"A
China of Athenian inclinations would be a domineering China, apt to bully Asian
neighbors that can’t match up to Chinese diplomatic, economic, or military
might."
“We don’t care about your stupid FONOPs.” That’s
what a group of retired People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) officers told an
American interlocutor recently. They referred, of course, to the “freedom-of-navigation”
patrols the U.S. Navy has undertaken in the South China Sea of late. Most
recently the destroyer USS Decatur mounted a challenge
in the Paracel Islands. But if not FONOPs, what does get Chinese blood pumping?
“We care about our ability to project power,” quoth the doughty seafarers. “Law
is only as good as it can be enforced.”
How refreshingly Thucydidean! Or, more precisely,
how refreshingly Athenian. Odd, isn’t it, how politics makes strange
bedfellows? And few bedfellows could be stranger than the compact democratic
city-state from Greek antiquity and the sprawling one-party authoritarian state
that is contemporary China. But however radically they differ in domestic rule,
classical Athens and present-day China operate from similar principles in the
international realm.
These hardbitten principles derive from the
conviction that law and justice go no further than arms can take them. They
find their clearest expression in the “Melian Dialogue,” wherein Athens makes a
weaker neighbor an offer it can’t refuse—join the Athenian empire or die—then
metes out a harsh fate when the neighbor does refuse. The Melian Dialogue isn’t
just a historical episode. It’s a parable about the consequences of too
lopsided a power mismatch against an amoral foe.
Thucydides is the premier chronicler of the
Peloponnesian War and an eyewitness to many of the war’s events. In the father
of history’s telling, Athenian statesmen are forthright about the exploitative
nature of the system they superintend. In the early years of the Peloponnesian
War, “first citizen” Pericles reminds his countrymen that Athens is a tyranny
abroad, regardless of how liberally it comports itself at home. It may have
been wrong to seize an empire; it’s dangerous to let it go once it has been
taken. Paybacks are hell.
Pericles knew whereof he spoke. Founded as a
democratic alliance in the wake of the Persian Wars, the Athenian-led Delian
League degenerated into a coercive empire as the fifth century B.C. wore on.
Athens moved the league’s treasury from the island of Delos to Athens, stripped
its allies of their navies, and forbade the allies to erect walls around their
cities—walls that might empower them to defy Big Brother’s bidding. No ally was
permitted to leave the empire.
That’s tyranny with a capital T. Brute power
constitutes the prime mover impelling Athenian actions. Thucydides relates the
tale of the fateful encounter between Athens and the island city-state of
Melos. In so doing he lays bare Athenian motives.
Melos occupied a strategic offshore location near
Athens’ archfoe Sparta, making the island an ideal outpost for naval
operations. The Athenian assembly dispatched a delegation to wring surrender
from them.
After entreating the Athenian ambassadors to allow
them to maintain their neutrality, the islanders opt to defy the Athenian
demands. Melos falls after a brief siege, whereupon the Athenian assembly votes
to kill the adult male populace and enslave the women and children.
The Melian Dialogue reveals several undercurrents
in Athenian power politics. First of all, the Athenian emissaries—much like our
retired PLAN officers—maintain that questions of justice seldom arise in
international politics absent a rough parity of arms between antagonists. This
elemental reality is not lost on the Melians, who seem resigned to defeat from
the beginning yet cling stubbornly to their independence. “We see that you have
come prepared to judge the argument yourselves, and that the likely end of it
all will be either war, if we prove that we are in the right, and so refuse to
surrender, or else slavery.” Athens confronts them with a Catch-22.
The Athenians agree with the Melians’ grim
prognosis, proclaiming that “the standard of justice depends on the equality of
power to compel and that in fact the strong do what they have the power to do
and the weak accept what they have to accept.” For Athenians this amounts to a
divine law. “Our opinion of the gods and our knowledge of men lead us to
conclude that it is a general and necessary law of nature to rule whatever one
can.” Not only is this a permanent precept of international relations, but
“anybody else with the same power as ours”—including the Melians—“would be
acting in precisely the same way.”
A China of Athenian inclinations would be a
domineering China, apt to bully Asian neighbors that can’t match up to Chinese
diplomatic, economic, or military might. For a statement displaying a Melian
tenor, look no further than Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi, who in 2010 told a meeting of the
ASEAN Regional Forum: “China is a big country and other countries are small countries
and that is just a fact.” We’re big, you’re small—get used to it. Take note,
Asian countries, if you treasure your rights under the law of the sea.
And take note, America, if China stops believing in
the U.S. military’s capacity to project power into Asian waters to uphold
freedom of the sea. In all likelihood, FONOPs will remain necessary for years
to come. But as the Chinese naval officers imply, these must be FONOPs that the
People’s Liberation Army knows it cannot defeat. Simply showing up in verboten
waters or skies garners little respect. Showing up there with ships, planes,
and armaments that would prevail in combat is what wins respect from a Melian
opponent.
