Thucydides’ Three Security Dilemmas in Post-Soviet Strife1

1. Earlier drafts of this article were presented at the sixth annual conference of the Central Eurasia Studies Society (CESS), Boston University, 29–30 September 2005, and at the Thucydides workshop organized by Jon Elster (Columbia University, NY, 25–26 February 2005). Comments by Stephen Holmes, Richard Ned Lebow, Eric Robinson, Bruce Russett and other participants, as well as the two anonymous referees for the Journal of Military Ethics, were helpful in revising the drafts.

Abstract

Attempting to apply the logic of conflict analysis developed by Thucydides to the chaotic spasms and clashes triggered by the collapse of the Soviet Union might appear inappropriate to many classical scholars, and entirely artificial to most Eurasian security experts. However, the two strategic landscapes, though separated by a period of some 2400 years, share a number of common features, and the ideas of the ancient strategic analyst may prove helpful for discovering structure in the chaotic violence of more recent times. The notion of the ‘strategic dilemma’—one that Thucydides never used but is credited with inventing—lies at the centre of this investigation, which seeks to test the applicability of the notion in three distinctive settings: in a bipolar confrontation; in conflict manipulation by a third party; and in secessionist conflicts. The article suggests that, as an instrument of political analysis, the security dilemma tends to overpredict conflicts and essentially comes out as a trap of self-fulfilling ‘worst-case’ expectations, so that nowadays—much as in ancient Greece—whenever a security dilemma determines a political decision, disaster follows.

Keywords:

• Thucydides
• security dilemma
• secession
• Russia
• conflict management

Notes

1. Earlier drafts of this article were presented at the sixth annual conference of the Central Eurasia Studies Society (CESS), Boston University, 29–30 September 2005, and at the Thucydides workshop organized by Jon Elster (Columbia University, NY, 25–26 February 2005). Comments by Stephen Holmes, Richard Ned Lebow, Eric Robinson, Bruce Russett and other participants, as well as the two anonymous referees for the Journal of Military Ethics, were helpful in revising the drafts.

2. My reading of Thucydides was dependent on the excellent Russian translation by Stratanovsky (1981). I also used the English translations edited by Blanco (1998) and Strassler (1998). Quotations in the text follow the latter edition.

3. The most thorough arguments on Thucydides’ relevance for the bipolar conflict analysis that this author has come across are in a book edited by Lebow and Strauss (1991); on ‘Athens as America’, see Philip Sabin's (1991) chapter in particular.

4. This footnote in McNeill's seminal work The Rise of the West continues: ‘This lends the study of classical Greek history a peculiar intellectual excitement and makes it, even for the relatively unimaginative mind, what Lord Acton wished all history to be, “not a burden on the memory, but an illumination of the soul”’.

5. On the pronounced declining trend in the number of conflicts, see Erikson and Wallensteen (2004) and Dwan and Holmqvist (2005). I have examined the dynamics of post-Soviet conflicts in Baev (2005a).

6. For a comparative security analysis, see Arbatov et al. (1997); a useful ethno-political perspective is developed in Tishkov (1997); a fascinating sociological picture is presented by Derluguian (2005).

7. Strictly speaking, nor was it ‘Peloponnesian’ (since Sparta controlled only a part of the Peloponnesus, which saw few hostilities), but rather pan-Hellenic, Aegean or simply Greek; on its character as civil war, see Price (2001).

8. It reads indeed like a thoughtful reflection on the turmoil in the Caucasus in 1991–93: ‘The sufferings which revolution entailed upon the cities were many and terrible, such as have occurred and always will occur, as long as the nature of mankind remains the same, though in a severe or milder form, and varying in their symptoms, according to the variety of particular cases’.

9. Chapter 4 on ‘Terror’ in Victor Hanson's (2005) excellent book A War Like No Other describes how the proliferation of irregular forces led to abandonment of strict ‘protocols’ of hoplite battle; his discussion of kinesis in Chapter 1 on ‘Fear’ is also illuminating.

