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[by Pauline Kaurin]

As a professional philosopher, I find the role of assumptions, especially faulty and unexamined ones, in Book II to be really fascinating.  I don’t think that this a problem that just plagued (ok, sorry, bad Book II joke!) the Greeks, and towards the end of this post I will explore some questions and implications for how we decide to go to war and how we wage it—as opposed to how we fight it on the ground. [For more on this distinction, see James Dubrik’s excellent new book on strategy and ethics, Just War Theory Reconsidered.]

And if both sides nourished the boldest hopes and put forth their utmost strength for war, this was only natural. (2.8)

Thucydides spends a fair amount of time at the beginning of Book II discussing the assumptions and presuppositions of both sides, later tracking how they largely come to naught.  The Spartans worked from the assumption of their own military size, strength and superiority and also from the assumption that Athens lacked this, as well as the experience and will to be effective in war.  They note that the Athenians were, ‘…more in the habit of invading and ravaging their neighbor’s territory, than of seeing their own treated in the like fashion.” (2.11) They also note the import of acting quickly and decisively and maintaining discipline and vigilance, as well as following orders.  So if the Spartans, maintain these things, they will naturally be victorious because that is all that is required in war.

For the Athenians, there is much focus on the assumptions that inherent in Perikles’ famous strategy of retreating behind the walls of the city, abandoning the farms and lands, and relying on the naval power and the strength of the walls to defeat the Spartans. (2.13) He stresses they they were NOT to go out to battle; deny the Spartans what they expect and where their strength resides. Its clear that the Athenians viewed their strength in their city, in keeping everyone together in a physical proximity that would be easier to control and defend, and that their strength resided in the navy. Finally, he also stresses the financial resources that Athens can leverage to finance and maintain such a strategy.

Interestingly, it doesn’t take long in terms of Thucydides narrative for things to go awry. The Athenians become cranky at abandoning their lands and temples and having to change their habits to live in the city. (2.16) As their land starts (quite predictably) to become ravaged and attacked, “…they lost all patience…” and the young men wanted (quite predictably) to go out and defend it. (2.21) This again is portrayed as perfectly natural by Thucydides, even though Perikles presumably warned them that this was exactly what was intended to happen, and was, in fact, THE PLAN!  This is followed later in the narrative with various and detailed discussions of the impact of the plague (which Thucydides notes was unanticipated) (2.51-2) Meanwhile, the Spartans are largely denied their decisive battles and engagement with the Athenians necessary to maintaining their conception of success and victory. The Athenians, in their view, are cowards and refuse to fight, but they also refuse to surrender.

What I have highlighted here points to the role that assumptions—both about our own side and that of the adversary—play in planning and justification for the war, as well as in how it is waged and fought. It’s hard not to think of the US Civil War and World War I, which the participants assumed would be short-lived and follow certain kinds of well known paradigms for war, honor and chivalry. Its also hard not to think about the claim in advance of the 2003 intervention in Iraq that of course there were WMD’s and that we would be ‘greeted as liberators’ which resulted in a mess, in part due to not thinking through what was to happen after the military was victorious. (As if the military being victorious was the sole end and goal?)

Which leads me back to Thucydides claim that these kinds of mistakes, blindness and miscalculations are natural. Why are they natural? Can they be avoided? Is it that we refuse or are not able to critically examine our own assumptions about ourselves and the adversary? I can see that its harder to do the second because you have less or inaccurate information about them, but surely self-examination (especially for the society that gave birth to Socrates and the Western philosophical traditions) is not beyond our reach? Or is the real issue, that we simply refuse to do so in the emotional excitement that is the rush to war? (Is there a war equivalent to the ‘beer goggles’ effect?)

A related issue seems to be the difficulty we, like the Greeks, have in thinking through the second, third and fourth order impacts of our own actions, much less those of the adversary. (Again, its hard not to think about 2003 in Iraq.) Thucydides notes that the plague was unanticipated, which is interesting. If we allow this point, it doesn’t explain how many of the other effects (immediate and further out) also need unanticipated or people believed that they would not happen. Is this a failure of strategic thinking and rationality? Or is it the emotions involved which make it difficult to think through or believe that the bad will happen? How many couples resist the idea of legal agreements prior to marriage or cohabiting, in the throes of love, lust or infatuation, only to regret it when things fall apart?

Like with romance and human relationships, surely things falling apart in war and not going according to plans and assumptions is entirely predictable. We check our equipment and personnel before going to war; we should also check and rigorously examine our assumptions.

P.S. An assumption is not simply true because we want it to be true!

[by Joseph Guerra]

Let me start by saying it is an honor to be able to comment on such a classic work of strategic thought in such a forum as this.  I thank Mark/zen for this opportunity and hope that I am able to do justice to this subject.