Second, a powerful nation can use its armed might
for a variety of purposes derived from the Thucydidean motives of fear, honor,
and interest. An empire might, for instance, use its military power to acquire
strategically placed territories. “[B]y conquering you,” proclaim the Athenian
ambassadors, “we shall increase not only the size but the security of our
empire.” For Athens there were obvious geostrategic advantages to wresting
Melos from its inhabitants. The island was ideally positioned off the southeast
coast of the Peloponnesus. Operating from bases on the island, the formidable Athenian
navy could conduct operations along the Spartan periphery, amplifying the
already dominant sea power of Athens.
The Athenians also wanted to make an example of
Melos, which had stubbornly maintained its independence and in past years had
taken up arms to resist the imperial will. Many of the allies had grown
restive, weary of the high cost of war and the increasingly tyrannical
character of Athens. The Athenians concluded they couldn’t allow the Melians to
defy them for fear of emboldening other allies to seek liberty from imperial
rule. “We rule the sea and you are islanders, and weaker islanders too than the
others,” observe the Athenian emissaries; “it is therefore particularly
important that you should not escape.”
Hegemonic states, then, prize consistency. It’s
doubtful in the extreme that China will make exceptions to its claims to
sovereignty over sea- and airspace. The Philippines or Malaysia is apt to be
disappointed if it hopes to win forbearance by cozying up to China. Beijing
might back off temporarily and for tactical reasons, as it seemingly has
vis-à-vis Rodrigo Duterte’s Philippines. It would be a stunner if the Chinese
Communist leadership gave in altogether and resumed keeping its commitments
under the law of the sea.
Third, the side endowed with preponderant armed
strength has the luxury of pursuing a harsh diplomacy in order to win without
resort to arms. That’s the “acme of skill” in Chinese statecraft. It can
attempt to browbeat a weaker opponent into submission by menacing it with the
prospect of defeat and destruction.
This, as much as any coarsening of Athenian virtue
during the course of protracted war, helps account for the ruthless, frankly
immoral tone of the Athenian pronouncements. The Athenian ambassadors wave away
the Melian petition for justice: “we on our side will use no fine phrases
saying, for example, that we have a right to our empire because we defeated the
Persians, or that we have come against you now because of the injuries you have
done us—a great mass of words that nobody would believe.” Not persuasion but
brute power was deployed at Melos.
China, likewise, is no stranger to chest-thumping
when it thinks it enjoys an edge in diplomatic, economic, or military power. It
can coerce or deter by disheartening seafaring states—dissuading them from
trying to enforce their rights and prerogatives under the law of the sea and
other accords. Beijing practices a bareknuckles form of
winning-without-fighting.
Fourth, hope is not a strategy in international
politics. The Melian representatives hold that, because their cause is just,
they can trust to fortune or their Spartan kinsmen to intervene on their behalf
and avert disaster. They maintain that “in war fortune sometimes makes the odds
more level than could be expected from the difference of numbers of the two
sides.” They also point to the geographic proximity of Sparta and the ethnic
affinity between Spartans and Melians: “we think [the Spartans] would even
endanger themselves for our sake and count the risk more worth taking than in
the case of others, because we are so close to the Peloponnese that they could
operate more easily,” and because “we are of the same race and share the same
feelings.”
Hoping to disabuse the Melians of such fantasies,
the Athenians deliver a blunt rejoinder. “Hope, that comforter in danger!” they
sneer. Hope is folly unless “one has solid advantages to fall back upon”—namely
deployable hard power. The Melian army cannot compete with the Athenian
expeditionary force. The Athenians, moreover, scoff at Spartan sea power, the
central element in any Spartan relief effort. No outside power—let alone
fortune or the gods—will step in to save Melos.
As in classical antiquity, so it is in Asia today.
Asian societies appear prone to assuming the United States will be there to
succor them in times of trouble vis-à-vis China. Deflating such hopes
constitutes a major part of China’s anti-access/area-denial
strategy (A2/AD). If Beijing convinces Asians the U.S. military
can’t reach scenes of battle in time to make the difference between victory and
defeat, it bolsters its chances of wresting control of sea and sky from its
neighbors. Regaining and preserving the U.S. combat edge—and convincing
regional allies and friends to do their part in enforcing the law of the
sea—are thus crucial to helping Asia avert a Melian destiny.
If the PLAN officers reflect
the conventional outlook among China’s decision-makers—and there’s little
reason to think otherwise—then protracted strategic competition awaits. There’s
little reason to prophesy a turnabout in China’s attitudes toward international
law and power politics, any more than Athens mended its ways until humbled by
Sparta. The wisdom of the ancients can help Washington, its allies, and its
friends discern how to reply to China’s Melian challenge. So dust off that copy
of Thucydides—and let’s get cracking.
James
Holmes is Professor of Strategy at the U.S. Naval War
College
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