The History of Greece - Essay Example

In Waltz, the fundamental question is why do human beings go to war and thus posits itself in a tri-locic point. Waltz shows that the basic nature ofwar is entrenched in man himself; something which Christian theologians call original sin, or the imperfect and imperfectable nature of man. Waltz elucidates that a world of iniquity and corruption cannot and does not have goodness as a natural and evident trope of human behaviour. There shall be people like the Stalin, Bin Laden's and the Idi Amin's whose natural violence can be curbed by violence alone. However, what makes Waltz different from Thucydides is the fact that Waltz realizes that this explanation was not adequate. He points out that it is mankind, which creates communities, regimes and other parameters, which defines its existence. As a result, he is of opinion that the second source of conflict is determined by the internal character of the state in which he/ she lives, namely the public beliefs and practices, opinions and expectations, political systems and institutions of government, that frame human behavior. Waltz does not stop here but goes further. He argues that if the structure of the state and its system of governance shapes human behavior, then the structure of the international system must also shape state behavior. Thus his concept of neorealism shuns essentialist beliefs that human nature does not explain international politics, rather rests in aconstant state of amorphous decentralized latency, which arises from mutual lack of trust and everytime the state develops technological and warfare power, which he calls offensive orovertly aggressive so as to create too much of international felling of insecurity, so much so that they are motivated to seize that power and check it to a normal condition. International politics is different than domestic politics, though, because no entity possesses a legal monopoly on the use of force. The countries of the world inhabit a self-help system, competing freely and independently to secure their own interests and promote their national security. There is no global structure capable of preventing one state from attacking another. This is the third source of conflict--a condition of anarchy that does not make war inevitable, only possible. Waltz argued that states must be prepared to use military force if necessary to protect them. No one else will do it for them. Considering these three sources of conflict, the concept of whether man, the state, or the international system is paramount becomes problematized. Interestingly, Waltz argues that we need to consider all three. Waltz argues that the world exists in a state of perpetual international anarchy. Waltz distinguishes the anarchy of the international environment from the order of the domestic one. In the domestic realm, all actors may appeal to, and be compelled by, a central authority - 'the state' or 'the government' - but in the international realm, no such source of order exists. Hence in Waltz's account, states must behave in a self-help way, acting freely unless or until other actors restrict or limit their ability to do so. Like most neorealists, Waltz accepts that globalization is posing new challenges to states, but he does not believe states are being replaced, because no other non-state actor can equal the capabilities of the state. Waltz has suggested that globalization is a fad of the 1990s and if anything the role of the state has expanded its functions in response to global transformations. Along with some other theorists, he has argued that the United States has some characteristics of an empire. In 1979 Waltz incorrectly predicted that the Cold War order would continue well into the next century. This wrong prediction, however, does not represent an anomaly in Waltz's theory since it aims to explain continuities rather than change in international system. Waltz's theory, as he explicitly makes clear in "Theory of International Politics", is not a theory of foreign policy and does not attempt to predict or explain specific state actions, such as the collapse of the Soviet Union. Disintegration of the Soviet Union hence is just out of the explanatory range of the theory. The theory explains only general principles of behavior that govern relations between states in an anarchic international system, rather than specific actions. Indeed, Waltz suggests in Theory of International Politics, that mainly explanation not prediction is expected from a good theory. For example, although his theory could not predict the disintegration of the Soviet Union, the theory does explain why a bipolar international system should be more stable than a multipolar system. Thucydides, the Ancient Greek historian of the fifth century B.C., is called the father of scientific history. He propounded that political "realism," is basically based on that very ground, where might is more justified rather than right. His analysis of the Peloponnesian War, in 431 B.C., Thucydides recognized an observable interaction of the states, that followed a strategic and recurrent design. According to him, every system of states, have a certain hierarchy, which in turn determined this pattern of their relations. A turbulence caused in the hierarchy of a weaker state did not necessarily