aspect of his history,every other event in his narrative." And since objective evidence that would make us doubt Thucydides' basic reliabilityhas yet to be uncovered, there is no good reason to doubt the fundamental veracityof the speeches, especially when Thucydides insists that he treats them with the same care he gives to the events in his narrative. This interdependence of the speeches and narrativeof events in The Peloponnesian War infirmsa second possible and explicitlyneorealist objection to the present approach to Thucydides' history. This second objection is that the speeches in The PeloponnesianWar must be distinguished from nonverbal behavior and are open to dismissal as mere rationalizations of systemicallydetermined interests. If this were indeed the case, it must be asked why Thucydides includes these speeches in such detail. The answer, suggests White (1984: chapter 3), is that the speeches constitutea "culture of argument" that defines the interactionamong cities and structurestheir behavior. This is not to say that naked self-interestplays no role in actions of the cities. It is to suggest instead that Thucydides is concerned with the language through which this self-interestis articulated, the norms and conventions associated with it, and whether or not they decay over time. Thus Thucydides interrupts his narrative with paired speeches or debates whenever he reaches a turning point in the conflict,an event that signals a radical departure from earlier policies by the differentactors. Individual speeches are used to clarifythe execution or extension of policies elucidated in earlier debates (Cogan, 1981:7-8). By using the speeches in this way, Thucydides emphasizes the deliberate choices made by individuals and the close relationship between these choices and the events of the history.Far from viewing historical figuresas driven by forces outside their control, Thucydides sees them as the conscious initiatorsof events. As Cogan (1981:194) argues, the speeches emphasize the direction exercised by human agents over conflictsboth by drawing attention to the fact of deliberation and by setting forthits content. In accounting for the actions of states,Thucydides does not begin, as in the structuralrealism of Waltz, "by draw[ing] connections between the distribution of power in a system and the behavior of states" (Keohane, 1983:508). DANIEL GARST 7 This is evident in the opening chapters of The Peloponnesian War. Keohane (1983:534) argues that Thucydides follows in these chapters the "positive heuristic" of looking for underlying power realities behind the actions of the differentparticipants. If this argument is correct, the chapters surrounding the celebrated judgement on the "truest cause" of the war should provide a broader description of internationalrelations in Greece at the outset of the Peloponnesian War, focusing on the physical capabilities of Athens and the other participantsin the conflict.In fact, the chapters preceding the arguments on the "alleged" and "truest"causes of the war are best characterized as an exercise in social anthropology, in which Thucydides describes the movement of peoples, the development of customs and habits, and their impact on political institutions.Thucydides then moves quickly to the firstof the paired speeches of the history,dealing with the incidents at Epidamnus, one of the "alleged" causes of the war. He provides just a brief explanation of the early developments at Epidamnus. Thus whatever final meaning is attached to Thucydides' judgement on the "truest" cause of the war,4our understanding of the Peloponnesian War actually begins with the firstpair of speeches. We come to these speeches, Cogan (1981:8) writes,"[w]ithout benefitof any other clarificationof the circumstances or issues involved other than that provided by the speeches themselves." It is only after this firstverbal exchange that Thucydides provides detailed informationon the existing relations between the major city-states. This procedure is repeated whenever Thucydides comes to major events or turning points in the conflict. He uses the paired speeches not only to "lay bare what stood behind the narrative, the policy, the possibilities and mistakes" (Finley, 1977:59), but to dispense with explicit precepts in outlining the political prescriptions of the history.The paired speeches build these prescriptionsinto the history's very structureand mode of argumentation. This basic characteristicof Thucydides' historydid not escape the attention of Hobbes (1839), who firsttranslated The PeloponnesianWar into English, and whose summary statementon the speeches in Thucydides' historycan hardly be bettered: "The ground and motives of every action he settethdown before the action itself,either narratively,or else contriveththem into the form of deliberative orations. . . . Digressions for instruction'scause and other such conveyance of precepts which is the philosopher's part), he never useth; as having so clearly set before men's eyes the ways and events of good and evil counsels, that the narration doth secretlyinstructthe reader, and more effectuallythan can possibly be done by precept" (E.W. VIII:xxi-xxii). "In sum," Hobbes concludes, "if the truthof the historydid ever appear in the manner of relating,it doth so in this history:so coherent, perspicuous and persuasive is the whole narration, and every part thereof' (E.W. VIII:xxi).5 Thus, understanding The PeloponnesianWar necessitatesunraveling, to use White's (1984:59) apt description, its "complex rhetorical universe" and "culture of argument," consisting of the "discourse, the conventions of argument and action" by which the Greek city-states"maintain and regulate their relations withone another." My analysis of discourse in The PeloponnesianWar will examine the changes in the conventions of argument and action underlying Athenian imperialism. I will show 4 In fact, the word Thucydides uses repeatedly,prophais,has a range of referencethat extends well beyond Hippocratic medicine, where it signifiesthe antecedent conditions of disease. In logic, for example, it means "premise"; in Greek drama, it signifies"pretext,""ground," or "reason." In the second range of meanings,Ball (1986:626) notes thatprophais"refersto 'causes' whichare linked to human actionby normsthatare widelyshared by all parties to a dispute." 5 I am indebted to Terence Ball forthisparticularcitation.For an interesting discussionof the parallelsbetween Leviathanand The PeloponnesianWar, see Ball (1985). 8 and Neorealism Thucydides that Thucydides' insights into power and hegemony are embedded in the changing Athenian discourse on the imperatives Athens faced as a great imperial power, focusing on the link between speech and action in Thucydides' history.In examining these changes, I choose the method of example and iterationas the mode of exposition because it seems closer to Thucydides' own conception of political knowledge, to the way he embeds his teachings in the architectureof his work. I will focus on the debates at the Congress of the Peloponnesian Confederacy at Lacedaemon, the first two speeches of Pericles, the MytilenianDebate, the Melian Dialogue, and the debate between Alcibiades and Nicias over the invasion of Sicily. I do so for two reasons. First, these verbal exchanges occur at criticaljunctures in Thucydides' history: the debate at Lacedaemon takes place prior to the widening of the conflict between Athenian and Spartan client city-states;the speeches of Pericles are followed by Athens's entry into the War and the plague; the Mytilenian Debate precedes the vivid description of the Corcyrean Revolution; and the Melian Dialogue and the debate between Nicias and Alcibiades precede the invasion of Sicily. Second, these exchanges contain distinctpositions on the nature of Athenian imperialism. Speech, Actionand AthenianImperialism Thucydides' historyof the Peloponnesian War opens with the dispute between Athens and Corinth over the status of the satellite cities of Corcyra and Potidea. While the account of these quarrels is preceded by thejudgement on the "truestcause" of the war, the allegations at Epidamnus and Potidea are not simply mere pretexts for the war. They are betterunderstood as the catalyststhat set the war in motion, as the firstactualizations of its "truest cause." Thucydides recognizes that fear is a subjective emotion that requires certain political processes for it to be translated into a collective motive that guides the behavior of a state. As is his custom throughout The PeloponnesianWar, Thucydides chooses to exhibit these processes and the deliberate nature of the choices made by actors through the medium of speech and debate. For this reason, the historyof the Peloponnesian War begins with the debate over the Corcyrian Alliance. This debate is followed by the narrativeof militarypreparations and engagements between Athens and Corinth and the events at Potidea. Thucydides then moves once more into the realm of debate and deliberation. Aftera brief introductorychapter, he records four speeches fromthe Convention of the Peloponnesian Congress at Lacedaemon. As throughout the history,these speeches speak for themselves. In the debate over the Corcyrian Alliance, Thucydides specifies the moment at which the war begins; in the debate at Lacedaemon, he clarifiesthe way in which the Peloponnesians go to war. Here Thucydides elaborates on the psychological implications of the growth of Athenian power and the range of choices that Sparta and its allies have, or feel they have, in dealing with it. Jaeger (1945:395) writes that the meeting "was supremely important: [Thucydides] marked it out by reporting no less than four speeches made by the participants." These speeches constitute two debates: one between Corinthian and Athenian speakers for and against Spartan action; another between Spartan speakers deliberating whetheror not to take action. The debate begins with the Corinthian speech. This rhetorical tour de force contrasts "Spartan dullness and indolency, old-fashioned respectabilityand narrowminded conservatism" withAthens' "restlessenergy,marvellous elan in acting and in planning" that make the Athenians "capable of meeting any situation" (Jaeger, 1945:395-96). The Athenians are "addicted to innovation," and are "born into the