10. Often referred to simply as ‘I.23.6’, this famous passage from Chapter 23, Book I reads: ‘The real cause, however, I consider to be the one which was formally most kept out of sight. The growth of power of Athens, and the alarm which this inspired in Sparta, made the war inevitable’. For identifying the parameters of the ‘security dilemma’ in Thucydides’ analysis, see Doyle (1997).

11. By the time of this writing, the influence of US neoconservatives may have peaked, but their flagrant abuse of Thucydides in justifying the war against Iraq is worth remembering; see Mendelson (2004).

12. While it is impossible to establish the authorship, one of the first examinations is Herz (1950), and an important further elaboration is Jervis (1978).

13. A Google search on ‘Thucydides security dilemma’ produced 23,500 hits (31 December 2005). In the vast scholarly literature on the causes of the Peloponnesian War, Crane (1998) and Kagan (1969) developed useful arguments on its preventability, while de Ste. Croix (1972) provided a brilliant defence for the Athenian cause.

14. Lebow (2003: 105–112) also points out that translation may be partly responsible for making Thucydides more deterministic than he really was, since what is commonly understood as ‘the real cause’ should actually be interpreted as ‘the main precondition’.

15. Pericles’ confident and ultimately disastrous drive towards the war was possibly based on the understanding that time was working in favour of Athens (hence Sparta's pressure) but against him (he was in his mid-60s by the start of the war). Only his authority could have convinced the Athenians to adopt the revolutionary strategy of asymmetrical war that was praised so highly by Hans Delbrück (1990: 135–143). Donald Kagan (2003: 52–54) argues convincingly that Pericles’ sound military strategy was incompatible with his diplomatic strategy of deterrence.

16. As Raymond Garthoff (1994: 765), one of the keenest observers of those strategic trade-offs, put the matter: ‘while the Soviet leaders in the mid-1980s were genuinely worried about a situation arising in which they would have to increase spending to offset an American strategic antiballistic missile defense, that prospect and that concern diminished’.

17. On the security profile of the Baku–Tbilisi–Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline, see Roberts (2004) and Starr and Cornell (2005); balanced and penetrating analysis of the Nagorno Karabakh conflict can be found in De Waal (2003). The new guidelines set by President Ilham Aliyev with the opening of the BTC pipeline according to which Azerbaijan's military expenditures would be raised to match the whole state budget of Armenia confirm Erevan's worst suspicions (Lenta 2005).

18. In a now-famous interview with Le Nouvel Observateur, Zbigniew Brzezinski (1998) claimed credit for setting this trap; for in-depth research, see Westad (1997).

19. Turning the ‘battle for Ukraine’ into a decisive political contest, Putin's regime put its own survival in jeopardy, since, as Yegor Gaidar noted, ‘the emergence of a functioning democracy on our borders—not in Finland or Estonia but in Ukraine—in a historic perspective means a death sentence for the model of closed democracy in Russia’ (cited in Hrabry 2005).

20. At the Istanbul summit of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) in December 1999, Yeltsin agreed to close two bases by July 2001 and to negotiate the withdrawal from two other bases. The Vasiani base near Tbilisi was indeed evacuated by mid-2001. The issue is explored by Devdariani (2005: 190–195).

21. In tense negotiations with Georgia in early 2005, Russia insisted on inserting a special clause in the ‘good neighbourhood’ treaty that would prohibit Georgia from hosting foreign bases on Georgian territory as a precondition for Russia's withdrawing its own (Vartanian & Paspadian 2005).

22. Arkady Moshes (2006) argued that this minor conflict established a broad consolidation in Ukraine on the platform of moving away from Russia: ‘Tuzla provoked a major split between Ukraine and Russia caused by Russian actions’.

23. Quoted in Gaddis (1982: 4). Following much the same logic, Stalin for a long time suspected Churchill of deliberate procrastination in opening the ‘second front’ against Germany in order to weaken the USSR, being aware that communism was only slightly the lesser of two evils in the eyes of his ally; see Zubok and Pleshakov (1996).

