Classical antiquity offers a lesson in the perils of economic warfare.
“That
decision may be judged irrational or merely a miscalculation of likely
consequences, but it is like many similar ones throughout history in which
passion inspired by old hatreds and wounded honor are the cause of dangerous
actions.”
As the
United States and China continue to play geopolitical chess in Asia, forming or renewing economic political and military
alliances, it is pleasing to note that leading scholars in international relations
from both East and West have once more turned
their attention to Thucydides, the 5th century Athenian historian. More than
two millennia old, Thucydides’ work has nonetheless become a center of vigorous
debate among American and Chinese strategists alike, with the Chinese political
science association dedicating a panel to it at its annual 2014 conference in
Beijing. Whereas scholars and generals once looked to the
Peloponnesian War to understand the conflict between U.S. naval power vs.
Soviet land power, today they study it in hopes of neutralizing the rising
security competition between a status quo power, the United States, and a
rising/recovering power, the Peoples Republic of China.
But for
all the interest in the study of classical antiquity, one area that has not
received as much attention as it might is the comparison between the Athenian
and Chinese ability to coerce an adversary through economic clout. Like
Classical Athens, China today has repeatedly used its
economic muscle to coerce states bold enough to confront it. The most recent
case is the boycotting of Japanese brands.
Four years ago the embargo on rare earths
almost strangled the technology-intensive and export-dependent Japanese
economy. And now latest reports highlight the downward trend in Japanese investments
in China, suggesting the technologically hungry Chinese economy may
be about to pay a similar price.
Even
assuming that China is right to confront its neighbors’ claims of sovereignty
over disputed territory, commercial retaliation is not an effective strategy.
Embargos can produce a slow and very painful economic death, and embitter the
citizens who must suffer the consequences, who may therefore view it as highly
confrontational and warlike. The result could be lasting ill-will towards the
state that initiated the embargo and polarized public opinion for many years to
come. That in turn could have dire consequences for regional peace and
stability.
The Megarian Degree
One of
the decisions that polarized the Athenian assembly, in a critical moment for
the preservation of peace, was the initiation of what is known to be the first
official economic embargo in history. According to Thucydides, withdrawing this
act of economic warfare by Athens against her neighboring city-state of Megara
was the only condition that the Spartans put to the Athenians on the eve of the
Peloponnesian war, offering peace in return.
Megara
was a strategically located city-state, important to both Athens and Sparta. It
lay between Corinth and Athens at the bottleneck pass from the Peloponnese to
Attica. Access to Attica by land was hence possible only with the consent of
the Megarians. Early on, Megara was embroiled in land disputes with Corinth.
Although both states were members of the Peloponnesian League, Megara defected
and instead sought the support of Athens, which grabbed the opportunity to intervene.
This became one of the factors that led to the First Peloponnesian War.
Athens
imposed a democratic regime on Megara that prevented the Spartans and their
Peloponnesian allies from accessing Attic land. However, a well-executed
Spartan covert operation with the support of dissident Megarian oligarchics
massacred the Athenian guard and ultimately turned Megara into an oligarchic
state. The Peloponnesian army invaded Attica, but the invasion was unexpectedly
cut short. A “Thirty-Years Peace” treaty was ultimately signed, which returned
Megara to the Peloponnesian League. Their Athenians were left embittered by the
massacre of their guard at Megara and the perceived disrespect of the
Megarians.
Subsequently,
on the pretext of land disputes with Megara and under the leadership of
Pericles, the Athenian ecclesia voted for a “Megarian Degree.” Among other
things, the degree was designed to intimidate Megara and other city-states that
may have wanted to support Corinth in its campaign against Athens after the events of Corcyra. The
degree would ban any Megarian commercial ship from using ports controlled by
Athens or its allies. Megarian products were blocked from Athens’ marketplaces.
At the time, the Athenian empire extended from Magna Graecia (South Italy) to
the Ionian, the Aegean and up to the Black Sea. Athens controlled many
strategic ports that other city-states needed for their trade routes in the Mediterranean
Sea. Consequently, the economic embargo devastated Megara, which was heavily
dependent on trade in agricultural products and pottery. Hardest hit were the
oligarchic elites of the city, who controlled much of the commerce.
Sparta’s Reaction
Renowned
Yale historian Donald Kagan cites a comedy
written in 425 by the great comedian Aristophanes, which is revealing as to the
significance of the embargo in the outbreak of the (second) Peloponnesian War.
Aristophanes has his comic hero Dicaepolis (which in Greek means fair city)
say:
“Pericles
in his fury enacted laws that sounded like drinking songs; That the Megarians
must leave our lands, our market, our sea and our continent. Then, when the
Megarians were slowly starving, they begged the Spartans to get the law of the
three harlots withdrawn. We refused, though they asked us often. And from that
came the clash of shields.”