I approach Thucydides’s work from a Clausewitzian strategic theory perspective. The book can be seen as perhaps the earliest attempt in Western literature to come up with a theory of grand strategy.  There is a lot to be said for this approach.  If we consider that Clausewitz’s general theory of war could be part of a larger general theory of strategy, or grand strategy, then a relationship between the two classic works, that is Clausewitz’s On War and Thucydides’s The Peloponnesian War becomes clear.

This could come across as questionable for many, since at first glance the two books are quite different.  Clausewitz discusses various types of theory in his book providing military historical examples to make his point.  Thucydides gives a detailed history of a specific conflict from various perspectives; provides a intricate view of political relations, including narratives of the time.  Raymond Aron came up with an interesting comment on the two authors which puts these distinctions within a common context:

It seems that we owe the great books on action to men of action whom fate deprived of their crowning achievement, men who arrived at a subtle blend of engagement and detachment which left them capable of recognising the constraints and shackles of the soldier or the politician and also capable of looking from outside, not indifferently but calmly, at the irony of fate and the unforeseeable play of forces that no will can control.  Philosophy presents an image of pessimism.  For what, may one ask, makes victories precarious and the state unstable?  Whoever devotes himself to the state chooses to build sandcastles.  There remains for him only the hope  of Thucydides or that of Clausewitz: “My ambition was to write a book which could not be forgotten after two or three years, but which could be taken up several times when required by those who take an interest in this subject.”   Clausewitz, Philosopher of War, p 12.

Book 1 of The Peloponnesian War offers various points for consideration from a Clausewitzian perspective.  The conflict is rooted in the political relations of the various communities involved (see “War is an Act of Human Intercourse”, Book II, Chapter 3).  Sparta initially uses a Strategy of Annihilation, whereas Athens a Strategy of Attrition, to use Hans Delbrück’s terminology.  Both sides display various stages and types of moral and material cohesion which varies as the conflict progresses.  All three of these would warrant comment from this perspective, but there is an additional aspect which I intend to introduce here and deal with in future posts.  This is the concept of strategic narrative.

One of the advantages of Clausewitz’s general theory of war is that it is compatible with a wide range of other strategic thought which is not limited to the military.  Such different (non-military) thinkers as Max Weber, Reinhold Niebuhr and Martin Luther King approached social action and community perceptions from a distinctly Clausewitzian outlook.  All would understand the importance of strategic narrative.

In his book, War From the Ground Up, Emile Simpson not only defines strategic narrative, but links it to Clausewitz:

‘Strategic narrative’ is a contemporary term, but is a formalisation of a concept that has been present in all conflicts.  Strategic narrative is the explanation of actions.  It can usually be detected chronologically before conflict starts, in some form, as the explanation for participation in, or initiation of, the conflict; strategic narrative also operates as the explanation of actions during and after conflict.

Strategy seeks to relate actions to policy.  A policy outcome is ultimately an impression upon an audience.  It can be a physical impression, which in war would typically be defined in terms of death and destruction.  It can simultaneously be a psychological impression, typically defined in terms of an evolution in political alignment, not necessarily by consent.  For strategy to connect actions to policy it must therefore invest them with a great meaning in relation to its audiences, both prospectively and retrospectively. page 179-180.

This narrative should be realised in a coherent set of actions which give it expression . . . strategic narrative is not just concerned with audiences exterior to one’s side, or coalition.  One of the key functions is to achieve unity of effort, ideally to give coherent expression to that side’s will, as Carl von Clausewitz would put it.  page 182.

A strategic narrative that is seen as incoherent or contradictory by the various audiences, or becomes incoherent over time, will obviously fail in its purpose.

James Boyd White (“the other Boyd”) devotes an entire chapter to Thucydides in his When Words Lose Their Meaning.  The tight fit between the speeches provided by Thucydides throughout The Peloponnesian War and the strategic narrative then in effect act as an indicator of how these various strategic narratives develop or decay over time.  The words also act as reflections of the loss of moral and material cohesion within the various political communities depicted as the war progresses.  Boyd White describes accurately Thucydides world as related in Book 1:

. . . this was a highly structured world, rich in resources for argument and action.  The very fact that the cities could jockey for position as they did, each seeking to place the other in the wrong, shows that they operated on terms established by a shard and comprehensible discourse and that each was acting in part for an audience, internal or external, who would use that discourse to judge what it did.  Thucydides now gives us the opportunity to learn something about the nature of that discourse, for at this moment Corcyra sends a delegation to Athens to ask for an alliance, and Corinth sends a representative to resist them.  Thucydides presents their speeches in considerable detail.

