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I should probably clarify here that I am most interested in understanding the limits of debate in the Washington and policy adjacent sphere. Jeff upthread notes that he hears arguments that Taiwan is not worth it all the time–but from China hands? From nat sec hands? Sure I hear it from silicon valley people, sometimes from generalist politicos, often from anons and fringier figures. But it is the people who make a career out of diplomacy, China, foreign policy, etc. that have both thought hardest about this problem and who have the biggest impact on it, and it is here where the debate seems to be most circumscribed.
That is my perception at least. Am I wrong?
@Signfield–
I am not sure I buy this. Well, I buy it for many people: new rightists, tankies, and other people on the fringes. But I don’t think it describes well the establishment debate in DC. I don’t think what divides a James Palmer on the one hand from Ryan Hass on the other is their opinion of America. Both are left of center establishment supporters; if anything Palmer is to the left of Hass. I think they have a fairly similar view of the American regime. They have a different assessment of the Chinese regime, however, and the kind of tools one can use to shape its policy.
Second thought: I would actually like to *remove* the stigma around claiming that we should not support Taiwan, that Taiwan is not worth it, etc. These are legitimate, defensible positions. But they cannot be argued against unless people are free to openly articulate them.
I agree that this is key — Japan is an old ally, a former enemy, and the world’s third largest economy. People are more culturally familiar with Taiwan as well.
Part of the reason we don’t here about this angle more is that the Japanese are themselves fairly subdued in their official statements on China; another is that Japan is even more divided than we are on the engagement/containment debate; the last is that the organic connections that tie together Japanese politicos and officials are far weaker than exists with Americans and the Anglo-sphere, or even the Americans and the Europeans. Lots of Americans have opinions about german or French politics; few have opinions about Japan.
CITATION: Patrick Coby, “Enlightened Self-Interest in the Peloponnesian War: Thucydidean Speakers on the Right of the Stronger and Inter-State Peace,” Canadian Journal of Political Science / Revue Canadienne de Science Politique 24, no. 1 (1991): 67–90.
SUMMARY: Coby argues that the Athenians were purveyors of a “new morality,” a morality that enjoined all to find peace through enlightened self interest (think the offer of peace given to the Melians. By
the terms of the old morality, Greeks are a single people with a unifying interest, particularly defence against the barbarians, and those who have contributed the most to the common good deserve the most from the common store, in the form of power, wealth and glory. The Athenians remind their audience that their possessions have been fairly won and that Athens is a city worthy of mention (1.73.1). In the Persian War they supplied the largest number of ships, the ablest commander and the most unhesitating zeal, leaving their city to the ravages of the enemy while fighting at sea. Their empire, which was in any event handed to them, is in fact owed to them (p. 72).
Though Coby does not quite connect the dots, this old morality fails at Plataea, where the hinge of the Greek people (as seen in the role in the Persian wars) are destroyed by other Greeks [Spartans] claiming to act justly. This paves the way for a new, more self interested morality:
But intelligent people, acting on selfish interest alone, can arrange their affairs so that the pursuit of power does not result in protracted and embittered war. And when people and nations do sort out their positions relative to each other, shared expectations respecting rights and duties follow as a matter of course. The weak know that surrender is their only hope, while the strong know how to offer terms which make surrender for the weak a sensible option. Equals know the utility of abiding by treaties. Not universal and perpetual peace-because similar people compete for the same scarce goods-but relative and temporary peace is the promise of the new morality, which is judged to be more realistic than exhortations to virtue (p. 73).
The trouble is that this new morality fails to convince just about everyone the hears it—the Spartans still fight, Melos still chooses resistance and death. Even the Sicilians only heed it shortly before falling back into general war.
The answer, as others have suggested, is a problem of emotion. Coby has an innovative argument that Diodorus [who many believe comes closest to approximating Thucydides own views] succeeds in the Mytiline debate by checking emotion against emotion. The true task is not to measures interests against each other, which are emotions do not leave us free to disinterestedly calculate, but rather to cancel out one strong emotional drive with another (e.g. pity and anger). In the space between these dueling emotional drives a narrow realm of sober calculation of self-interest might be found:
The intelligent governance of the empire requires of Athens that it respond to rebellions with just enough force to defeat the hope of independence and afterwards that it negotiate an acceptable peace with its opponents. Nothing is gained if one master passion is replaced by another, if the hope of freedom which brought on the rebellion is succeeded by the fear of destruction which prevents its conclusion. People’s lives are generally ruled by emotion, but from time to time the emotions are balanced and the voice of reason is audible.
