Bringing Democracy to Greece

America is the current global hegemon, so it is always possible to make analogies with the US and prior super-powers such as Britain, Rome, and even Athens. Victor Davis Hanson looks at the analogies between America and Athens in A War Like No Other. One of the curiosities of Sparta was that they would promise to bring tyranny to the states they liberated from Athenian democracy. Tyranny back then being a legitimate government form while democracy was the radical, liberal and egalitarian form of subversiveness.

Hansen writes:

Although Americans offer the world a radically egalitarian popular culture and, more recently, in a very Athenian mood, have sought to remove oligarchs and impose democracy - ... - enemies, allies, and neutrals alike are not so impressed.

They understandably fear American power and intentions while our successive governments, in the manner of confident and proud Athenians, assure them of our morality and selflessness.

Military power and idealism about bringing perceived civilization to others are prescription for frequent conflict in any age - and no ancient state made war more often than did fifth-century Athens.

Despite Athens' view of itself most of the ancient Greek states were more inclined toward Sparta despite its militant social structure and repugnant form of slavery. According to Hansen Greek states expected a higher level of moral and ethical behaviour from Athens than Sparta as well; which infuriated Athenians. We see a similar dynamic with the US. When America doesn't live up to its moral republican promise there is great disappointment, which must chap foreign policy realists in the US.

Ultimately however they are analogies. The modern state of America is drastically different to Athens or ancient Greece. Democracy, Republicanism, Liberalism, not to mention the fury and technology of warfare are significantly different. While the analogies offer whimsical curiosities the world is significantly different even if we can recognize modern patterns within the past and vice versa.
Spartan coin was iron rods - ie rusty nails.
Permalink, A Fistful of Nails

Old rusty nails via Husard's flickr photostream

Sparta was quite a backward state. At the beginning of the Peloponnesian War their monetary system was based on iron rods; not gold or other precious coins - basically they traded rusty nails as currency.

Since the Greeks were always loose confederations of city-states that formed alliances largely based upon their political systems; Athenian democracy vs Spartan Oligarchy or Tyranny, statecraft was a valuable tool. Wealth entered into that and this area Athens had it all over Sparta.

Paying for an extended war with rusty nails probably does not inspire confidence in oligarchic allies.
adam: Reminds me of this review.

cam: I agree with most of that. The Peloponessian War went for so long because Athens would not meet Sparta's hoplites in battle (same as Germany and the UK wouldnt trade shots with Dreadnaughts in WWI) and Sparta wouldnt meet the Athenian Navy in a clean fight. So they fought assymetrically and consequently a city-state form of genocide appears to have been the common way to fight. Quite horrid really.

The Spartans were skilled at statecraft though. They did manage to keep a wide confederation in place throughout the war despite Athenian attempts to destabilise it through the Messinians and by establishing democratic ruling elites in cities. There was political genocide as well in cities because Sparta and Athens tried to install oligarchic or democratic elites into power. The locals would execute their political rivals and vice versa.
avocadia: I only just saw 300 this week, after a mate dumped a whole bunch of rips on me.

Sparta understood only one kind of fighting: land battle, the hoplite shield-wall

I was vastly amused when, after shooing the hunchback away because he couldn't be part of a shield wall, the Spartans engaged the Persians in a phalanx formation only once for about fifteen seconds, and then broke it up to fight as individuals in the standard barbarian fashion that phalanxes tended to pulverize.

I guess there is less opportunity for posers posing in posing pouches when they are squeezed together in a shield wall.
avocadia: As I look at my desk and see a small (sob) pile of polymer and miscellaneous metal discs, I'm not sure I can agree one hundred percent with the notion that using iron instead of gold or silver necessarily makes the Spartans backward. The example works better when you play up the convenience factor of those precious metal coins over the deliberately-inconvenient rods.
cam: What happens when the state wants a loan because they are out of money? They start nicking nails from houses? Stealing forks?
avocadia: Pretty sure they didn't inflate their way out of trouble by melting down their spear heads.

Trauma Cocktail

Cunning Realist writes on trauma cocktails which effectively make a nation accept anything; breaking down individual and social norms such that extremes become accepted as the new norm.

One of the interesting aspects of the Peloponnesian War was that the normal method of determining conflict between Greek city-states, hoplite battle, was replaced with political and ethnic genocide. Asymmetric warfare ruined the wealth, morality and power of Greece such that the Macedonians and then the Romans replaced them as the centre of Mediterranean power.

The shocks of two generations of continuous warfare, asymmetry, ethnic genocide, political turbulence, political genocide (people were wiped out for being oligarchic or democratic in their politics), plus the plague in Athens all led to a Greek trauma cocktail where plunder and genocide became the norm. It destroyed the power of Athens and Sparta; making them easy prey for Phillip of Macedonia and later the foreign policy politics of Rome's Scipio Africanus.

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