affect a given system, whereas a disturbance in the order of the stronger states would actually tend to upset the stability of the system. The Peloponnesian War, according to him, was the result of a systematic change, brought about by the increasing power of the Athenian city-state, which tried to exceed the power of the city-state of Sparta. The growth of Athenian power and the fear, which this caused in Sparta, gave way to the ultimate systematic change. This change was seen specifically derivative of the hierarchy or the intention to control the international political system. Thus, Thucydides was the first to describe international and political intentions and relations as anarchic and immoral. The "Melian dialogue" best exemplifies this view and the attendant suppositions that the interstate politics are devoid of any regulation or justice. In the "Melian dialogue," he wrote that, in interstate relations, the strong use power and force in a way that they can afford to do. The Melian Dialogue gives a classic view of the clash of liberal and realist ideology. The weak accept what they have to accept by turn. For international relations, according to him, allow powerful people to do anything that they please and force the weak to suffer as a result and as they are obliged to do. This situation is itself the best recipe to induce insurrection, if not war in a grand-scale, which also demonstrates why men need a moral judgement based on reason rather than force. This can only help stop war and slavery. The ultimate reason why Athenian power grew was because the Athenians rejected reason in dealing with other men. This is also the reason why the allies of the Spartans were afraid, and why their allies demanded that the Spartans fight to the death. Thus for him, history was guided by causes and it was this causal force that propelled all results to their ends, even if it meant multiple events being arrived at due to the same causal tendency. Events are likely to repeat if the same causes repeat themselves. Thucydides thus states that causes can be both proximate and long-range. But understanding the long-range causes maybe an actual way of finding occurrences of the future as well as of the past. Thucydides may hold the very discovery of causation as a principle of human affairs beyond the mere presentation of the application of causation to history. Thus he raised history to the state of an objective and affirmative study of facts of human affairs and thus extremely scientific in methodology and attitude. Thucydides again gave an illustration of the Cold War phenomenon of "polarization" among states, resulting from this strategic interaction. The critique of his work by J. B. Bury, reveals that, the complete reflexivity of Thucidides in relaying the history of the war and the understanding of the Athenian democracy is completely unfazed by powerful events and its underlying emotional impacts. Thucydides performs a cold, if not critical and detached analysis of all and thereby becomes an important link in the study of the universal and truthful portrayal of history, that has been raised in recent studies.1 The impact of Thucydides' work upon scholars of the Cold War period also brings to relevance, the importance of his realist theory in the present world. Taking that in mind one may conclude that human nature and the nature of the state and war have quite their universal appeal in Thucydides' work. In fact, his influence upon realist scholars in the post-1945 period, and in turn upon American diplomacy, is direct. Infact history in Thucydides is relevant since to him it is being caused by the nature and actions of human beings and the gods or fate have no role in such events. Thucydides' secular idea of the state also pans the nature and dilemma involving security. He analyses that if the power of a subordinate state in a relatively stable international system increases disproportionately or very quickly, it is brought into conflict with the dominant state(s). The smaller state induces fear and also the usherer of wars that not only destroys wealth, but also reduces the level of character and morality in men. Thus there is a power struggle for preeminence. The accumulating alliances between these two contending states lead to a bipolarization of the international system. One cannot but marvel at the practical and present relevance of his work, which seek to explain the nature and cause of the most major wars in the history of humanity. The whole system of war looks towards a system of win-loss situation that ultimately results in one's gain and gives way to the other state's loss. As bipolarization proceeds, the whole system becomes increasingly misbalanced, and thereby arises the possibility of a system-changing conflict, or a revolution. Thucydides may have been the father of a cruel realist view of international relations, and the idea of the realpolitik, but this does not mean that Thucydides himself endorsed the immorality of the international realm or this whole system of cold and a strict purpose-oriented politics. In the distinction between internal and external affairs in The Peloponnesian War, Thucydides is indeed ready to make moral judgements as he deals with the relations of individuals within the state. Thus while explaining power politics, he himself