Imperial Necessity? Been there. Done that.
Leighton Woodhouse’s analysis of our political situation in the article Donald Trump, Pagan King makes a very interesting comparison. As he noted, the line “The strong do what they can, and the weak suffer what they must,”1 which was quoted by Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney in his recent speech, originally comes from Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War, written in the 5th century BC. Specifically, it is spoken by Athenian envoys to the leaders of Melos as an ultimatum demanding surrender, representing the classic assertion that “might makes right.” As Woodhouse describes:
“The Melians, who were no match for the Athenians, wished to remain neutral. They complained that Athens’ demand that they submit to its rule was unjust. The Athenians responded that matters of justice exist only between equals. Between those who are strong and those who are weak there is only force. The dialogue is famous for its stark portrayal of the dictates of political realism. The world is not guided by ideals and values, it demonstrates. It is brokered only by power... The Trump administration has adopted this philosophy as its own. In a recent interview with Jake Tapper, Stephen Miller said, “We live in a world in which you can talk all you want about international niceties and everything else, but we live in a world, in the real world, Jake, that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power.”
But Woodhouse ignored some important context. For while the Athenians in Thucydides’ Melian Dialogue famously argued the case for a realpolitiks of political survival, this didn’t represent the moral beliefs of the time. It would not be accurate to say that ancient Greeks or pagans generally believed their gods favored only the strong and were indifferent to the weak, particularly given the cultural significance of xenia (guest-friendship) at the time. For while Greek society heavily valued strength and power (often believing success in war was a sign of divine blessing), the concept of xenia was a crucial, sacred counterweight, enforced by Zeus himself. Social order was conceived as a web of reciprocal duties where the strong were given strength so they could uphold the traditions (like xenia), and the weak were protected because mistreating them disrupted the kosmos (order) that the gods maintained. In short, it wasn’t only Christianity’s universalization of Jewish ethics that would’ve been capable of preventing Athenian realpolitik from overrunning the Melians. And the parallels with contemporary politics are still more stark. Just as xenia was insufficient then, Christian morality is insufficient today. Woodhouse notes that:
“Christian morality didn’t prevent medieval kings and the Catholic Church from massacring civilians, persecuting Jews, and committing genocides in the New World. The American founders, so proud of their Christian piety, betrayed their religion in the most profound way: Many of them owned slaves.”
Another consequence of Woodhouse’s omission of Greek ideals and values is his claim that the Athenians didn’t have to answer to charges of hypocrisy. The Athenians were indeed accused of hypocritically acting as the very tyrants they had once fought against, and more broadly, of violating Hellenic norms. Their rulers were certainly aware of this. But, like today, these violations were rationalized. They didn’t see it as a failure of character, but as a necessary evolution: the old world of xenia and honor was dead and replaced by an era of imperial necessity. It wasn’t until their total defeat in 404 BC that the Athenian public truly reckoned with the moral cost of their actions at Melos. So the parallels being drawn by Woodhouse are perhaps more profound than he acknowledges. We are seeing the same excuses of imperial necessity being repeated again. And just as the Athenian realpolitik ignored Greek morality, American realpolitik is ignoring Christian morality, in an almost word for word fashion.
Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War, trans. Richard Crawley (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1874), 5.89, p. 394.