Diodotus is carefully calibrating actions and reactions in order to produce an emotional balance favourable to reason. His objective is not to train the emotions, to teach spiritedness the beauty of wisdom or appetite that deference is its duty, as is the case of Socrates and the citizens of Callipolis. Rather it is the more modest task of neutralizing one master passion with another, or, in the words of a modern practitioner of the art, of using “ambition… to counteract ambition.” (84).
Interestingly, Diodotus is not just attempting to do this with the Athenian subjects, but with the Athenians in the assembly itself:
His method, as applied to the allies of Athens, is to identify their ruling emotion, check it by another, then bargain over interests, taking account of alterations in the balance of power. Other allies are watching the Mytilenian affair, and it is their behaviour that he means to influence. But more directly, if less visibly, he means to influence the behaviour of the Athenian assembly, using presumably the same techniques of rhetoric and psychology. With the Athenians the master passion is anger. Yesterday they expressed their anger in voting to put to death the men of Mytilene. But today it is pity that moves them, and they have reassembled to debate anew the matter of punishment…
His speech is filled with arguments about utility, but its persuasiveness lies in the compliment it pays to Athenian pride, specifically pride of intellect. He describes the Athenians much as Tocqueville does the Americans, as a people who plume themselves on their enlightened pursuit of self-interest. Any fool can be angry and impetuous and even successful for a while; but better it is to get one’s way intelligently, with the least amount of trouble and for the longest period of time. This is the emotional stroking that counters Cleon’s fulminations. It is a bit of flattery which promises to work because intellectual pride is as characteristic of the Athenians (85)
This appeal to emotion comes with a lie, as Diodotus himself admits. But what is the lie? Coby claims that Diodotus’ policy, in contradistinction to Cleon’s, will also not save the empire. “Diodotus’ reply to Cleon does not add up to a perfect strategy of imperial rule” but rather “forces a choice between few rebellions meticulously planned because failure is fatal (Cleon) and numerous rebellions thoughtlessly chanced because the hegemon is wont to rationalize and excuse the attempt (Diodotus)” (89). By passing the strategy off as something that will unquestionably secure Athenian interests, Diodotus eases the Athenians into living a reality they are not quite ready to accept:
Diodotus recognizes that cities rise and fall and that nothing substantial can be done to make their relations permanent. His purpose is not to effect a political escape from the commotions of the world, as might be said of Plato, but to contain and manage the inevitable collisions of master passions and rival states. Now certain it is that when the strong, the weak and equals each know who they are, the relations among states are predictable and little the cause of war. But times are dangerous when the strong grow tired and the weak grow bold, or when an equal aspires to superiority. The war between the Athenians and the Peloponnesians is just such a time of dangerous transition. Peace is not impossible, but the makers of peace require the maximum in statesman-like finesse. For Diodotus statecraft requires that he bring Athens down gently from the heights of imperial eminence. Athens is a city in decline not because Athens has begun losing its power but because other cities have begun mobilizing theirs. Power is relative, and as weaker cities ascend the hill of military might, making independence or imperium their national purpose, Athens invariably becomes less their master and more their equal. Either Athens adjusts to these new circumstances, draws down its empire while it can, or the future is implosion the moment the empire ceases to expand (5.95-99; 6.18.6-7).
[Those last two references are to Melian Dialogue and Alcibiades argument that the expedition for Sicily is needed lest Athenian war skill decline].
CITATION: Steven Forde, “Varieties of Realism: Thucydides and Machiavelli,” The Journal of Politics 54, no. 2 (May 1992): 372–93, https://doi.org/10.2307/2132031.
SUMMARY: An interesting compare/contrast job that highlights an important difference between the two types of thinkers. In contrast to modern “realists” both Machiavelli and Thucydides are radical amoralists on the international scene. Both claim that necessity rules all in the world of interstate relations; what is more, this necessity necessitates imperialism.