gives a view of the realist foreign policy and the moral nature of human with dialogues as in Book 3, Chapter 39, Section five, "It is a general rule of human nature that people despise those who treat them well, and look up to those who make no concessions".2 In his narration of Pericles' funeral oration, this historian does not falter to comment on the tragedy of the plague that strikes Athens. Again, Thucydides did not approve of the radical democracy Pericles followed, but he liked his ways and means of leading people and proving himself with good leadership and thus it was enough for Thucydides that the people were under the hands of a thoughtful and good leader, who would not be selfish to his own cause but guide the state politics with a measure of raciocination. Thucydides did not hesitate to compliment Nicias for his sense of morality in the debate prior to the Sicilian expedition. His comments on Nicias' opponent Alcibiades are both judgmental and analytical that throws light on the moral nature of his character. Thucydides stated that the democracy that was dissolved after Alcibiades with the help of the Persians and Spartans brought it to an end, had been, in his experience, the best government Athens ever had. Thucydides clearly shows his own emotional turmoil when he describes the suffering inherent in war, and the extremes that human nature indulge in when the wholenation isunder the seizure of such a fate of destruction and inhuman atrocities. For example, this is evident from his analysis of the atrocities committed during civil conflict on Corcyra in Book 3, which shows war a an unnecessary, crual and violent teacher. The primary goal of states, is to secure power, security in the form of military power, or political powers, which is both acknowledged by Thucydides and Waltz, but for Waltz, if the political relations everywhere are in a state of restless upheaval ornarchy,then for Thucydides, the whole anarchy sprouts from a lack ofmoderation inpolitical ambition. Waltz questions the real impact of globalization in improving the anarchy that exists between states in aninternational ground. To him the whole thing is nothing more than extending the power of the staes beyond their immediate loci of action,which is also reiterated in Thucydides, where he talks of the power politics that destabilizes the mutual relationship between neighbouring states and all because of unhealthy and distrustful attitude to each others breeding of power. Thus Thucydides analyses the whole practical aspect of power relations in a State and very democracy which should be guided by a good leader is in danger from the same. Thus both the historical philosophers analyze power relations and the danger that arises due to an imbalance in power accumulation. Historical parallels between eras and events are valid and important, because the factor of human nature remains relatively constant. Inherently a military history, chronicling events by the date and time, it completely avoids any reference to social conditions or state policy, unless they have to deal with the progress of the war, to which the Athenians took scrupulous combatant care and thus he interprets the succession of events in view of the general nature and behavior of man rather than as the result of a fate outside man's influence. The basic idea that underlies a balancing of political power, has also beenpointed out by David Hume pointed out in his Essay on the Balance of Power, where he expalins and compares it to the old notion of history. It is notmuch different in its essence of commonsense, born of experience and the human instinct of self-preservation, that Thucydides too underlines. Thus equilibrium becomes an important word both in the concept of power relations and also in human nature. A lack of it always attracts undue fear and instincts of self-preservation that is inherently destructive as it seeks to restore the same equilibrium by acting brutally against its very source of growth. Waltz propounds the point further by saying that in the absence of any central authority, the only resort is sought behind behind some established code of rules (think of example The Treaty of Versailles) and the established custom that names itself 'international law', at different points in history. This is the only bond that has the capacity to hold each other in check. Thus the representation of power and human nature are in both the vision of Waltz and that of Thucydides, an explicit intention to probe beyond apparent causes and to reveal forces that, though often hidden, nevertheless drive events. While Waltz talks about the limitations of cooperation between sates when one becomes obviously powerful than the other, Thucydides talks about the impossibility of any friendship developing in such a situation, since friendship arises not between the master and subordinates, but between equals. Works Cited J.B. Bury, History of Greece, 4th ed., (New York 1975), p. 252 Thucydides. The Peloponnesian War. London, J. M. Dent; New York, E. P. Dutton. 1910, pp. 237 References W.R. Connor, Thucydides, (Princeton 1984), pp. 231-2. Ernst Badian, "Thucydides and the Outbreak of the Peloponnesian War. A Historian's Brief" in Conflict, Antithesis and the Ancient Historian, ed. June Allison, (Columbus 1990), pp. 46-91. Read More