U.S.A. and Ancient Sparta

I may not have more than some disconnected thoughts here.

Warbloggers never want to hear about analogies between Iraq and Vietnam, but here goes one more. At some point during Vietnam, and for years afterward, many Americans felt it was a bad experience that should not be repeated; maybe just a failure against forces that turned out to be mysteriously strong; maybe a kind of moral wrong (although this was always mainly a response of the "European-loving left."

It seemed that there was a "Vietnam Syndrome." Partly this meant a dread of getting "entangled" in a similar "quagmire" again, and therefore extreme caution about getting into a real shooting war anywhere.

For many Americans, it seems 9/11 ended this syndrome or attitude, and brought a different attitude--more aggressive and morally confident--in its stead. Even or precisely when Bush says the primary or only reason to liberate other countries is to keep the U.S. safe--i.e. the self-interest of the United States--he also suggests everyone who is liberated should be grateful, and the rest of the world should applaud that justice is being done (for a change).

There is at least a similarity to the ancient Spartans. Early in Book VII (out of eight books), in his account of the eighteenth year of the war between Athens and Sparta, Thucydides prepares us for a new larger second stage of the war, which was separated from the first stage by various truces. He says this (VII.18):

In the meantime the Lacedaemonians prepared for their invasion of Attica, in accordance with their own previous resolve, and at the instigation of the Syracusans and Corinthians, who wished for an invasion to arrest the reinforcements which they heard that Athens was about to send to Sicily. Alcibiades also urgently advised the fortification of Decelea, and a vigorous prosecution of the war.

But the Lacedaemonians derived most encouragement from the belief that Athens, with two wars on her hands, against themselves and against the Siceliots, would be more easy to subdue, and from the conviction that she had been the first to infringe the truce.

In the former war, they considered, the offence had been more on their own side, both on account of the entrance of the Thebans into Plataea in time of peace, and also of their own refusal to listen to the Athenian offer of arbitration, in spite of the clause in the former treaty that where arbitration should be offered there should be no appeal to arms. For this reason they thought that they deserved their misfortunes, and took to heart seriously the disaster at Pylos and whatever else had befallen them. But when, besides the ravages from Pylos, which went on without any intermission, the thirty Athenian ships came out from Argos and wasted part of Epidaurus, Prasiae, and other places; when upon every dispute that arose as to the interpretation of any doubtful point in the treaty, their own offers of arbitration were always rejected by the Athenians, the Lacedaemonians at length decided that Athens had now committed the very same offence as they had before done, and had become the guilty party; and they began to be full of ardour for the war. They spent this winter in sending round to their allies for iron, and in getting ready the other implements for building their fort; and meanwhile began raising at home, and also by forced requisitions in the rest of Peloponnese, a force to be sent out in the merchantmen to their allies in Sicily. Winter thus ended, and with it the eighteenth year of this war of which Thucydides is the historian.

After 18 years of war, Sparta begins to be full of ardour for it, largely because they now feel they are in the right rather than the wrong. If they had seemed even slower and more cautious than usual for the first 17 years, to the point of playing the ludicrous role of the helpless giant, there was a specific reason for it. Now that reason has ended.

Sparta is still Sparta--cautious in foreign adventures, largely because of fear of what could happen if the leading Spartiate soldiers don't tend to things (including a huge slave population) at home. In practice their new zeal will come partly from the counsel of a new general--Alcibiades, who has been more or less driven out of Athens. Besides their sense of moral rightness, Thucydides says the Spartans are motivated by a belief that Athens is seriously weakened. At Book V, 105, the Athenian emissaries say, with a lot of support from Thucydides, that the Spartans as much as anyone identify what is useful and expedient for themselves with what is just.

My sense is that the change from Vietnam to Iraq, for Bush and others, is not based on some new optimism or discovery about human nature--that democracy is possible in far more countries than was previously thought, or that a kind of modern, progressive rationality can be established practically everywhere, and that John F. Kennedy and others from the Vietnam era were too pessimistic. Rather, the U.S. is driven by anger and fear to try to prevent another 9/11. When they reflect on the fact that an attack by a few individuals, barely if at all connected to any sovereign government, can be carried out so easily, they begin to think that the whole world must be brought to some kind of enlightenment in order for Americans to be safe at home--where they want to be. This is a very Spartan motive for bringing democracy and human rights to the entire world.

It's a bit like Bertrand Russell wanting the U.S. to nuke Moscow in 1945, but once the Soviets had the bomb, wanting the West to carry out unilateral disarmament. The common thread was keeping Russell safe.

I hasten to add: I don't think the reason for the "normal" isolation or caution of the U.S. is something like the Spartans'--the need to keep down a huge slave population. I don't agree with left-wing views that capitalists only engage in wars to provide a kind of release or entertainment, and distract concerns about political power and fairness. Somehow successful capitalism, in a big country, simply keeps people busy--gives them enough to do without seeking their fortune around the world.

Partly the Athenians, in Thucydides' account, wanted to conquer the world because they were erotic for what is strange and new. We might say they were romantic, and even that the philosophic or scientific spirit was present, to some degree, in many Athenians. Americans are the liberal bourgeois type of modern. Science has been pacified and regulated--it is practised by lots of people, every day. Beyond that, Americans (normally) don't have time for sentimentality about war and empire.

UPDATE: It may also be relevant that according to polls, many Americans think about one-quarter of the federal budget goes to foreign aid; the true figure is about 1%. No wonder they find the world distressingly ungrateful.

Sun Feb 13, 2005 8:29 pm MST by robertll | Email Article |

Return to Main Page

U.S.A. and Ancient Sparta