world to take no rest themselves and given none to others" (1:70:40,41). The Spartans, on the other hand, are "old-fashioned" in their habits. While the Athenians move swiftly,the Spartans "wait till the power of the enemy is twice its original size" DANIEL GARST 9 (1:69:39). And while the Athenians have unlimited desires, the Spartans' "ideal of fair dealing is based on the principle that if you do not injure others, you need not risk your fortunes in preventing others from injuring you" (1:71:41). In putting forward this opposition between innovation and tradition and action and passivity,the Corinthians invent two opposite characters designed to bring about Spartan action. While these characters fulfilltheir rhetorical purpose, they are not necessarily the most accurate depictions of Athens or Sparta.6 The Athenians tryto blunt the pointedness of the Corinthian remarks in two ways. First,they argue that their empire was acquired by accident and necessity rather than innate impulsion. They can claim that they are, in fact, quite moderate in their desires. The firstAthenian defense is designed to counter the claim that their naturemade them active. They tell the Spartans that their empire was acquired "by no violent means, but because you were unwilling to persecute the war against the barbarians and because allies attached themselves to us and spontaneously asked us to assume command." They then state that necessity required them to hold on to it: "[W]hen you had ceased to be the friends that you once were, and had become the object of suspicion and dislike, it appeared no longer safe to give up our Empire, especially as all who left us would fall into your hands" (1:75:44). The Athenians chide the Spartans for taking up the "cry of justice," a "consideration which no one ever yet brought forward to hinder his ambitions when he had a chance of gettinganything by might." They argue that it was "not a very remarkable action or contraryto the common practice of mankind, if we accepted an Empire that was offered to us, and refused to give it up under the pressure of the three strongestmotives, fear, honor and interest" (1:76:44). The Athenians claim here that all men-including the Spartans-act from fear, honor, and profit. Far from unique by nature, the Athenians have simply done what all others would have done in the same circumstances. In their second defense, the Athenians respond to the Corinthian charge that they possess unlimited desires. They tryto show that, far from having unlimited ambitions,Athens unnecessarily imposes limitson itselfin dealing withallies over whom it has complete control. The Athenians state that they are "not so superior to human nature as to refuse domination" and yet,at the same time,"respectjustice more than [their] situation compels them to do" (1:76:44,45). In the course of these remarks, they stress the "fair title" to their possessions resulting from the "daring patriotism" of Athens during the Persian invasion of Greece. This patriotism"had no competitors" and is contrasted with the belated entryof Sparta into the conflict(1:74:43). The second debate recorded by Thucydides between Archidamus and Sthenelaides completes the analysis of how Sparta enters the conflictby settingforthSpartan attitudes toward Athens. The content of both speeches reflectsdifferentfacets of the Spartan character. Archidamus argues for strategiccaution and claims that this caution represents particularly Spartan virtues of moderation and obedience (1:84:49). He remains unpersuaded by the Corinthian argument that the Athenian threat is unique. Archidamus does express fear of Athens and believes that war will eventually be fought between it and Sparta. But he maintains that the Athenian threat is not especially pressing, and he counsels waiting at least two more years before entering into war (1:82:47-48). If Archidamus invokes values that the Corinthians have already argued are characteristicallySpartan-caution and attachment to tradition-Sthenelaides' speech is 6 For example, Kagan (1969:290-9 1) argues: "A people so sluggishand unimaginativeas the Spartan depicted by the Corinthianspeech could har-dlyhave won masteryover the Peloponinese,leadership of the Greeks in the successfulresistanceto Persia, and victoryin the firstPeloponnesian War.. . . The depictionof Athenianactions and characteris even more remote fromthe facts." 10 Thlucydides and Neorealismti Spartan in its "Laconic" style.7Sthenelaides bluntlydismisses the Athenian defense with the comment: "The long speeches of the Athenians I do not pretend to understand" (1:86:50). His short and bull-headed appeal for war against Athens is based firmlyon mattersofjustice and injustice. While the Corinthians elaborately set forth proof of Athens' unlimited aims, Sthenelaides simplyclaims that the Athenians have acted wronglytoward Spartan allies and that Sparta must end this behavior. Though the Athenians may have acted heroically during the Persian invasion, they have "nowhere denied that they are injuring our allies and the Peloponnese." Thus the Athenians "deserve double punishment for having ceased to be good and for having become bad" (1:86:50). Though Archidamus' proposals are more consistent with habitual Spartan responses to external threats, it is Sthenelaides' simple and inelegant reasoning that sways the assembly. The outcome of the debate shows, then, that with regard to Athens the Spartan character has changed. The Spartans now accept the Corinthian argument that Athens poses a new and special threat. This acceptance was no doubt encouraged by the Athenian speech, particularlyits arrogance and condescending remarks on the morals of the audience it is supposed to persuade. But even though the Athenian-sare unable to dissuade the Spartans from entering the war, their speech does offer a challange to the Corinthian interpr-etationof their empire. Its presen-cein the exchange mitigates any conclusions that might otherwise be drawn about the necessityor inevitabilityof the war. The Spartans must choosebetween the rival interpretations of Athens' empire advanced by the Corinthian and Athenian speakers. As Cogan (1981:30) declares, "[I]nsofar as we can see the Athenian accoun-t as a possible representation-of the empire, we can also understand what Thucydides meant by saying it was Spartanfear of the empire, and not the empire itself,which was the true cause of the war." Aside from furtherclarifyingthe choices and purposes for which the Spartans go to war, the Athenian speech provides the firstsubstantial discussion of the interplay between necessity and choice in Athenian imperialism and the sources of Athens' hegemony. The Athenians readily acknowledge the importance of honor, fear, and profitin the acquisition of their empire. These motives,theynote, are common to all great powers and, as such, belong to the realm of necessity. But if the Athenians concede the importance of necessityin their activity,they also maintain that Athens, unlike other great powers, does not abandon the effort to act morally. In these passages, Jacqueline de Romilley declares (1962:256): "Athens is shown as transcending human nature," which hadjust "served as an excuse for all human actions." Athens differs from other imperial powers because its empire is not merely the product of brute force. What Thucydides establishes with these remarks is the basis of Athenian hegemony following the war with Persia. Athens acquires hegemony not through its wealth and militarystrength,but through the consent of other city-states.And this consent follows from Athens' deeds during the Persian invasion. Because of its "daring patriotism,"the other city-statesvoluntarilyallied with Athens and asked it to assume leadership of the Delian League. What stands out in all of this is that Thucydides makes no necessary connection between Athens' hegemony and its material resources. The Athenians secure hegemony or leadership8 because they can persuade, on the basis of past deeds and services, other city-statesto follow them. 7 The "laconic" der-ivesfr-omLaconiia,the Spar-tanhomelanid. 8 Hegemoniycomes to us fr-om the Greek word egemiosliol, which means leader-or ruler. Anidwhile the termii was cuLstomarily ulsecluLp to the late ninieteenthcenituLryto descr-ibethe political preclominaniceof onie state over DANIELGARST 11 This aspect of Athenian hegemony is also stressed by Greek writersafter Thucydides. De Romilley (1958:97) notes that for the historian Isocrates, "The rise and fall of a hegemony can always be explained by the fact that cities either respected justice or ignored it," with the rise of hegemony occurring when "cities spontaneously accept the other's direction." The argument thatjustice is necessary if cities wish to retain power is also present in Xenophon's Hellinica and is invoked by Plato against Callicles in The Gorgias. And its origins, de Romilley (1958:93) emphasizes, lie in Thucydides' history,in the speech delivered by the Athenian envoys at Lacedaemon. The monologue speeches that follow the meeting at Lacedaemon set forth the strategiesgrowing out of the widening conflictbetween Athens and Corinth. Two of these speeches, the firstspeech of Pericles and the Funeral Oration, are relevant to the issues addressed here. Pericles' firstspeech deals with the relationship between choice and necessity in Athens' behavior, the Funeral Oration with the social and political bases of Athenian power. In his firstspeech, Pericles urges the Athenians not to make concessions to the Peloponnesians for the maintenance of peace. He maintains that giving in will only lead to furtherdemands. The war is necessary to properly demonstrate Athenian resolution (I: 140:8 1). Having argued for the necessity of war, Pericles advocates a strategythat sustains choice within the boundaries of necessity. He tells the Athenians that the war will be a long one, and that Athens' best course is to rely on its greater stayingpower (I: 141-43:82-85). He explains that victoryis certain as long as they refrain from undertaking furtherconquests and avoid superfluous campaigns (1:144:85). We know from both the Corinthian depiction of Athens' character and from Thucydides' account of its operations against Persia in the Pentecontaetia (1:89-117:57-66) that this passive strategy will be difficultfor