“You’re not in a good position. You don’t have the cards right now. With us, you start having cards,” snapped President Trump at Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the president of Ukraine, in a so-called negotiation at the Oval Office, broadcast globally on Friday, February 28, 2025. Vice-President JD Vance went on to demand that Zelenskyy say thank you and “offer some words of appreciation for the United States of America and [Trump] who is trying to save … [Ukraine].” Before the dialogue ended with President Trump asserting “This is going to be great television,” he turned to Zelenskyy and summed it all up: “…You are either going to make a deal or we’re out. And if we’re out, you’ll fight it out… But you don’t have the cards…Once we sign that deal [a ceasefire without any guarantees], you’re in a much better position, but you are not acting at all thankful. And that’s not a nice thing. I’ll be honest. That’s not a nice thing.”
Behind all these assertions by the U.S. president and vice president that Ukraine must follow directives—indeed, that Ukraine has no choice but to comply with whatever the U.S. dictates—lies the belief that might makes right. The ancient Athenians made similar arguments in a remarkably analogous dialogue recorded in Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War, specifically during the conflict between Athens, a state at the height of its power, and the small, weak island of Melos.
In 416 BCE, during a truce between Sparta, Athens, the two states embroiled in the Peloponnesian War (431–405 BCE), Athens, without any clear motive or moral justification, sent a large army to Melos, a neutral state during the war, demanding that Melos join the Athenian alliance. “Right,” they claimed, “is only in question between equals in power, while the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must” (Thuc. 5.89).
The Melians were fully aware that by deciding whether to join the Athenians, they were facing a choice between war (against Athens), should they choose to maintain their neutrality, and slavery (to Athens), if they did not. They contended that they ought to be permitted to remain neutral, but Athens responded to each of their arguments with refusal and points that highlighted their superior power. At the conclusion of this disheartening dialogue, the Athenians told the Melians:
“Your strongest arguments depend upon hope and the future, and your actual resources are too scanty, as compared with those arrayed against you, for you to come out victorious. You will therefore show great blindness of judgment, unless, after allowing us to retire, you can find some counsel more prudent than this … And it is certain that those who do not yield to their equals, who keep terms with their superiors, and are moderate towards their inferiors, on the whole succeed best. Think over the matter, therefore, after our withdrawal, and reflect once and again that it is for your country that you are consulting, that you have not more than one, and that upon this one deliberation depends its prosperity or ruin.” (Thuc. 5.111)
With us, they said, you will have cards. But you are not acting at all thankful to us, who can guarantee your security.
This notion that might is right is foundational for the realist school of International Relations, which argues that power, often enforced through violence or war, structures the relationships among sovereign nations. However, the apparent rationality of Trump and Vance’s arguments, as well as those of the ancient Athenians, is misleading.
Thucydides’ presentation of the Athenians in this dialogue is not positive. At the end of it, the Athenians besieged the Melians, who surrendered a few months later and faced the harsh penalty of having all the male citizens executed and all the women and children sold to slavery. These were reprehensible acts to Thucydides, most of the ancient Greeks, and probably many of the Athenians. A few months later, the Athenians made an arrogant and disastrous decision to invade the island of Sicily, where they suffered an utter defeat that marked the beginning of their loss to the Spartans in the Peloponnesian War. Thucydides, who was writing his history after Athens had been defeated in Sicily, offers the Melian dialogue as an example of how states should not behave toward one another. The events on Melos mark a turning point in Athens’ history, when its excessive use of force and abuse of power eventually came back to bite and destroy the Athenians. In 411 BCE, after the disaster on Sicily, Athens briefly abolished its democracy and instituted an oligarchy, followed just 7 years later by another oligarchic regime that ruled violently, disenfranchised most Athenian citizens, and killed foreigners and citizens alike to get rid of enemies. It took a civil war in Athens to restore democracy and return to a healthy civic community.
Athens’ behavior toward the Melians and the belief that power equates to justice led the Athenians directly into a civil war. As a professional historian, I do not think that history repeats itself. Instead, I believe not knowing history is like driving without rear-view mirrors. The televised negotiations in the Oval Office should make us all cautious about the future for the U.S. and the world. As we rush headlong into the future, we should slow down and consider whether there are alternative ways to structure international relations based not on fear and strength, but on positive values like community and peace. We must reflect on whether our states’ actions, or even our own, align with a good moral code and whether war is genuinely inevitable.
Featured image by Constantinos Kollias via Unsplash.
Recent Comments
There are currently no comments.