They differ in the consequences they see for this at home. Thucydides believes in civilization, reason, and justice. These things are real to him, not sophistical cover for interest or power. But these things, though real, are not truths of the universe so much as fragile human creations forever in jeopardy, always at risk of being overwhelmed by the baser passions of our nature [compare: Xunzi]. Necessity destroys virtue: the role of the good statesman is to preserve a space where necessity does not crowd, and some smaller measure of justice and reason can be preserved. The inability of most peoples and statesmen to do this is what gives Thucydides’ work its tragic sound.
Machiavelli has no more faith in justice at home than he does in justice abroad; everywhere men lie to themselves; everywhere they seek self interest, regardless of what they may say on the matter. But if men will resort to fear and faction regardless of their spoken pieties, if necessity crowds out all else in all times and places, then there is nothing tragic in necessity’s rule. Often necessity is a force of strength: when necessity presses, great leaders arise and great peoples unite. To fail in face of threat is to perish; most elect not to perish. External threat aligns self interest with the public interest; in times of peace—that is, times when external necessity does not press—the two diverge, and people fall into dissension. Rome was strong as long as she had enemies to conquer. She turned on herself when the stakes of the contest within exceeded the stakes of rivalry without.
Those are the differences between the two men. Thucydides believes in reason and justice; he believes that these things come from social cohesion and civilization. War is stronger than them, however, and–because war is inevitable–always threatens their fragile existence. Machiavelli also believes war is inevitable, but does not think it threatens either reason nor justice, for both of those words are self serving delusions. He does believe in social cohesion: but in contrast to Thucydides, he believes that war strengthens regimes and civilized norms of behavior. It is peace that undermines them.
CITATION: Steven Forde, “Thucydides on the Causes of Athenian Imperialism,” The American Political Science Review 80, no. 2 (1986): 433–48, https://doi.org/10.2307/1958267.
SUMMARY: Forde begins with the Athenian thesis, arguing that Thucydides is interested not just in its consequences, but also the question of “whether or to what extent Athenian imperialism is rooted in deeper principles of human nature” (433). The problem is complicated by the fact that on top of the question of human nature is the specific question of Athenian nature, which all characters in the book acknowledge as unique.
Athenians are associated with two words in this story: daring (tolma) and eros. Forde has helpfully collected the references on the first:
The most prominent of these, and the one most widely held to separate the Athenians from other men, is called “daring” (tolma) by all who broach the sub- ject. This becomes almost a technical term in Thucydides.2 The Athenians are daring in the History; the Spartans are the oppo- site (cf. 8.96.4-5). Brasidas is the single Spartan exception that proves the rule (cf. 5.7.2; 2.87; 2.89.5). The Syracusans alone succeed in countering the Athenians by becoming, like them, daring (6.69.1; 7.21.3-4; 8.96.5).
The Athenians have daring where the other Greeks merely have courage. Daring implies courage, but also something more than it—the ability to cast oneself away from all restraints and to trust in human power. Thucydides describes the trait of daring as arising out of the Persian wars, and the experience Athenians had becoming “sea men.”
This might reflect the place based nature of Greek religion. Explains Forde:
Nonetheless, some of its most significant elements [of Greek piety], especially for the life of the city, were inextricably bound to place—to sacred ground, to temples or shrines, to ancestral graves. From the point of view of this piety, the city was in effect constituted by common rites and sacred festivals, inasmuch as citizenship was identical with competence to participate in the common cults. These festivals and rites included the city’s guardian divinities as well as its generations of ancestors, divine and spiritual beings believed to inhabit more or less immovably the places associated with their cults. When the Athenians abandoned their city to the Persians, therefore, they would also have abandoned their holy places, the abodes of their gods and their ancestral graves (436).
Leaving all that behind for the sea would have taught the Athenians a few things:
For one might say that what the Athenians discovered as a body on their ships is the enormous potential of purely human power—that is, human power standing on its own and bereft of its traditional supports, terrestrial or otherwise, It would be difficult to overestimate the political significance of such a discovery for a community, for traditional piety acts not only as a sup- port, but as a restraint on the activities of men and states. Therefore, insofar as daring among the Athenians represents a transformation of and a replacement for traditional courage, it is an innovation predicated in part on overcoming the inhibitions imposed by piety (437).
And of course these are the exact lessons endorsed by Pericles in his funeral oration, where he advises the Athenians not to think of themselves as the land, but the people, and the people of one specific generation at that. Pericles puts his trust in the power of men.