the Athenians to follow. Thus Pericles places it within a context of action and maneuver by calling upon the Athenians to think of themselves as "islanders." Even if Attica is lost, Athens will retain its navy, which it can use to harass the Peloponnese and maintain links to its empire (1:143:84-85). Pericles is confident of a successful outcome to the conflict because of the far greater experience of the Athenians in seafaring and naval operations (I: 14243:84-85). In making this point, he alludes to the broad differencesbetween Athens and Sparta noted earlier in the speeches at Lacedaemon. Because the navy requires rowers and because rowers mean democracy, Athens' maritime empire follows directlyfrom its political innovations (Edmunds, 1975:28-29). Thus when the Corinthians tell the Spartans that their habits are "old-fashioned," they state that in politics, as in art, "improvements ever prevail," and that "constant necessities of action must be accompanied by constant improvement in methods." "The vast experience of Athens," they claim, "has carried her further along the path of innovation" (1:71:41). What makes these recommendations strikingis the Corinthians' illustration of them with the example of the Athenians, who have displayed the spirit of technological innovation in the political realm. Pericles' next speech, the well-known Funeral Oration, takes up this relationship between Athens' habits, customs, and political institutionsand its activityand political power. The expressed purpose of this address is to strengthenAthenian determination to pursue the war and bolster support for the cautious and difficultstrategy adopted by Pericles against the growing discontent caused mainly by the loss of homes and property (11:21:100-1). Addressing this criticism,Pericles tries to convince the Athenians that Athens' existence is not defined by any specific material kinld. another,thereexistoccasional early uses of the termin English to indicate pr-edominanceof a more genler-al of thingsgrowving ulponthe earth," and in 1567, to the "Aegonomic or suLfferaigntie Referencesappear, startinig from 1656 to "the supi-eamor Hegemoniickpart of the Soul." See Williams(1983:144). 12 Thucydides and Neorealism possessions. His statements all tend to emphasize that Athens is unique in Greece and that this uniqueness does not reside in its material wealth or monuments, but in singular qualities of habit and intellect. These qualities are described in detail in chapters 37 through 40, which emphasize the unityof deliberation and action made possible by Athens' settled habits, democratic political institutions,and national character. Unlike the inhabitants of other city-states,Athenian citizens,"though occupied with the pursuits of industry, are still the fair judges of public matters." Their participation in civic affairs, particularlyin the debates during the meetings of the Assembly, is seen by Pericles as the key element behind Athenian activity:"[W]e Athenians are able tojudge all events . . . and instead of looking upon discussion as a stumbling block in the way of successful action, we think of it as an indispensable preliminary to wise action at all." Thus Athenian enterprises are described as a "singular spectacle of daringand deliberation[emphasis mine]," and those who fail to participate in civic affairs are not merely "unambitious" but "useless" (11:40:110). Pericles attempts in these remarks to show the Athenians that the citythey defend exists in the way of life they lead, not in any of their material possessions. He argues that the power of Athens, what makes it unique in the Greek world, is the subjective nature of Athenian democracy (11:37:108). By providing each citizen with the opportunityto participate in public life, in debate and deliberation, Athenian democracy produces a unity of will among its citizens far stronger than that resulting from blind obedience to the state. Pericles contrasts the bravery of the Spartans, which results from a "painful discipline" inculcated from childhood, withthe self-conscious patriotismof Athenian citizens, who are able to live as they please and yet are just as ready to act bravely when theymust (11:39:109). As Edmunds (1975:67) perceptively observes, "Patriotismof this sort is a release from fortune,because the cityis considered itselfto embody the values of the individual citizens." Thus, when speaking of the fallen soliders, Pericles tells the Athenians that their lives and sacrifice have significance, and that their memory will endure not in stone tablets, but in the'unwrittenmemorial that lives with the survivors (11:43:112). The polis compensates individual citizens for particular shortcomings and protects them against chance by standing between them and whims and uncertaintiesof nature (Edmunds, 1975:6 170; Euben, 1977:41-42). This enables the Athenians, unlike the Spartans, to view chance interventionsas both objective and subjective, as at least partiallyamenable to human intelligence. While Archidamus argues that wars are decided by "freaks of chance not determinable by calculation" (1:84:49), Pericles equates the arbitrariness of events withthe plans of men; he claims, "[T]his is whywe usually blame chance for whatever does not happen as we expected" (I: 140:87).9 For Thucydides, then, the basis of political power is the existence of a public realm in which individuals have the opportunity to voluntarilyspeak and act together. As White (1984:84) declares, "[T]he nature of power is social, not material, and the realities of power should never be confounded with such appearances as a city chooses to build." More specifically,political power rests on the intersubjectivesocial conventions and institutionsregulating the interplaybetween speech and action. For this reason, political power in Thucydides' historyis very much potential in character: the exercise of political power is contingent upon the existence of well-defined and widely accepted social conventions and institutions.The same kind of argument is present in the writingsof Hannah Arendt. In his discussion of Arendt's "Communications Concept of Power," Habermas (1977:4) observes, "The fundamental phenomenon of power is not the instrumentalizationof will, but the formation of a commonwill in a communication directed to reaching an agreement." Like Thucy9 For a masterfuldiscussion of the differentoutlooks of Athensand Sparta on chance and the abilityof human reason to masterit, see Edmunds (1975). DANIEL GARST 13 dides, Arendt urges us to understand political power as a "power potential," linked to the ability of individuals to act in concert. And like Thucydides, Arendt sees no necessary connection between political power and material resources. Power is actualized not by the presence of material resources, but in political environments "where word and deed have not parted company, where words are not empty and deeds are not brutal, where words are not used to veil intentions but to disclose realities, and deeds are not used to violate and destroy but to establish and create new realities" (Arendt, 1985:200). If political power is potential in character, hegemony rests on the acquisition of leadership, in particular on the ability to persuade and carry out singular accomplishments.Thus, unlike political power, hegemony presupposes some formof activityin the form of both persuasion and deeds. But as withpolitical power, Thucydides draws no necessary connection between hegemony and the possession of material resources. This is not to say that possession of material resources is unimportant in the acquisition and maintenance of hegemony. Nevertheless, hegemony is defined in the firstinstance by the ability of a state to combine such material resources with political strategies that make other states recognize and consent to its leadership. And since the effectivenessof hegemonic strategiesmay vary in particular situations and openand maintenanceof hegemony and time-spans, theestablishment is a contingent endedprocess. In the Athenian speeches and events that follow the Funeral Oration, Thucydides describes how Athens is transformed from an environment in which "words are not empty and deeds are not brutal" to one in which words lose their meaning and in which sentimentsof decency, moderation, and justice are obliterated by necessity.As if to underscore the contingent nature of the political environmentin which political power and hegemony are actualized, Thucydides follows the Funeral Oration with his description of the Plague, which "entirelyupset" normal burial rites and induced various forms of "lawless extravagance" (11:52:117, 118). Though Pericles is able, in his third and final speech, to rekindle Athenian resolve, he succumbs shortlythereafter to the plague. And following his death, the leadership of Athens falls into the hands of men who choose to "[o]ccupy themselves with private cabals for leadership of the commons, by which they not only paralyzed operations in the field, but also firstintroduced civil discord at home" (11:65:126). The symptoms of this rot firstappear in the next major debate of Thucydides' history,between Cleon and Diodotus over the fate of the Mytilene, which had rebelled unsuccessfully against Athens. The deterioration of Athenian political life is personified by Cleon, "the most violent man in Athens" (Cornford, 1907:110), who is responsible for the massacre at Scione, and possesses, as Gomme (1962:108) acidly puts it, "a vulgar mind, acute in a second-rate manner, without intelligence or humanity."Cleon calls for the execution of all Mytilenians,regardless of whether or not they participated in the rebellion. "Democracy," he bluntlyargues, "is incompatible with empire because you entirely forget that your empire is a despotism and your subjects are disaffected conspirators whose obedience is insured not by your suicidal concessions but by superiority given you by your strength and not their loyalty" (111:37:172). Diodotus, Cleon's foil in this debate, begins his response by statingthat, like Cleon, he has no desire to be "influenced" by "pityor indulgence" (111:48:180). The cornerstone of his argument for leniency is an elegant sophistry on human nature. Diodotus accepts Cleon's premise that human nature is incorrigible; he then uses it to demonstrate that fear