New Imperialists : Ideologies of Empire

WORKMAN: When Might is Right 143
poleis across the Hellenic world and beyond, were destined to alarm the
Peloponnesian League. Fear compelled the Spartans to respond to the
growing power of Athens, a fear rooted in the natural calculations that
emerge out of the basic character of power relations in international
affairs. The chilling view of international relations expressed by the
Athenian envoys at Melos just before they massacred the adult males of
the island and enslaved the Melian women and children, namely that the
strong rule the weak whenever they can – the “Athenian thesis” as it has
come to be called – is affirmed by Thucydides. It expresses a most fundamental
truth about the character of international life. But this is a
doctrine of all international relations, not merely a doctrine justifying
Athenian expansionism. As Leo Strauss wrote: “The Athenians’ assertion
of what one may call the natural rights of the strong as a right which the
stronger exercises by natural necessity is not a doctrine of Athenian
imperialism; it is a universal doctrine; it applies to Sparta for instance as
well as to Athens.” 16 At this point the Straussian reading of Thucydides
resembles in all respects the standard reading of Thucydides made by the
field of international relations, a connection now fully acknowledged by
later Straussian writers including Thomas Pangle and Peter Ahrensdorf.
One of the earliest expressions of this understanding of the relations
among nations – commonly called Realism in the field of international
relations – came from Hans Morgenthau, a colleague of Leo Strauss at
the University of Chicago, in a celebrated work entitled Politics Among
Nations. 17 In this book Thucydides was identified as a thinker who saw
the basic Realist character of international life clearly, and most international
relations thinking since then assumes that Thucydides prefigured
Realist thought of the twentieth century. 18
This basic tension between “right” and “power” frames all discussion
about Thucydides among those who accept Leo Strauss’s basic teachings.
Thucydides expresses the truth of power politics in international life, and
he recognizes the dilemmas that bear down upon statespersons in international
relations who “naturally” factor in our more ethical or humanist
dimensions. We are powerless to resist the lure of interest and power, just
as we are powerless to resist thinking about right and justice. Our basic
natures tug at us in two different directions, yet all state leaders come to
realize that considerations of justice are relatively weak in the affairs of
nations. As Pangle elegantly expressed it: “Through his account of the
great and terrible war between Athens and Sparta, Thucydides nourishes