But how do a get a city of daring-dos to cohere together? Pericles asks the Athenians to experience eros for their city.
we might upon reflection agree that an appeal to this kind of passion is appropriate to the Athenian case, particularly given the warmth of Pericles’ praise of the city. Erotic passion may, after all, be the one thing capable of attaching even the most individualistic human beings to something outside of themselves. Erotic passion is individualistic, even egoistic, yet leads to the most intense devotion and willingness to sacrifice. In any event, it is clear that Pericles, whose Athens has largely forsaken traditional supports to community and patriotism, must have recourse to extraordinary devices.
Patriotism or “love of city” (philopoli) of the ordinary kind, based in such things as traditional civic piety and subordination of self, is no longer sufficient grounds for community at Athens. The Athenians have all but abandoned public piety, and Athenian individualism owes its very existence to the abandonment of the kinds of conventional strictures that cement the political community in a city like Sparta. Pericles’ appeal to eros circumvents or supplants those conventional mechanisms of community, and seeks to bind the Athenians directly or immediately to the city, depicted as a beloved object (439).
Forde catalogues the various uses of the word eros in Thucydides. It appears rarely—in the Mytilene debate, in the Sicilian expedition, in Pericles oration—but always at key moments. Thucydides makes a point of placing a eros story at the heart of his Sicilian expedition narrative. This is the story of Harmodius and Aristogeiton. H&A are lauded as the founders of the democracy and the essence of its spirit—Thucydides agrees with this sentiment, but argues that the stories told of H&A were false. They were moved to daring not by public spirit but by erotic jealousy. This suggests a pattern that Athens still follows:
The unique democracy at Athens provided or bred intense and excessively jealous attachment to freedom; such erotic love of freedom may always verge on simple hatred of all restraints, sacred or profane (442).
[Slightly off topic but I have nowhere else to put this: the eros for an abstractified regime/far away goal is highly reminiscent of the neocon’s attachment to democracy for its own sake and their quests for a political order premised on foreign glory. This might also explain the neocon infatuation with Athens of Thucydides as a force of moral good].
Pericles sought to use this for the city’s gain; his project failed with his death. This is in part because eros is inherently individualistic and jealous, and thus is an unstable foundation for public solidarity. But it is also because it seems that erotic passion is “naturally enflamed more by the splendid, the faraway, and the grand” (440), thus propels the Athenians to reach beyond their bounds.
Forde does not address the argument—made by Thucydides own speakers—that the empire itself needed to keep on expanding lest it begin contracting. By focusing on this erotic element he is able to ground his account of empire solely in human impulses:
That communities that follow the impulse to empire are likely thereby to destroy themselves does not alter the state of this question on the level of principle. Thucydides, in tracing Athenian imperialism to human erotic passion, does indeed ground it in the deepest strata of human nature. That the Athenians, in their daring, have to an unprecedented extent unleashed this erotic impulse from traditional restrictions makes them unique, but does not alter the naturalness of their imperial impulse. What is unprecedented about the Athenian regime in general is precisely its liberation of human nature. (444).
This gives a cruel determinism to Thucydides’ History, a determinism somewhat comparable to Ibn Khaldun’s. [My parallel, not Forde’s]. Men are driven by their passions. If human structures allow them to live those passions to their fullness, they will accomplish great things—until their reach exceeds their grasp. But their reach will exceed their grasp, sooner or later, for that is the nature of eros, which accepts no limits except those forced upon it.
Yes, I accidentally linked to another class I taught. Here is the second Thucydides link: https://drive.proton.me/urls/SSKK6SX1ZM#tooqAycD9yhn
Jeffrey —
Thank you for the local perspective!
In the ’90s of course many parts of the south were voting Dem; people who predicted NC going blue then probably were just predicting that it would revert to the pre-Reagan voting patterns, right? Or were the arguments structurally similar to today?
Do you a division between Dems in Raleigh and Dems in the triangle?
I’m also not sure that one can draw a strong distinction between “acclaim” and “excellence”, or equate “excellence” with “control.” My favorite of all the Pixar films, Ratatouille, threads the needle quite beautifully, in my opinion. Remy isn’t particularly interested in acclaim from his rat clan, or in acclaim from humans, or even in being able to think himself the greatest of all chefs: he’s mainly just obsessed with food. He does change the social order (the way humans and rats relate), but the new order is not fundamentally about power or control. It’s about a higher purpose: the religion of gastronomy.