will never prevent rebellion. The execution of all Mytilenians will only make others who rebel more intransigent in their rebellion rather than deter them from it (111:45-6:178-9). The nature of this rebuttal has led some commentators to argue that, unlike Diodotus, Cleon at least makes an argument based on justice, even if thisjustice is a 14 Thucydides and Neorealism rough kind in which injury is repaid with injury.'0 While this argument has some merit,it cannot be squared with Diodotus' insistence, toward the end of his speech, that the Athenians must recognize the different sympathies of the oligarchs and demos in the subject states. In the case of the Mytilene, the oligarchs had led the rebellion while the demos remained sympatheticto Athens (111:27:167). As Cogan (1981:56-7) perceptively argues, the basic thrustof the policy advocated by Diodotus is to make use of this distinction to pacify rebelling satellites. For this reason, Diodotus does indeed offer in his argument a "principle to direct action toward the allies and other states 'before the fact'-that is, an actual and uniform policy to maximize allied sympathyand cooperation, not merely a case-by-case expedient to return rebellious allies to Athenian control" (Cogan, 1981:56). Diodotus' argument, adopted by the audience, represents a significantturning point in Athenian policy. Both prior to the outbreak of the war and through its early stages, the Athenians refrained from consistentlysupporting democratic factions within individual city-states.Diodotus urges the Athenians to cultivate new bonds within and outside their empire based on the ideological alliance of democracy in Athens with the democratic factions in other city-states.Diodotus offers,in effect,a new strategyof maintaining Athenian hegemony within its empire. Drawing upon the "eunoia," or "good will,"" that the democrats in the cities feel toward Athens offersthe Athenians a means of control over theirempire more effectivethan fear to replace the earlier and by now eroded basis of Athenian hegemony in Greece. But if this new Athenian strategymade militarysuccess more frequent, as Athens' military power was not augmented by ideological support,'2 it also extended the scope of the conflictbetween Athens and Sparta. Democratic and oligarchic factions, bent on seizing power, could now secure the interventionof the great powers. In the new wartime environment: "Revolution . . . ran its course from cityto city,and the places which it arrived at last, having heard what had been done before, carried to a stillgreater excess the refinementof their convention, as manifested in the cunning of their enterprise and the atrocityof their reprisals." Thucydides follows this observation with his vivid description of how "[w]ords had to change their ordinary meanings" during the Corcyrian rebellion: "Reckless audacity came to be considered the courage of a loyal ally; prudent hesitation,specious cowardice; moderation was held to be a cloak for unmanliness; abilityto see all sides of a question, inaptness to act on any. Frantic violence became the attributeof manliness, cautious plottingajustifiable means of self-defense.The advocate of extreme measures was trustworthy;his opponent a man to be suspected" (111:82:199). It is against this backdrop of growing political polarization in the Greek world that the Melian Dialogue takes place. Unlike other small islands, Melos had managed to preserve its independence and stay outside both the Athenian and Spartan blocs, even though its inhabitants were colonists from Sparta. The Athenians had attacked the island in the early stages of the war (in 426) but abandoned the campaign as not worth the time or effort(Kagan, 1981:148). The marked contrast between this early 10This claim is put forwar-d most provocativelyin White (1984:74-77). For a critiqueof it thatdiffersfromthe one puLtfor-wardhere, see Ball (1986:672-78). "The eunoia of Greece is largelyon the side of Sparta l l De Romilley(1958:92) claims thatin Thucydides' histor-y, and againstAtheins.Diodotus is the onlyone who souLght to make use of the eunoza whichthe democratsin the cities felttoward Athenis."These claims ar-esuLspect on two grounds. First,Diodotus' argumentsar-eaccepted by the majorityof Athenianisin the debate over-the fateof the Myteline.Second, the claim thatthe eunoia of Greece is on the side of the Spartans is simplyfalse. As de Ste. Croix (1954:1) observes,"The general mass of the population of the allied (or suLbject)states,far frombeing hostile to Athens,actuallywelcomiied her-dominance anid wished to remain within the Empire, even-aind perhaps more particularly-dUring that last thir-ty years of the Fifth Century, when the tyrannyof Athens,whichbulks so large in the traditionalview,is supposed to have beeil at its height." 12 See Kagan (1974: chapter 9). DANIEL GARST 15 behavior and later Athenian words and deeds at Melos underlines the growing political polarization within the Greek world; for the Athenians now deny, even during a period of nominal peace, that any space exists for free movement between the Athenian and Spartan blocs. It is thisdenial and how the Atheniansjustifyit that makes the Melian Dialogue so exceptional, marking it as another turning point in Thucydides' history.The Dialogue does not, as is often alleged, constitutea demonstration of Athens' growing cruelty and depravity (Finley, 1942:208-12; Strauss, 1964:211-17). The problem withthisclaim is that the harshjudgement meted out to the Melians had already been used against the Scionians in 420. Thucydides passes over without comment the Athenian decision here to put all men of militaryage to death and sell the women and children into slavery(V:32:318). Moreover, the conditions Athens firstoffersto Melos are in fact quite reasonable: alliance and payment of tribute. The debate at Melos is about whether the Melians can maintain their neutrality.In rejecting the neutral status of Melos, the Athenians betraya new and urgent anxiety about their control over their allies and empire. When the Melians warn them that their"fall would be a signal for the heaviest vengeance and an example for the world to meditate upon" (V:90:351), the Athenians respond by statingthat their main fear is not defeat at the hands of the Spartans: "[A] rival empire like Lacedaemon, even if Lacedaemon is our real antagonist, is not so terrible to the vanquished as subjects who by themselves attack and overpower their rulers" (V:91:351). And later in the debate, the Athenians state once again that "islanders like yourselves" and "subjects still smarting under the yoke" (V:99:352) are the people whom they fear the most. Thus, for the firsttime in Thucydides' history,the Athenians indicate that their empire is a greater threat to their security than the Spartans are. They have now accepted Cleon's contention that their Empire is a "tyranny"and its subjects are "disaffected conspirators." The new ideological orientation of Athenian policy initiated by Diodotus has only temporarily prevented the empire from becoming the weak link in Athens' defenses. Once this has happened, the energy, innovation, and generosity that had earlier played such an important role in Athenian imperialism gives way to weary realism and abdication to base necessity.The Athenians choose not to "trouble" the Melians with "specious pretences either of how we have a right to our Empire because we overthrew the Mede (the Persians), or how we are attacking you because of the wrong that you have done us" (V:89:350). They maintain that such a "long speech would not be believed" and instructthe Melians to "aim at what is feasible" because justice "is in question only between equals in power, while the strong do what they can and weak sufferwhat they must" (V:89:35 1). They cynicallyand correctlypredict that the Spartans will not aid Melos (V: 105-9:353-54). And theytell the Melians that there is even less reason to base their hopes on those "invisible prophecies and oracles that delude men with hopes to their destruction" (V: 103:353). Indeed, the structureof the entire Dialogue is such that from beginning to end it is the Melians who put forward the ideas and proposals while it is the Athenians who reply. Because they have a response to everything,the Melians are constantlyfoiled and sent off to find another argument. As de Romilley (1962:293-94) observes, it is this characteristicof the Dialogue thatcontributesmost to the "impression of overwhelming power against which resistance is useless: in fact, the more attempts that are made to find a defect in it, the more invincible does this power appear, and the demonstration of the futilityof Melian resistance acquires an almost mathematical certainty.""3 13 De Romilleyobservesthat the Melian proposals and Athenianrebuttalsmap out the structureof the dialogue, whichcan be divided into threeparts: "A preliminarysectioncontainsa discussionof the fundamentalmoral thesis of the relationshipbetweenjustice and force. Then, in paragraph 91, the Athenians put forwardtheirpolitical thesis,assertingthatit is in the interestof the Melians to surrenderwithouta struggle;then up to paragraph 100, 16 and Neorealism Thucydides But while the Athenians are certainlyin holding to the belief that they can crush Melos alone and without immediate danger to themselves, Thucydides clearly suggests through the dialogue that the brutallyimperialisticpolicy pursued by Athens carries the seeds of its own destruction. The continual demonstrations of Athens' strength, now seen by the Athenians as necessary to maintain control over their empire, only serve in the long term to increase the number of Athens' enemies and thereby heighten its insecurity.By ruling out as "specious pretences" discussion of how their empire was acquired, the Athenians have destroyed the rhetorical culture through which their interestsas an imperial power were intelligiblyexpressed in the early speeches of the history.As White (1984:79) declares: "Athens is leftwith selfinterestalone, the desire for power without culture to give it bounds and meaning. Not only is ambition of this sort unlimited,it is incoherent and irrational; for without a comprehensible world there can be no way of reasoning about it or acting withinit. One cannot be self-interestedwithouta language of the