History of the Peloponnesian War

The prelude to war can be discerned in the speech of the Corinthians of the debate at Sparta, which makes the point that Lacedaemonian "confidence which you feel in your constitution and social order" yields political moderation but "also the rather limited knowledge which you betray in dealing with foreign politics" (Thucydides). Athens has made a project of inserting itself into foreign affairs. Its naval mobility empowered it to extend its conquests to a variety of distant places to engage in wealth-building trade and to absorb cultural lessons from abroad--and collect tribute from places like Corinth--an ally of Sparta. Feeling the onus of having been invaded, Corinth wants Sparta to help. The Corinthians continue:

Such is Athens, your antagonist. And yet, Lacedaemonians, you still delay, and fail to see that peace stays longest with those, who are not more careful to use their power justly than to show their determination not to submit to injustice. On the contrary, your ideal of fair dealing is based on the principle that, if you do not injure others, you need not risk your own fortunes in preventing others from injuring you (Thucydides).

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s Athens and the Athenian military machine that guaranteed Athens' uniqueness. Pericles makes much of Athenian democracy vis-à-vis the undemocratic and barbarian nature of Athens' enemies, the Spartans and their allies, though its behavior flies in the face of the obligations that democratic societies incur when war is at issue: "War [aggression] is no longer an admissible means of state policy" (554). However, in the modern period, war as policy is rationalized because democracy is a superior form of governance and expression of civilization. Huntington's idea that Western and Muslim or other Asian civilizations are in danger of going to war over which civilization is better provides theoretical explanation of how that rationalization could arise: "A West at the peak of its power confronts non-Wests that increasingly have the desire, the will and the resources to shape the world in non-Western ways" (Huntington 25). The hostility of fanatical Islamism toward the West tends to support this, as do Western characterizations of some Islamist states as barbaric ("As Bush"). Walzer describes the moral weight that is often assigned to the prosecution of war. We "want . . . to act or to seem to act morally" (20). He cites the post-Wor
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Approximate Word count = 1719
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page)

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