SignField420, I think this is correct as far as the movie goes, but not rarely correct as a model for how it works when this is attempted in the real world. In reality true visionaries often don’t meet with acclaim while living, precisely b/c they rebel against established norms and see past what the masses can currently understand. Their contribution is to push the envelope; the benefits are not usually seen until their death,
But that leads to a problem: there is no functional way for to distinguish the excellence of the visionary from the lunacy of the madman or the delusion of the arrogant. The temptation that faces the excellent whose excellence is thus never given the acclaim they deserve is to retreat into bitterness and hostility, treating all of humanity as a lesser species unable to appreciate genius incarnate. But then again, Raskolnikov thought the same — but the truth is that he was a genius in his mind only.
If Remy were a Greek rat he would have sought glory and honor in a fashion other rats understood as a realm of competition — ideally, a competition structured so that glory for the winner led to benefits for the community as a whole. So too with the Romans. Their corsus honorum was more similar to modern Ivy League admissions than Remy’s jump into the unknown.
I had not thought much about North Carolina, and think this is a topic worth delving into.
re: education and money — This will always be a problem for the party in an age of educational polarization. Thus the need for the party to win higher and higher margins among the less educated. Thus big outreach to hispanics, etc.
This is possible. More alarming for me is the widening generation gap. Millennials are not growing conservative fast enough as they age. Most important outreach IMHO needs to be downward through the generations, not outward across ethnic blocs. GOP has no solution for what happens when its voters all die away.
I am glad you posted this here–it was informative when you posted in on twitter, and I am glad we have a permanent record of it. Much food for thought.
This was an interesting essay, but I came away with a bad taste in my mouth.
I also don’t fancy Nietzsche a terrible amount, especially Nietzschean whiners, which he kind of seems like. Vitalists should seize life heorically, not complain about culture with a sort of smug semi-irony.
The LOTR books are far better than the movies.
He is obviously talking about the world of the Tolkienic hero, but I think he misunderstands things. Especially this notion of action/reaction. Achilles, whom he cites as having some sort of will to power, was extremely reactive. Tragic heroes of greek tragedy? extremely reactive. Even Odysseus mostly just muddles his way through adventure to adventure with no larger world changing purpose in mind. The classic pre-Christian hero was motivated first and foremost by revenge, which is inherently reactive.
Virgil’s Aeneid is one exception—which is why the Christians liked it so much. The most obvious heroes of the sort OP yearns for are the Arthurian grail seekers, but of course they were Christian to the core. IMHO, Christianity broadened the vision of literary heroes, put them on the track towards ideals bigger than local rulership disputes.
On the flip side, it is not hard to find modern heroes with a plan. Ocean’s 11 strikes me as a particularly good example. Star Wars?
Part of the problem here has to do with the structure of story telling. See my essay “Conservative Fairy Tales and Liberal Allegories” (https://scholars-stage.org/conservative-fairy-tales-liberal-allegories/). Traditionally, most fairy tales have a pro establishment bias. Good is achieved when order is restored. that naturally leads to stories where evil is seen as a perversion or attack on the established, wholesome way of doing things.
Incidentally, as that essay discusses, the Pixar/CGI Disney films are very much in the mode of “the good guy is the one with radical plans to make society better.” Big Hero 6, Luca, Onward, Bug’s Life, Ratatouille, Cars, Tangled, heck, even Up are all led by “let us form grand plans, seize the day, and leave our mark on the world” sort of characters. Given his film references OP is probably a millennial and missed all these films. But they exist. The culture does not tilt the way he thinks.
As for the broader question of the strengths and weaknesses of the Tolkienic hero: biggest weakness by far is that in the real world fate does not choose you for greatness. Greatness must be striven for. Glory must be sought. And I think glory and greatness are legit good things for people to want.
What Andreeson et al don’t want to recognize though is that in the classical world they motion to but are unwilling to follow, glory is not about will to power. Glory is about winning the esteem of one’s peers. Or one’s polis. In a way in is an extremely anti-individualistic pursuit, because it is so bound up in communal norms and judgements. Achilles did not want to be master of the universe: he wanted to be a story among his people for the rest of time. Very different motivations. I’m far more comfortable with the Greek and Roman pursuit of acclaim than I am the Nietzchean pursuit of excellence, which inevitably reduces down to the pursuit of control.