self; one cannot have power without community." The limitationsof this kind of self-justificationare fullyrevealed in the debate at Camarina, during the invasion of Sicily, when Athens unsuccessfully attempts to renew an alliance with Camarina against Syracuse. Here too the Athenians bluntly state, "We make no fine professions of having a right to rule because we overthrew the barbarian single-handed, or because we risked what we did risk for the freedom of the subjects in question any more than that of all." Save for naked self-interest,the Athenians make no effortto justify their conduct: "If we are now here in Sicily,it is equally in the interestof our security,with which we perceive that your interestalso coincides" (VI:84:408). It comes then as no surprise that Camarina opts for neutrality,for the Athenians have given them no good reason to believe that their interestis limited to dividing Sicily rather than ruling it. And Alcibiades, at least, thought that Athens should conquer not only Sicily but Carthage as well (VI: 15:367). There is a strong sense in which the master-slavedialectic of power obtains in this Athenian behavior. As the idea of Athens' liberalityand merit disappear as the source of Athenian action, all that remains is base necessity,the alleged fact that men, "by a necessary law of their nature rule whatever they can." This "common rule," firstelucidated by the Athenian Emissary during the debate at Lacedaemon, has now become, de Romilley (1962:288) declares, "somewhat abstract, and each enterprise taken separately acquires a strikinglygratuitiousquality. The actions they envisage are valid only as pure examples, and which may well obey the rule, but in a unsatisfactoryway." Given the disparitybetween their physical capabilities and those of the city-states(like Melos) they subjugate, the Athenians can seemingly afford to dispense with earlier rationalizations for their behavior. Like the master, they can arbitrarilycoerce other weaker city-states.But also like the master,the Athenians are caught in a trap, for they can get no satisfactionfrom their power over people they treat as mere objects.'4 Such conquests only make it necessary for Athens to undertake additional conquests. Far from enhancing Athens' power by adding to its territoryand wealth, such activitycircumscribesits autonomy and abilityto make intelligent choices. theytryto prove, against the objectionsput forwardby the Melians, thattheymuLstobtain the suLrrender of their island; and fromparagraph 101 onwards thatthe Melians have no hope of success. This correspondsto saying,in the firstplace, thatAthens needs to conquer and, in the second, thatshe can do so." I should like to thank Mary Dietz for bringingde Romilley'sbook to my attention. 14 The dilemma faced by the master is ably summed up byJon Elster (1978:261): "To the extent the master treatsthe slave like cattle,he gets no non-economicsatisfactionover him; to the extenthe treatsthe slave like a human being, he has no power over him." That the Atheniansare caught in a similarbind is evidenced by the fact thatpleasure or advantage in rulingand extendingtheirauthorityis onlyan additional or subordinateargument in the Melian Dialogue which theymentionsolely in passing. DANIEL GARST 17 This becomes evident in the next and last major debate of the historybetween Alcibiades and Nicias over the invasion of Sicily. Prone to extravagance and boasting, Alcibiades is perpetually demanding more for both himself and his city; scornfully rejecting Nicias' "do nothing" policy, he argues: "[W]e cannot fix the point at which our Empire must stop." Alcibiades claims that if Athens fails to undertake fresh conquests in Sicily, it will "wear itself out and its skill in everything [will] decay" (VI: 18:370). The Athenians' acceptance of these statementsindicates that they have finallycome to resemble the portrait of them drawn earlier by the Corinthians at Lacedaemon. They have become uncontrollable in their activityand limitlessin their desires; they have forgotten Pericles' warning that their lack of moderation would lead to defeat. To be sure, Pericles also had warned them not to give up theirempire. But the argument "not to give up," as he states it, is a precise law, with one possible application in the circumstances the Athenians confronted at the outset of the war. The law upon which Alicibiades bases his call to invade Sicilyis far broader and more uncertain: there is nothing to prove that the dangers Athens will allegedly face if it fails to make further conquests will come from Sicily. This new undertaking is not justified in its own terms but as an answer to the demands of purely external necessity. "When it reaches this point," de Romilley (1962:289) writes, "the imperialist motto condemns what it set out to defend: it advocates a policy which has no place for rational deliberation, but which is the blind observance of necessity: non ill vult, sed proteststare." If Alcibiades embodies the excesses of Athenian culture, the pious and cautious Nicias is to a large extent removed from it. Although Nicias does have a sense of the impending disaster, he lacks Pericles' eloquence and his abilityto frame arguments against further activityin an idiom that suits Athenian culture. Nicias' clumsy and ill-conceived ploy to head off the expedition by extravagantly overstating its requirements only spurs Athenian enthusiasm for it, and his inaction and blunders at Syracuse are largely responsible for the catastrophe that overtakes Athenian forces. Whereas Pericles' caution is based on a humanist self-relianceand rationalityrooted in Athenian political institutionsand life, Nicias' caution grows directly out of his piety,which can take the form of disastrous superstition.For example, Nicias warns the Athenians that if the invasion of Sicilyis to succeed, theymust have "much good counsel and more good fortune[emphasis mine], a hard matter for mortal men to aspire to" (VI:23:373). This argument has far more in common with the outlook of Archidamus and the Spartans on chance interventionsthan it does withPericles' firm belief that such interventionsare to some degree amenable to human intelligence. And later, in his final despairing exhortation to the Athenians at Syracuse, Nicias attemptsto revive the flagging morale of his men by presenting himselfas an example of one who is as badly off as they but who expects a favorable turn of events because of his justice and piety (VI:61:461-62). Nothing could be furtherremoved either from the cool rationalism of Diodotus, who insists that "fortune . . . by the unexpected aid it sometimes lends, tempts men to venture with inferior means" (111:45:178), or from hardheaded realism the Athenians display in the Melian Dialogue. Unable to prevent the invasion of Sicily,Nicias is forced to lead an expedition he opposes, in which the Athenians are "destroyed, as the saying is, with total destruction" (VII:87:481). This outcome supports the oft-statedview that Thucydides' historyhas the form and meaning of a tragic drama, in which Athenian hubris, exemplified by Athens' behavior at Melos, is properly punished at Sicily.'5 While this 15 This interpretationis forcefullyadvanced by Corniford(1907) as part of his broader contention that The see Edmunds War reflectsThuLcydides'religiousbeliefs.For a critiqueof Cornford'sinterpretation, Peloponnesians (1975:3-6). 18 Thucydides and Neorealism interpretation has much validity, Thucydides' narrative of the Sicilian expedition and the subsequent course of the war should discourage any strong conclusions along such lines. The Athenians come veryclose to achieving victoryin Sicilyand are defeated only after Alcibiades is expelled from Athens and manages to convince the Spartans to come to the aid of Syracuse. And it is Nicias' hesitation that prevents the Athenians from successfullyevacuating theirforces. Finally,in spite of the disaster in Sicily,the Athenians manage to fighton and inflictnumerous reverses on the Spartans and their allies. Kagan (1987:23) declares that even after this setback: "If the Athenians could keep their nerve, limitexpenditure, and keep control of their allies, they need not give in, even though the defeat in Sicily provided an invitation for Persian involvement." This opinion is shared by Thucydides: "Yet after losing most of their fleetbesides other forces in Sicily,and with faction already dominant in the city,they [the Athenians] could stillfor three years make head against their original adversaries, joined not only by the Sicillians, but also by their own allies nearly all in revolt, and at last by the King's son" (11:65:126). What ultimatelycauses Athens' defeat in Thucydides' view is the breakdown of its democratic institutions,the "private cabals for leadership of the commons" caused by the growthof factionalism"which not only paralyzed operations in the field,but also firstintroduced civil discord at home" (11:65:126). Thucydides concludes that the Athenians did not "succumb till they fell victims of their own intestine disorders" (11:65: 126-27).16 These disorders cause the Athenians to abandon Pericles' policy of prudent restraint and to mismanage the Sicilian campaign by putting Nicias in charge of it and then recalling Alcibiades, and they lead to Athens' eventual defeat. Thus if Thucydides' historyhas a unifyingthread, it is the contingentand problematic nature of the political institutionsand environmentsustaining Athenian political power and hegemony. Implications for Neorealist Theory Political Power and Hegemonyin Neorealism Neorealists define political power as either a simple possession of material resources and capabilities or the ability of a state to bring about observable changes in the behavior of other states. The firstunderstanding of political power is most prominent in the writings of Gilpin and Waltz: for Gilpin (1981:13), political power is simply "the military,economic, and technological capabilities of states"; for Waltz (1979:192), "to be politically pertinent, power has to be defined in terms of the distribution of capabilities." This distribution of capabilities the main ordering principle within the anarchic structure of the "Third Image" yields the hypo16 Kagan (1987:418-21) points out that Thucydides' conclusion thatinternaldiscord caused Athen-s'defeat