The new US-EU trade deal has spawned a legion of critics who allege European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen cravenly capitulated in the face of American pressure. They would have known this was the likely outcome had they simply understood the teachings of an ancient Greek historian.Thucydides was an Athenian nobleman writing in the late 5th Century BC. His landmark history of the Peloponnesian War between that era’s two great powers, Athens and Sparta, remains one of the greatest documents that golden era produced.
It gains its enduring reputation from its unerring insight into power politics and human psychology. Thucydides grasped as perhaps no writer before Machiavelli how human beings behave when faced with the temptations and perils of geopolitics.His famous description of the Athenian destruction of the island city state of Melos is the description par excellence of a ruthless power pursuing its aims without regard to justice.
Thucydides explains that the Athenians, hard pressed by the Spartans, arrive on the island with a simple demand: Join our side in the war or be destroyed. Melos is tiny compared with great Athens and stands no rational chance of survival, but nonetheless seeks to persuade the attackers that they – an independent, sovereign city-state – be permitted to remain neutral.
Athens rejects this, contending that what we would today call the law of nature dictates that powers rule what they are able to and that the security of their empire demands that they follow that law regardless of whether such action might be considered just. They succinctly describe their doctrine with one phrase: “The strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.”
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