Critical Security in the Twenty-First Century: The Resonating Voices of Thucydides

Abstract

What makes Thucydides' work so relevant for global politics today is the analytic of how the story is told. Three points stand out. First, “The Peloponnesian war” features a momentous epistemological jump. Second, his work is not subject to the stultifying shackles of ideological boundaries. Finally, the unraveling of the 27-year epic war is told through a multitude of competing voices that evokes the reader to interpret the text's ultimate meaning.

Keywords:

• Thucydides
• critical security
• global politics theory
• post-modern reread

Notes

¹See Thucydides (1996, 93). For another good translation of Thucydides, see Thucydides (1998).

²Beyond other works cited here, for further discussions of the significance of Thucydides' work, see Bruell (1974), Cartwright (1997), Connor (1977), Crane (1998), Croix (1981), Edmunds (1975), Kagan (1969), Lebow (2001), Orwin (1994), Rawlings (1981), Reeve (1999), Sears (1977), Singer (1999), Stadter (1973), and Workman ( 2001).

³For a discussion of interpretations of Thucydides in the realist tradition, and with an emphasis on points such as objectivity, see, for example, Bagle (1994), Doyle (1990), Monten (2006), and Forde (1995).

⁴Regarding complexity theory and ecocide, see Homer-Dixon (1996, 2006).

⁵For a broader discussion of the RMA, see: Latham (1999), Gat (1989), Krepinevich (1994), Dartness (1999), Dokubo (2000), Metz (2000), and Rochlin (2007).

⁶See, for example, Armijo (2007) and Georgieva (2006).

⁷See Rochlin (2003) and the webpage of the Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional, www.ezln.org.

⁸For another look at Thucydides' use of language, see Lebow (2001, 548, 555).

⁹See chapter 2 of Rochlin (2007).

¹⁰See for example Athens' fear of revolt within its empire (Thucydides 1996, 309). For a broader discussion of these, see Garst (1989).

¹¹See, for example, Amorosos (2008). See also UNASUR's website, www.pptunasur.com.

¹²See Brown University's Eisenhower Research Project, “Costs of war,” http://costsofwar.org.

¹³The discussion of alliances in relation to the causation of war is most apparent in Book One, where Thucydides shows how subordinate powers lured Athens and Sparta into war.

¹⁴See Sun Tzu (1998), Khaldun (1987), and Khadduri (1966).