is somewhat ambiguous. One common interpretationis to view it as part of a broader-condemnationof Athenian democracy.This is suLrely false. Such an inter-pretation is difficuLltto square withPericles'celebrationof Athenian political institutionsin the Funeral Oration. And while Thucydides certainlybecame more criticalof Athenian democr-acy as the war progressed,his favorablecommentson the rule of the Five ThouLsand(VIII:96:546) indicate that he remained a moderate democrat. Thucydides' judgement can also be read as a vindicationof Per-icles' leadership and anl attack on the shortcomingsof his successors. This reading is certain-ly more in line with Thucydides' inten-tions.However, Kagan (1974:350-62 and 1987:418) conicludesthat Pericles' str-ategy couLld never have bl-ouLght Athens victory:Athenian resources wouldlhave been inadequate to last even through the ArchidamianWar had not Pericles'successorsabandoned his policyof caultiousrestraint.ThuLcydides'criticismsof Pericles'successorsreston more solid ground. In particular,the bitterr-ivalries and factionlal disputessurrounding Alcibiades certainlydicdimmense damage to Athens an-dhad much to do withits loss of the war. In addition to con-tribuLting to the Atheniandisasterat Sicily,Alcibiades' disgracer-emovedhis verycapable friendsand associates, Theramens an-d ThrasybulLs, from positions of commancdwhen their militaryand political skill were badly needed. For a discussion-of this,see Kagan (1987:420). DANIEL GARST 19 thetico-deductive models of the motivations and behavior of states. Thus Waltz argues that multipolar, not bipolar, distributionsof capabilities lead states,following the underlying motivation of self-help, to engage in power-balancing.'7 Likewise, Gilpin uses the distribution of capabilities to formulate hypotheticalgeneralizations concerning the ascent and decline of so-called hegemonic powers and the outbreaks of systemicwarfare said to accompany these cycles. Finally, other neorealists have applied this model to the issue-areas of trade (Lake, 1984) and the New International Economic Order (NIEO) (Krasner, 1985). A second neorealist understanding of power is present in the criticismsof Waltz and Gilpin put forward by Keohane (1983:520-27). Keohane argues that the distribution of capabilities can, at best, only be used to construct parsimonious theories that generate testable hypotheses. It cannot, however, be used to yield accurate predictions of state behavior and outcomes, because power resources are not fungible across issue-areas. In putting forward this critique, Keohane applies pluralist notions of power withinindividual communities and states to interstaterelations. His critique embraces the basic pluralist assumption that agents have power only when theyare able to cause things to happen and when the object is observable actions by other agents. Thus Keohane and Nye employ Dahl's "intuitive idea of power" in defining it as "the abilityof an actor to get others to do Power and Interdependence, something they would otherwise not do" (1977:13). While this appropriation of pluralist arguments is never explicitlyacknowledged, it is evident in Keohane's insistence that the failure of states with relativelyhigh capabilities to prevail in conflicts withother, weaker states necessitates employment of "issue structuretheories." As in the pluralist critique of power-elite arguments, power is seen as being diffused among states across differentissue-areas; while asymmetriesof power between states may exist in specific issue-areas, they are viewed as potentially cross-cuttingrather than mutually reinforcing. While neorealists disagree over the precise nature of political power, they generally agree about what constitutes hegemony in the international arena. Neorealists invariably use the term hegemony to refer to a preponderance of economic and militarycapabilities. Hegemonic powers, they argue, use this preponderance to construct and maintain liberal regimes regulating international trade and monetary affairs.As Krasner (1983:357) puts it, "The most common proposition [among structural realists] is that hegemonic distributionsof power lead to stable, open economic regimes." These regimes are treated as collective goods: their provision by a hegemon stems from its own self-interestand ability to provide the material incentives needed to persuade other states to follow its leadership. This logic is neatly stated by Keohane (1980:136): "Both hegemonic powers and smaller states have incentives to collaborate in maintaining a regime-the hegemonic power gains the abilityto shape and dominate its international environment,while providing sufficientflowof benefitsto small and middle powers to persuade them to acquiesce." Power and Hegemonyin Neorealism:A Critique Despite their disagreements on how to measure political power, neorealists are basically agreed on the objective that definitions of political power should aspire to. 17 As a number of sympathetic criticsof neorealismhave noted, Waltz'stheorypredictsthatpower balancingwill occur but failsto predictexactlywhichbalances willform(Keohane, 1983:512-55; Ruggie, 1983b:267-68). In his Politics,Waltz denies thathe ever response to thisand other more fundamentalcriticismsof TheoryofInternational argued that structuresdeterminebehavior. "Structures,"Waltz (1986:343) argues, merely"shape and shove." In this formulation,structuressimply set broad constraintson agency. This account of agency and structureis problematic,for as Giddens (1979) emphasizes, structuresnot onlyconstrainbut facilitateaction. For an in-depth reviewof the agent-structureproblem and internationalrelationstheory,see Wendt (1987). 20 and Neorealism Thucydides Gilpin, Waltz, and Keohane all argue for an operational definitionof political power, in which power can be precisely measured and then can be used to account for observable regularities in the behavior of states. In the view of Gilpin and Waltz, power is operationally defined by the presence of physical capabilities; in the view of Keohane, by observable changes in the behavior of states. Unlike Thucydides, these authors do not define political power as a power potential, dependent on the existence of a certain political environment. Thucydides does not, of course, deny the importance of capabilities, be they economic wealth or militarymight,in enhancing the political power of states. However, his account of the decline of Athens tells us that such capabilities cannot serve as the sole basis of the political power of states. If such capabilities are to enable an actor to exercise political power, they must be deployed in an environment of well-defined and widely held social conventions regulating speech and action. Otherwise, the use of physical capabilities to achieve certain ends involves violence and force, not the exercise of political power. An obvious corollary to this argument is that power relations should not be limited to an observable act or signaling event of some kind. For Thucydides, then, attributions of power are conditional: that is, they do not necessarily follow from possession of physical resources or observable changes in the behavior of actors but are instead tied to intersubjectivelydefined social conventions and the institutionsassociated with them that delimit the conditions under which political power is held and exercised. This understanding of power is consistentwith the definitionof power embedded in ordinary language. "Power" comes to us by way of the latin potestasor potentia,meaning ability. It ordinarily describes a property, ability,or capability to affect things, given certain conditions (Ball, 1975:212). The same can be said for the Greek equivalent to the Latin potentia,dynamis,and the German macht,which derives from mogenand moglich,not from machen (Arendt, 1958:200). Gilpin and Waltz are, therefore, at least on the right track in defining power as a possession and not an event. Where theyerr is in confusing power with strengthand force. "Power," Arendt (1958:200) writes,is "not an unchangeable, measurable, and reliable entity like force and strength." While strength is a natural quality of an individual, attributionsof power to human agents involve some recognized convention or rule, and not mere possession of physical capabilities. For example, the power of the President to veto legislation is not intrinsicto the person in the office but is rather part of his role as defined by constitutionalrules. It is certainlytrue that the possession of certain intrinsicqualities, like the abilityto communicate persuasively, will enhance this power. But what defines political power in the firstinstance are the rules delimiting the responsibilities of the Executive and Legislative branches and the extent to which they are recognized by the relevant political actors. And while a President possesses the power to veto measures and persuade members of Congress to back such vetoes, he may not make use of it when the opportunity arises. By contrast,saying that inanimate objects or things have the power to do something is equivalent, Haare (1970:85) argues, to the conditional statement: "If X is subject to stimulior conditions of an appropriate kind, then X will do A, in virtue of itsintrinsic nature." The power of a hydrogen bomb to destroy a cityis intrinsic;when dropped on a targetand detonated, it will destroyit. The error made by Gilpin and Waltz is to confuse this kind of explanation of power with those warranted for human agents. As Ball (1975) argues, the former are causal and licensed by universal law, while the latter are contingent and licensed by intersubjective social conventions, rules, and institutions.Given these differences,it should come as no surprise that the distribution of capabilities often yields inaccurate predictions of state actions and outcomes. For this reason, Keohane is certainly correct in arguing that what he calls "basic force" models, in which power is defined in terms of physical resources, will be DANIEL GARST 21 inaccurate predicters of actual outcomes. But Keohane's critique and his call for "disaggregated" power models, in which physical resources influence outcomes in general while having differentimpacts across particular issue-areas, rest on the mistaken assumption that actors have power only when