Sphinx

Either the ‘Thucydides’ Trap’ has now infiltrated France, or Bernard-Henri Lévy has been spending a lot of time in Washington lately; in either case, his latest discussion of the fate of the Kurds (French version in Le Point (£), English in Tablet) and denunciation of Trump’s USA for abandoning them invokes Thucydides and the Peloponnesian War extensively* – though not in the most illuminating manner.

These days in Washington “Thucydides’s trap” is much discussed, thanks to Graham Allison’s 2017 book by that name.

On everyone’s mind is that fearful instant—fearful because it almost invariably leads to war—when the old hegemonic power grasps that, as a result of its own failures and weaknesses, it may have to yield to the newcomer.

Well, in America’s treatment of Kurdistan we glimpse Athens and Sparta switching roles—but no doubt it is the fatal fault that will give wings, far beyond the region, to America’s rivals.

Remember Pericles, the wise strategist, whose death and the popular disregard of his message brought forth the ruin of the great democratic city-state of Athens. Pericles had warned those of his fellow citizens who were inclined to cowardice and laxity.

He had told them that prestige was a responsibility that could not be shirked. And he had predicted that, if his fellow citizens failed to heed his warning, they would slide quickly into “peaceful enslavement.”

In equating Kurds and Iraqis, Trump has come down on the wrong side of the Thucydides’ theorem—at the expense of the United States.

The Athens of our time, the most prestigious and democratic of nations, runs the risk of throwing itself headlong into peaceful enslavement and leaving the remains of its influence to the several menacing Spartas that, from Ankara to Moscow or Beijing, have already begun to salivate.

Where do we start? The basic issue is that – as indicated by his claim that today “Athens and Sparta [are] switching roles” – BHL wants to compare the US to both these ancient Greek states, depending on which analogy suits his purpose best at any given moment. On the one hand, Trump’s America is, as in Graham Allison’s account, the established power confronted with the threat of a rising power – though BHL seems extremely confused as to the identity of the Athens that is threatening this Sparta (China, fine, but Russia? Or Turkey???), and his interpretation focuses solely on the opinions and actions of the established power, with war resulting – at a “fearful instant” – from that state’s realisation that it might lose its position of prominence. Allison’s emphasis on medium-term structural factors, in which established and rising power alike stumble into war because they don’t recognise the real danger in the growing tensions until it’s too late, never seemed so persuasive in comparison – let alone the stimulating round table on his book that’s just been published in the new Texas National Security Review.

The reasoning behind this eccentric reading of the Thucydides Trap model becomes clearer when BHL switches analogies: what he really wants to do is compare America to Athens (noble democracy, yadda yadda) so that he can invoke the trope of cowardice and decadence leading to inexorable decline, Pericles’ warning that, if the Athenians give in to any of the demands of their enemies, (1.141, I guess), they will effectively be enslaved to them. “Prestige” is a pretty weird translation of “power” as the thing the Athenians ought to be defending resolutely – maybe this makes more sense in French, but it does look as if BHL is shimmying round the inconvenient fact that Pericles is offering a stout defense of aggression and imperialism, little different (as modern scholars have pointed out) from the sorts of ideas propounded by Cleon.

Who is Pericles in this scenario – Obama, who arguably began the process of disengagement that’s being deplored here but who better fits the idealised model of a USA that’s globally respected, or George W. Bush and his extremely Athenian project to exert American hegemony? And what is “Thucydides’ theorem” when it’s at home? If I’d seen this article yesterday, I’d have been inclined to start discussing Thucydides analogies as zombie ideas, that shamble round the place groaning inarticulately…

*He also invokes Schroedinger’s cat, Louis Aragon, Cato the Elder and Philip Roth, again not to any great effect. I’m led to believe that this is par for the course.