24. The strategy of balancing is closely linked to the idea of balance of power and so is thoroughly examined in every possible nuance; see, for instance, Jervis and Snyder (1991). On ‘buck-passing’, see Posen (1992); an elaborate comparison of these two strategies can be found in Mearsheimer (2001).

25. While it is possible that the end of the book has been lost or was never written owing to the death of the author, Kaplan (2002: 135) ventures a guess that Thucydides stopped writing since ‘the sheer complexity of political and military developments in the Greek archipelago may have become too much of a burden for him’.

26. This type of ‘bandwagoning’ in search of profit is described in Schweller (1994).

27. This understanding of the ‘security dilemma’ is elaborated in Glaser (1997).

28. Thucydides describes how Argos, which benefited from neutrality in the first phase of the war, began building anti-Spartan alliances during the Peace of Nicias: ‘Argos came in to the plan all the more readily because she saw that the war with Sparta was inevitable, her treaty with Sparta being on the point of expiring; and also because she hoped to gain the supremacy of the Peloponnesus’ (V.28.2).

29. This interaction of security and predatory motives is examined in Snyder and Jervis (1999); for an analysis of real and perceived offensive advantages, see Posen (1993) and Van Evera (1984).

30. On the tensions related to the withdrawal of the Russian military base in Akhalkalaki, see Lieven (2001).

31. This conflict and Russia's role in its transformation are thoroughly analyzed in Antonenko (2005) and Zürcher et al. (2005); my earlier analysis can be found in Baev (1997).

32. The first comparative research on Russian peacekeeping was Jonson and Archer (1996); my initial examination of this pattern can be found in Baev (1994); it is elaborated in Baev (1996).

33. The famous ‘march on Pristina’ conducted by a Russian peacekeeping unit deployed in Bosnia and Herzegovina marked the last desperate attempt to employ military instruments; see Allison (2004: 147).

34. It is slightly disconcerting for reflections on present-day events that the ‘model democracy’ of Ancient Greece was unable to rely on its unique ‘soft power’ for building a stable alliance but had to enforce strict discipline by the threat of severe punishment; for concise analysis, see Lebow (2003: 122–123).

35. Graham (1983) has argued that the refusal to honour the mother-city constituted a shocking breach of political norms.

36. For a sound conceptual framework, see Coppieters and Sakwa (2003); my early attempt at systematizing the European experiences is in Baev (1999).

37. For a thoughtful and impartial analysis, see Kolstoe (1995: 112–120).

38. Systematic analysis of causes and driving forces in these conflicts, as well as the war in Abkhazia, can be found in Zürcher et al. (2005).

39. The trajectory of these ‘statelike entities’ is convincingly examined in King (2001).

40. Evangelista (2002) has thoroughly researched the issue of a possible ‘domino effect’ triggered by Chechnya's secession, concluding that by the end of 1990s no other Russian region was remotely interested in following that example.

41. The corroding impact of this failure to stabilize the North Caucasus on the credibility of Putin's regime is analyzed in Latynina (2005); for my recent research, see Baev (2006).

42. A good example of current Russian political thinking on Kaliningrad is Kortunov (2004); EU perspectives are presented in Baxendale et al. (2000).

43. The prevalence of the geopolitical logic was particularly obvious in the emotional debates that followed the crash of a Russian fighter in Lithuania in September 2005 (Felgengauer 2005).

44. Generations of scholars have argued about the material elements of that power, from the size of the population of Athens to that of its navy, since the absence of this data (particularly in comparison with the meticulous attention given to the forces engaged in every small campaign) weakened the convincing force of the key argument about the shift of the power balance against Sparta. Franz Mehring (2000: 30) complained that he would gladly exchange ‘a dozen of his military and siege stories for a short chapter on the economic development of Athens during Pericles rule’.

45. In the latter case, the ‘orange revolution’ was by no means a disaster for the country, but the Russian interference, driven in no small part by the logic of the security dilemma, resulted in a humiliating failure.

46. I am grateful to Jon Elster for this point.