they are able to induce observable changes in the behavior of other actors. Thus Keohane argues that "power resources" are not fungible across particular issue-areas on account of the failure of great powers like the United States to prevail in conflictswith smaller powers over the past two decades (1983:522). Political power is therebyredefined to refer not to potentialitiesbut to actual events. The problem with this line of argument is that it restrictsattributionsof political power to one location, that of "power over," in the belief that scientifictheories of international politics involve the detection of behavioral regularities. In political discourse, however, "power over" is by no means the only or even the most important kind of power. Actors also have "power to": they may have the capacityor abilityto do certain things if they so choose. Moreover, they may have this power without ever overtlyor observably using it.18 Keohane's arguments on political power fail, then, to distinguish between the possessionand the exerciseof political power. An actor may tryto exercise her power but, through lack of skill,fail to alter behavior in the way she wants. And far from being a defect,'9 this possibilityof slippage is what saves arguments linking outcomes to political power from triviality:it means that a frameworkexists for explaining successes and failures in the effortsof agents to modify the actions of others. Thus, far from focusing on "underlying power realities" as defined by neorealists, Thucydides' historydirects attention to the confusion underlying neorealist debates over power in international politics. In particular, Thucydides' understanding of political power underscores the pitfallsof viewing power as a concrete and measurable entityor in terms of control over observable behavior. Both Waltz's and Gilpin's conceptions of power and Keohane's critique of their accounts rest on the mistaken presumption that power, defined in terms of physical capabilities, should be causally related to regularities in observable behavior and outcomes. On the other hand, Thucydides urges us to see power as a property whose effectsare contingent upon the structure of social institutionsand conventions that delimit the use of both the tangible and intangible resources that enable actors to establish relations of psychological control. Thus, the oft-noted "true cause" of the conflict, "the growth of 18 Waltz recognizes thisaspect of politicalpower. He (1979:192) notes, "In politics. . . powerfulagents fail to impresstheirwillson others in just the ways theyintend to. The intentionof an act and its resultwill seldom be identicalbecause the resultwillbe affectedby the person or object acted on and conditionedby the environment withinwhich it occurs." But he then goes on to argue, "an agent is powerfuLl to the extentthat he affectsothers more than theyaffecthim. . . . Because of the weightof our capabilities,American actions have tremendous impactwhetheror not we fashioneffectivepolicies and consciouslyput our capabilitiesbehind them in order to achieve certainends" (1979:192). The problem withthisline of argumentis thatit conflatesthe exercise of power withinfluence.One can influencesomeone's behavior intentionallyor unintentionallyor be influentialwithout intendingor even knowingit. Unlike influence,which can be both a noun and a verb,power always requires the presenceof a verb.Thus we say thatan individualexercises power and influences behavior.And since the actionword has intention"builtinto" it,we cannot say thatthe exercise of power is unintentional.For a broader discussionof intentionality and power, see Ball (1975:211 and 1978:613-15). 19As Brian Barry (1978:71) forcefullyargues: "Weber-and Dahl close the logical gap [betweenthe possession and exer-ciseof power] by equating power withthe probability of one actor's being able to change the behavior of someone in the direction desir-ed.To say that A got B to do somethingthat B would not have otherwisedone because A had power over B becomes as vacuous as sayingthatsomeone became angryon a givenoccasion because he had an irascible temperment,or that opium makes people sleepy because it has the virtusdormativa."Thus Keohane's (1983:523-24) complaint that taking seriouslythe slippage between the possession and exercise of power makes power explanations of outcomes degenerate restson the mistakenassumptionthata decline in the political power of an agent is to be equated with its failure to exert control over observable behavior. For an excellentcr-itiqueof thiskind of argument,as applied to the alleged decline of U.S. power and hegemonyduring the 1970s, see Stran-ge(1987). and Neorealism Thucydides 22 Athenian power and the fear this inspired in Lacedaemon," must not be viewed as a covering-lawexplanation of systemicwar. When Thucydides speaks of the growth of Athenian power, he is not simply referringto disparities between the physical capabilitiesof Athens and Sparta. As the debate at Lacedaemon makes abundantly clear, Thucydides' celebrated judgement on the "true" cause of the conflictrefersas much, if not more, to the vastly different character of Athenian and Spartan political institutionsand the rules and conventions undergirding them. By focusing on rules and institutions,it could be argued that this reading of Thucydides' conception of political power conflates power with Weber's notion of legal/procedural authority. And as neorealists emphasize, the latter inheres in domestic society and is absent in the anarchic realm of international politics. This objection poses two problems. First,Weber's notion of legal/procedural authorityis problematic: it conflates the conditions underpinning the possession of authority with those of power. The concept of "authority" comes to us by way of the Roman notion of auctoritas,which derives from the verb "augere,"or "augment." Romans in authority constantly augmented the foundation of Rome. They did so and were endowed with authoritynot because they held particular officesbut because of their descent and by transmission (tradition) from those who founded Rome. As Arendt (1980:122) writes: "Authority, in contradistinctionto power, had its roots in the past." The second problem withthis possible neorealist objection is that it rests on the questionable assumption that the international realm is anarchic, lacking any order, rules, or authority,save for that associated with hierarchical distributionsof capabilities.20But as Keohane has emphasized in AfterHegemony,the decline of U.S. economic and militarycapabilities need not be described as anarchic in the sense of lacking rules or cooperative regimes. In addition to clarifyingthe confusion underlying neorealist debates on political power, The PeloponnesianWar provides a far richer understanding of hegemony in the international arena than that of neorealism. It is true that a superficial resemblance exists between the accounts of hegemony put forward by Thucydides and the neorealists. Both equate hegemony with leadership. But in neorealism, this leadership lacks the moral dimension so heavily emphasized by Thucydides.2' Hegemonic powers lead because it is in their narrow self-interestto do so; they persuade others to follow their leadership by providing material side-payments. In Thuycidides' history,whether or not a state is hegemonic depends on the moral authorityit is able to wield. As leader of the Delian League, Athens' coercive power, based on its militarycapabilities, is armored by the moral claims stemming from its role in the Median War and its eschewal of pure force in governing its subjects. And later, during the conflict itself, the Athenians are partially successful in reconstructing their hegemony by developing new bonds withinand outside their empire, based on the ideological alliance of democracy in Athens with the democratic factionsin other cities. What is noteworthyabout the conception of hegemony embedded in Thucydides' historyare the broad parallels between it and Gramsci's arguments on the subject. To be sure, the writingsof Thucydides and Gramsci are informed by very different concerns tied to the particular historicalcircumstancesin which theylived. Nevertheless, both emphasize the importance of persuasion and leadership in the form of 20 Neorealistsdiffer,of course, in theiracceptance of this postulate.See Alker-(for-thcoming). 21 This applies to both the neorealistar-guments on hegemonyancdthe more recentemphasis on norms,conventions,and r-ulesin the work on regime formation.As Kratochwiland Rtuggie(1986) note, while the constittutive basis of regimesin thiswor-khas a stronginterstubjective quiality,the positivistic epistemologicalpositionin regime analysisinspiredby game theory,exchange theory,and the like entailsa radical separationof stubjectand object in which intersulbjective meaning is inferredfrombehavior. DANIEL GARST 23 concrete activityin enabling actors be they great powers like Athens in the case of Thucydides or dominant classes and labor movements in the case of Gramsci to obtain and retain hegemony. According to Gwyn Williams' (1960:587) early but still useful summary of Gramsci's outlook, hegemony signifies "an order in which a certain way of life is dominant, in which one concept of realityis diffused throughout societyin all its institutionaland private manifestations."22To establish hegemony, a dominant class or state must do more than simply impose its supremacy; it must also demonstrate its claims to "intellectual and moral leadership," and this involves continual ideological activity(Laclau, 1977:161). As Raymond Williams (1977:109) argues, such leadership is grounded, in Gramsci's arguments, in "conscious ideas and beliefs [i.e., ideology]" as well as the "whole lived social process as practicallyorganized by specificand dominant meanings and values." For both Gramsci and Thucydides, then, the establishment and maintenance of hegemony is an essentiallyopenended process that requires continual activity in the form of persuasion and negotiation. The greater richness of this understanding of hegemony can be illustrated by a briefconsideration of the cases of nineteenth-centuryBritish and twentieth-century U.S. hegemony. These cases are especially appropriate for this purpose because of the role they have played in providing