This is a highly literary moment, of which we can ask: Of all the things that might be said here, what will the speakers choose to say? How will they try to persuade the Athenians to do what they want them to?  To what values will they appeal, for example?  What pleas, what charges, what veiled or explicit threats or promises, will they make?  Will they call on the gods, on compassion or justice, or on tradition of the law?  Will they appeal to the Athenians’ economic or military self-interest, and if so how will they define these things?  Or will they appeal to the Athenians’ sense of their own character, say, as virtuous or brave or generous, and how will they do that?  In what terms will they tell their stories?  page 62

Book 1 fittingly ends with Pericles’s speech to the Athenians (1.140-144), where he lays out clearly the strengths and weaknesses of the two sides.  He accurately depicts Athens’s advantage at the onset and rightly fears the potential blunders of his own side over the strengths and strategy of the enemy.  Given her position among the Greeks, Athens has no choice but to fight.

On to Book 2.

[Mark Safranski / “zen“]

Pericles, son of Xanthippus and strategos of Athens

“For heroes have the whole earth for their tomb”
– Pericles

“…like that star of the waning summer who beyond all stars rises bathed in the ocean stream to glitter in brilliance.”
                            – Homer

Book II of the Peloponnesian War features the great Athenian leader Pericles and contains Thucydides’ remarkable apologia for his statesmanship and the Periclean regime over which he presided, which lasted only so long as he lived.  A kind of golden age within a golden age, thrown away by a senseless mob, at least as Thucydides tells the tale. What cannot be discounted however is that the man Thucydides called the “first citizen” of Athens was the dominant political figure of his day and put his stamp first upon Athens, then upon Hellas and then led his people into war to conserve and defend his vision of democratic empire against a jealous and fearful Sparta. Furthermore the novel strategy pursued by Pericles was integral the Athenian polis he had reshaped according to his vision and was designed to strengthen that regime as much as to win a military victory over Sparta.

In the text of Book II, Thucydides gives the reader three important narratives regarding the statesmanship of Pericles: his funeral oration; Pericles defense of his strategy before the Assembly; and Thucydides own analysis and eulogy of Pericles and his policies. From these we can see the continuity between Pericles political program for Athens at home and his imperial ambition for the role of Athens in the Hellenic world. Pericles, along with Ephialtes, had been pivotal in the decline the aristocratic, Aeropaegi faction that had been led by Cimon, whom Pericles had ostracized. Cimon’s regime was Athens as limited democracy, guided by the nobility, friendly to Sparta and deferential to Spartan hegemony. Pericles upended all of that root and branch. His Athens was to be at once radically democratic, investing power in the thetes of the Assembly, and gloriously heroic.

This was, to say the least, an unconventional viewpoint in classical Greece that had associated heroic qualities, or arête, with the well-born presiding over a hierarchical society. This cultural prejudice went back to at least Homeric times, if not to the older civilization of Mycenaean Greece. Pericles utterly rejected that and argued the excellence of all Athenian citizens was made possible by the political system of Athens and that Athens’ exalted status among Greek city states rested on the arête of its citizens:

….Our constitution does not copy the laws of neighbouring states; we are rather a pattern to others than imitators ourselves. Its administration favours the many instead of the few; this is why it is called a democracy. If we look to the laws, they afford equal justice to all in their private differences; if no social standing, advancement in public life falls to reputation for capacity, class considerations not being allowed to interfere with merit; nor again does poverty bar the way, if a man is able to serve the state, he is not hindered by the obscurity of his condition. The freedom which we enjoy in our government extends also to our ordinary life. There, far from exercising a jealous surveillance over each other, we do not feel called upon to be angry with our neighbour for doing what he likes, or even to indulge in those injurious looks which cannot fail to be offensive, although they inflict no positive penalty….

….”Nor are these the only points in which our city is worthy of admiration. We cultivate refinement without extravagance and knowledge without effeminacy; wealth we employ more for use than for show, and place the real disgrace of poverty not in owning to the fact but in declining the struggle against it. Our public men have, besides politics, their private affairs to attend to, and our ordinary citizens, though occupied with the pursuits of industry, are still fair judges of public matters; for, unlike any other nation, regarding him who takes no part in these duties not as unambitious but as useless, we Athenians are able to judge at all events if we cannot originate, and, instead of looking on discussion as a stumbling-block in the way of action, we think it an indispensable preliminary to any wise action at all. Again, in our enterprises we present the singular spectacle of daring and deliberation, each carried to its highest point, and both united in the same persons; although usually decision is the fruit of ignorance, hesitation of reflection. But the palm of courage will surely be adjudged most justly to those, who best know the difference between hardship and pleasure and yet are never tempted to shrink from danger. In generosity we are equally singular, acquiring our friends by conferring, not by receiving, favours. Yet, of course, the doer of the favour is the firmer friend of the two, in order by continued kindness to keep the recipient in his debt; while the debtor feels less keenly from the very consciousness that the return he makes will be a payment, not a free gift. And it is only the Athenians, who, fearless of consequences, confer their benefits not from calculations of expediency, but in the confidence of liberality.

