Thucydides Roundtable, Book IV: WHAT WOULD THE MELIANS DO? POWER AND PERCEPTION IN A TIME OF DEEP CONNECTIVITY

For great powers, though, this need for more subtle methods of imposing their will increases the probability that their message will be misunderstood, or that small nations will conclude that they can withstand it. When Athens or, later, great powers like Rome decided to send a message, they did so openly and unambiguously. There is no doubt that other small Greek states took note of what happened to Melos and, for a while at least, were less inclined to challenge or resist Athens. But today the colonization of the weak by the strong is off the table so when the application of power is something like a cyberattack, smaller states may not reach the conclusion that the great power intended. In its face off with Athens, Melos may have believed that the price of submitting to Athens would be greater than the costs of submitting. Since Athens eventually colonized Melos, killed the adult males, and sold the women and children into slavery, it is hard to believe that its leaders thought that was a an acceptable cost to preserve their honor. More likely, they did not consider the Athenian threat credible only to find out that it was.

In a time of deep connectivity, then, the core challenge for a great power is to find methods for imposing their will that are politically acceptable and strategically affordable yet which send the desired message. It is not easy to find the sweet spot which sends the desired message particularly when the smaller state has some means of striking back at the more powerful one as North Korea does with nuclear weapons and Iran does through support for terrorism. Thus the nature of great power messaging endures but its character has changed.

Today’s Melians—whether North Korea, Iran, Taiwan, or the small nations on Russia’s periphery—must clearly understand what the threshold for great power intervention is and stay below it. To miscalculate can be catastrophic as Saddam Hussein and Moammar Gaddafi learned. Why relations between great power and small powers remains as asymmetric as it was during Peloponnesian War, the extent of the asymmetry has changed as a result of constraints on the great powers arising from deep connectivity, and the development of strategic power projection capabilities by small states. The essential truths of the Melian Dialogue endure but their application continues to change.

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