neorealists with empirical grounding for the "common proposition" that hegemonic distributionsof power will be associated with stable, open economic regimes (Krasner, 1976; Keohane, 1980; Gilpin, 1981; Lake, 1984).23This so-called theoryof hegemonic stabilityhas recentlybeen subjected to a series of quite damaging critiques (McKeown, 1983; Stein, 1984; Snidal, 1985; Strange, 1987). My objective here is simply to suggest that the problems of hegemonic stabilitytheorystem in some measure from neorealism's impoverished understanding of hegemony, and that the richer understanding of these concepts present in Thucydides' historycan shed better light on the roles actually played by Britain and the United States in bringing about open international economic orders. It is certainlycorrect to argue, as McKeown and Stein do, that Britain was unable, even during the peak of its economic dominance from 1815 to 1850, to successfully bring other states to accept a lowering of trade barriers. In this respect, Britain was indeed never really "hegemonic." Nevertheless, it can be argued that Britain did exercise hegemony by demonstrating,through its early industrialization,the advantages of laissez-faire. By the 1850s, Britain's impressive econoomicdevelopment provided a potent argument for economic liberalism and served as the model that other European states feltcompelled to follow to achieve industrialization.This, at least, is what Charles Kindleberger (1978) argued in his classic general sketch of the spread of free trade across Europe during the third quarter of the nineteenth century.The same argument is also made, in more global terms,by Eric Hobsbawm (1975: chapter 13) in his account of how the bourgeoisie "ruled" throughout this period. Hobsbawm (1975:275) declares: "There was no alternative to capitalism as a mode of economic development, and at this period this implied the economic and institutional program of the liberal bourgeoisie." Thus all statesmen, even those like Bis- 22 Exegecies of Gr-amsci are now legion. For an excellentsL1ummar-y of the existinginiter-pretative see Eley wvork, (1984). 23 In cor-responiden-ce in the revisionof the article,Keohane com-plainsthatthisstatemenit ulsefuLl misr-epresenits his earlier thinikinig on this matter.While Keohanie acknowledges inIhis 1980 article the inidifferent fitbetween hegemuonic stabilitytheoryand regime chan-gein the areas of trade, energy,and imionetary issues, he (1980:155) nievertheless conlcludesthatthe argument"is clearlyulsefuLl as a firststep; to ignor-eitsconglrLuen-ce withreality,and itsconsiderableexplanator-y power-,wouLld be foolish."In Keohanie's(1984) compellingaccouLnt of post-WorldWar II initer-nationial cooper-ation,hegemonlicstabilitytheor-y is deniotedto an "iinter-pr-etative framework,"whiclhser-ves as a usefuLl descr-iptionbuLtniotan explanation-of regime formationi. 24 and Neorealism Thucydides marck who opposed the bourgeoisie, "were liberal in the economic sense, because there was no workable alternative policy" (Jones, 1977:87). In a similar vein, John Ruggie (1983a) has persuasively argued that the post-World War II liberal international economic order grew out of changes in the hegemonic forms of state-society relations, from "laissez-faire liberalism" during the nineteenth century to "embedded liberalism" following 1945, in which liberalism in foreign economic relations was combined with activistwelfare-orientedpolicies in the domestic realm. And while the effortsof the United States to use its resources to press for greater openness in the world economy certainly promoted "embedded liberalism," so too did, as Russett (1985:229) suggests, "the near-global acceptance of American culture . . . [which] shaped people's desires and perceptions of alternatives so that their preferences in international politics were concordant with those of Americans." This cursory sketch of Anglo-American hegemonies indicates that major differences exist in both their content and the institutionaland social structure of nineteenth- and twentieth-centurycapitalism to which they were tied. While we can say that the United States and Britain exercised hegemony in Gramsci's and Thucydides' sense, this hegemony and what it entailed can only be specified withinthe appropriate historical context. This is something to which neorealists are not blind. For example, Gilpin's (1975) early investigationof the U.S. and British cases displays a great deal of sensitivityto the differenthistoricalsettingsthat shaped theirrespective strategies. And Keohane's (1984) important analysis of cooperation in the world political economy displays a similar acute awareness of the differencesbetween British and American hegemonies. But if neorealists do acknowledge the importance of historical context when engaged in actual research, their theories ahistoricallylink systemic causes and effects via perceived law-like regularities in the behavior of states.24It is this ahistorical mode of theorizing that leads neorealists to treat Thucydides' historyas a naturalisticnarrative that sets forththe basic systemicimperatives driving the behavior of states and makes the underlying anarchic structureof international politics similar across widely separate historical epochs. This is most evident in Gilpin's insistence that Thucydides' historycontains "everything that the new realists find intriguing about the interaction of international economics and international politics." When neorealists discuss this interaction,they emphasize the two-waydetermination or merger of international economics and international politics (Ashley, 1983:470). Thus Gilpin (1981:219) writes,"[I]f somehow Thucydides were placed in our midst,he would (followingan appropriate short course in geography, economics, and modern technology) have littletrouble in understanding the power struggle of our age." Gilpin (1981:218) furtherargues that "Thucydides tells us that an act of economic warfare, the Megara Decree, was a precipitator of the Peloponnesian War." In fact, de Ste. Croix (1972: chapter 7) shows in his painstaking study of the origins of the Peloponnesian War that the Megara Decree had very littleto do with economics: the main purpose of excluding 24 Waltz (1979:5-6) argues that the purpose of theories is to explain laws, defined as invariantor probable associations.Thus Waltz (1979:66) concludes that "the textureof internationalpoliticsremains highlyconstant, patternsrecur-and eventsrepeat themselvesendlessly"becaulseof the endur-inganarchiccharacterof international politics. Likewise, Gilpin (1980:210) con-tendsthat the "law of uneven growth"redistributespower, generating similarcyclesof hegemonic ascent,decline, and global warfare.And like Waltz,Gilpin (1980:211) concludes, "the natureof internationalrelationshas not changed fundamentallyover-the millenia."In both theseoutlooks,history is frozen.This is also the case in the game theorymodels of cooperation developed by Keohane and others,even thoughthese models serve the veryuseful functionof overtuLrning the pessimisticconclusionsof Waltz and Gilpin on internationalcooperation in the absence of a hegemonic power. In the game theorymodels of regime formation,cooperationdepends on the numberof game players,theiractuallydiscountediteratedgame futures,and the degree to which theirinterestsconflict.These variables provide a deductive and "parsimonious"explanation of cooperation by passing over the preexistingsocial structuresand precedentsthatsurelyinformthe strategiesof real-lifegame players. DANIEL GARST 25 the Magarians from the Athenian Agora was simply to humiliate them, to put them in the same class as men convicted of disgraceful crimes or suspected of being carriers of pollution. It is also difficultto make any connection between the pattern of Athenian imperialism and Athens' need to protect its supply routes for grain or acquire more wealth. Thucydides' silence on these matters is criticized in the commentaries of Cornford (1907: chapters 3-4) and Grundy (1948:187), but the connection drawn by these authors between commercial and economic imperatives and Athenian imperialism has been discredited by modern research. The pattern of Athenian expansion is simply too unsystematicto support such claims (de Romilly, 1962:71-74; de Ste. Croix, 1972). This is not at all surprisingin view of the fact that trade and commerce were far less important in ancient Athens than in modern-day capitalist societies.25As a product of this environment, Thucydides wrote political history;at no point does he argue for a reciprocal relationship between international politics and international economics. Concluding Remarks In writingThe PeloponnesianWar, Thucydides hoped to create a work "for all time." This article has argued that Thucydides' enduring insightson internationalrelations were primarilypolitical rather than scientific.Thucydides' historydoes not point to general laws explaining international conflict,nor did its author intend it to do so. What The Peloponnesian War does provide are timeless insights into the basis of political power and hegemony. Thucydides reminds us that power and hegemony are above all bound to the existence of political and social structuresand the intersubjective conventions associated with them. Nothing could be more foreign to Thucydides' way of thinking than neorealism's ahistorical treatmentof these concepts. And nothing could be more pernicious to Thucydides than neorealism's insistence that the quest for power is an underlying and enduring systemicimperative that exists independently of social structurescreated and maintained by human agency. What the trajectoryof Athenian imperialism ought to make abundantly clear is that prediction and control are the last things this "scientific"understanding of international politics provides when put into practice. If this is the case, then Thucydides' work remains relevant in an era of nuclear weapons because it underscores the necessityof thinkingabout political praxis in the studyof internationalrelations that are both realistic and critical. References ALKER, H. (forthcoming)The Presumption of Anarchy in World Politics. In Anarchy, Powerand Community: Understanding International Collaboration, edited by H. R. Alker and R. K. 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