Although
as Kagan notes this is probably comical exaggeration and a direct attack on
Pericles, the leader of Athens, the adverse effects of the embargo remained
crucial to persuading the Spartans to go to war, for it highlighted Athens’
asymmetric warfare capabilities and threatened the status quo of Sparta’s
alliance in the Peloponnese. While initially the Spartans voted for
unconditional war with rising Athens, they eventually backtracked and elected
to sent envoys instead, bearing a single demand: “They
proclaimed publicly and in the clearest language that there would be no war if
the Athenians withdrew the Megarian Decree.”
At the
ecclesia – Athens’ marketplace of ideas – Pericles persuaded his fellow
citizens to rebuff the Spartan demand on the grounds that Athens was an
independent, sovereign city-state. He further argued that under the
Thirty-Years Peace treaty, any dispute should be resolved by binding
arbitration. Pericles observed that if Athens appeased Sparta under the threat
of war then future demands were sure to follow and thus Athens would not be an
autonomous city-state but a Spartan protectorate. War ensued.
Japan-China and the Embargo
“Despite the fact that China has become Japan’s largest partner in
trade and direct foreign investment, the animosity among nationalists in the
two countries is growing and both governments are playing with fire.”
If
current forecasts are to be believed, China is expected to become the biggest economy in the world
sometime in the next decade. By 2030, some economists believe, China could be
1.5 times the size of the U.S. economy and more than four times larger than the
Japanese economy. According to the gravity model in trade economics,
commercial exchange between two countries is dependent on their relative GDPs
and the relative distance between them. This means that during peacetime, Japan
and China could be expected to be each other’s largest trading partner. Even in
2012, when China’s GDP was still only about half as big again as that of
Japan’s, bilateral trade was worth nearly $350 billion per annum. Given the
likely widening of their relative GDP gaps to China’s benefit, Japan’s economy
will be more dependent on China’s than vice versa. This creates the conditions
for a “Megarian trap”; that is, China will have the
ability – and thus the temptation – to wreak havoc on the Japanese economy with
an economic embargo. Recent history has shown that this could either be a state
policy (rare earths) or a public
opinion overreaction to bilateral sea disputes (the boycotts in 2012). Already
Chinese officials have warned Japan in clear
language of a potential third lost decade of economic development.
If China
does attempt to coerce Japan economically, Tokyo may well find itself with no
alternative but to ask for Washington’s direct intervention. To the
disappointment of liberal internationalists, WTO and multilateral organizations
would not be able to dissuade China. Moreover, WTO’s dispute settlement
mechanism would probably be too slow to alleviate the damage to the Japanese
economy. (In the rare earth case it took four years.) The argument Tokyo would
present to Washington would be powerful and rational: China, the Japanese side
would argue, is breaking norms of the liberal global order that are vital for
worldwide economic stability and thus threatens not only Japan’s prosperity but
also America’s economic security. The United States would have no choice but to
directly intervene and prevail on China to show responsibility and drop any
trade embargo or take the necessary steps to protect Japanese investments in
China. This would put China in Athens’ position. Would Beijing accept
Washington’s lecturing or would it, like Athens, tell Tokyo it must take the
case to arbitration (at the WTO)? That is not an easy question to answer, given
the likely Chinese public anger at both Japan and the U.S., and the difficulty
the authorities would have taming nationalistic resentment. As Thucydides’
history shows, economic embargoes can be seen as an act of war. With its long
tradition of commerce with Asia, and in the interests of peace, China would be
advised to abstain from using economic coercion to resolve its disputes with Japan.
The
triangular relationship among the U.S., China and Japan is the defining dynamic
for peace in our time. Certainly, the U.S. must be prepared to live with a rising China. As the
scholar Robert Scalapino puts it, the U.S. should deal with problems patiently
and with strategic maturity. For its part, China should not let “old hatreds
and insults” interrupt its recovery and should stay committed to its commercial
engagement with the world. In the question of potestas vs. auctoritas,
China should choose the latter and lead by attraction rather than coercion. In
that sense, Beijing should solve issues with Japan through arbitration before
things reach the nationalistic “street” in Tokyo or Beijing and get out of
hand. The treatment of the recent delegation of Japanese businessmen
in Beijing could perhaps be seen as a positive first step.
The
travails of antiquity offer insights into the strategic maturity that great
powers need to resolve disputes peacefully. Great powers should deploy economic
warfare with caution, lest it lead to a Megarian trap and another great power
conflict – cool, cold or hot. Such an outcome would be catastrophic and must be
avoided by all costs. Thucydides warned us that his work was written not “to
capture the applause of the moment but to be instead a possession for ever”
(ktema es aei) as human nature remains a constant. It would be worth thinking
twice before ignoring a warning from the father of political historiography and
realpolitik.
Vasilis
Trigkas is a research assistant in Sino-EU affairs at the Chairman of Tsinghua
University’s Social Sciences department. He is a Non-Resident WSD Handa fellow
for the Pacific Forum CSIS, a global shaper for the World Economic Forum and
researcher at the ThinkinChina.asia community in Beijing.
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