“In short, I say that as a city we are the school of Hellas, while I doubt if the world can produce a man who, where he has only himself to depend upon, is equal to so many emergencies, and graced by so happy a versatility, as the Athenian. And that this is no mere boast thrown out for the occasion, but plain matter of fact, the power of the state acquired by these habits proves. For Athens alone of her contemporaries is found when tested to be greater than her reputation, and alone gives no occasion to her assailants to blush at the antagonist by whom they have been worsted, or to her subjects to question her title by merit to rule.

While Pericles was called “conservative and moderate” by Thucydides – and he certainly was a wise steward of shrewd strategic judgement in comparison with Cleon or Alcibiades – he was also in the context of the wider Greek world a social revolutionary. Moreover, a social revolutionary with demonstrated imperial ambitions and policies which Greek cities with tyrannical, aristocratic or oligarchic leadership found unsettling. Furthermore, Pericles drove home the point with the Parthenon, which he openly financed with the Delian League treasury, demonstrating that “ally” in Athenian eyes meant “subject”, Chiseled into marble on the Parthenon amidst a reconstructed Acropolis were ordinary Athenian citizenry made ideal and deified. This was clearly a political as well as a religious statement in what was the greatest temple of the ancient world. If one wonders why the Peloponnesian war took on so lethal an ideological dimension of factional strife  in every city touched by the Athenians or Spartans, the answer is written on the ruins of the Parthenon.

End Part I

[Mark Safranski / “zen“]

Our friends at Infinity Journal have the latest edition out today. For newer readers, Infinity is a peer review e-zine on strategy that has published some of the more eminent figures in strategic studies, military history and security studies, new rising young scholars, an international set of active duty and retired military officers and serious students of war. The current issue boasts such topics as Clausewitzian theory, preventive war, the limits of air power and Chinese strategic thinking ( Registration is required but is always free).

I would however like to draw your attention specifically to their featured exclusive:

Does the U.S.’s War on the Islamic State Make Sense?

by Ron Tira

….The regional competition is multilateral[vii], with quite a large number of participants: global powers, regional powers and sub-state actors. Of them, the most competent challenges to the U.S. and its traditional regional allies come from Iran, its sub-state Shiite proxies and from Russia.

Iran is a serious competitor that poses the most severe threat to Saudi Arabia, the Gulf principalities and Israel. Iran possesses nuclear capabilities and ambitions, a robust ballistic missile apparatus, and long, subversive tentacles. Its regional footprint is also growing, from Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Yemen, to Gaza, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia’s eastern provinces. Hezbollah is armed with more high-trajectory weapons than most NATO allies – combined, with high-impact shore-to-sea/shore missiles, cruise missiles, UAVs and cutting-edge surface-to-air missiles. Hezbollah is no longer a solely-Lebanese actor, and its footprint can be found throughout the Shiite-Sunni frontline. Iran and Hezbollah are ambitious, aggressive and skillful in orchestrating ends, ways and means. In contrast, IS’s objectives are unattainable and it is unable to orchestrate ends, ways and means[viii]. Hence, there is no comparison between the risk posed to America’s traditional regional allies by Iran and Hezbollah and the one posed by IS’s proverbial Toyota hordes.

Russia is pursuing an aggressive Middle Eastern policy[ix], aimed at gaining regional ground at the expense of the U.S. as well as accruing chips for its global game. There is no comparison between the risks posed to American interests by Russia’s new assertive posture – running in an arch from the Baltics, through Crimea, the eastern Mediterranean and Syria’s Tartus harbor – and the risks posed by IS’s street fighting in Syria’s battered Sunni heartland.

In fact, IS #1 and other extreme Sunni Jihadist organizations are a primary balancer of Iran and its proxies. IS and its ilk stand between Iran and its hegemony bid in the Sunni parts of Iraq. They also stand between Iran and Russia and their ambitions in Syria. IS pins Iran and Hezbollah down to the quicksand, and increases their expenditure in blood and treasure. IS both attrits Iran and Hezbollah as well as keeps them busy from pursuing other interests, with potentially graver consequences.

Furthermore, the fact that the U.S. has surprisingly prioritized the fight against IS ahead of containing the Russians[x], resulted in the need or at least desire to collaborate with the Russians against IS. It is this order of priorities set voluntarily by the U.S. that made Russia so artificially important, and unnecessarily given the Kremlin powerful global cards….

Read the rest here.

[ by Charles Cameron — honor and shame ]
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Not “no comment” — speechless.