Discover more from Life in the 21st Century
Democracy and War (III)
History of the Peloponnesian War is both a magnificent work of history and politics, certainly any great history is by definition invaluable politics. There is so much to be gained from this work its impossible to narrow down, but two things are particularly relevant for contemporary politics. Athens democracy was as warlike as any other political system and excessive belligerence repeatedly led the Athenians to refuse peace when it was in their best interests.
While America notably holds up this tradition of democratic militarism, a couple distinct differences are important to point out. Most important is American institutional war power compared to Athens. Athens was very much a citizen army, including the election of generals. This made both Athens’ and Rome’s militaries distinct from other ancient political orders in regards to standing professional armies. For most of Athens' and Rome's existences, the citizenry was expected to supply their own weaponry. The idea behind America's Second Amendment has ancient roots if no equivalence in contemporary practice.
As noted, the establishment of Athens' navy created a reliable war-ready block in the Assembly. Yet, neither Athens or Rome had any institutions remotely comparable to America's unaccountable National Security State comprised of; a standing professional army, gargantuan weapons industry, and an entrenched massive bureaucracy unceasingly promoting perpetual war while spending well over a trillion dollars a year. Despite their consuming militarism, neither Athens or Rome is precedent. America's National Security State's tradition is closer to monarchy and tyranny.
The other difference is the militarism of the demos. The Athenian people were always ready for battle. They were proud of the empire they had created and eager to gain any benefits from expansion. They were also very much active participants of every war. When they voted to engage, it was those voting who did the fighting and the paying.
Maybe nothing can be more strikingly different from America today. Where the vast majority of voters, their representatives, and the bureaucracy of the National Security State see no engagement with the wars they support. Indeed, the last war to have a relatively larger representation of the population, Vietnam, became so unpopular the National Security State ended the citizen draft and has since relied on an increasingly professional army and larger and larger groups of mercenaries, both supported by extremely expensive, overwhelming technological superiority.
There is also a genuine difference in the militarism of the people. Athenian militarism was very much part of ancient culture. While American militarism requires constant stoking and is unfortunately too easily provoked by the incessant war-propaganda of the Security State. Compared to Athens, American history consistently reveals a less bellicose demos, distinctly exemplified in the people's initial opposition to getting involved in both World War I and II.
The American, using that most offensive recently devised National Security marketing term, homeland, has not seen war in over a century and half. Perceived foreign threats are continuously manufactured through a thick atmosphere of ignorance, fear, and paranoia. War's always great costs in blood, money, and sacrifice are hidden and shifted, again in stark contrast to Athens where all three were immediately and constantly shouldered by the collective citizenry.
Lust for violence has deep roots in human culture, certainly far deeper than the two and half millennia democratic tradition. The civilizations preceding Athens in the region, such as the Egyptians, Hittites, Sumerians, all viewed military conquests essential. It is the same looking at the ancient civilizations of China, India, indeed all of Asia, the Americas, and Africa.
Military conquest became institutional with the the imperative of controlling land made necessary by the Agrarian Revolution. For hundreds of thousands of years preceding homo sapiens literal planting, controlling land offered less advantage to migratory populations. Not to in anyway suggest violence was previously absent from the human condition, but it was with the establishment of agriculture, militarism as an organized social, political and institutional force became a primary method for humanity to gain wealth.
Over thousands of years, the association of specific populations with specific areas of land created separate cultural identities, resulting in their disassociation from other peoples of other lands, even with those quite geographically close. Across the planet distinct cultures rose. Each one of these cultures looked at themselves as exceptional, inevitably viewing others as threats, which in fact they often were. For every culture the rules of interaction inside the society differed vastly from the rules of dealing with the outside — foreigners or as the Greeks called all others, barbarians.
Technology created the institutional militarism of the Agrarian Era. Today, these institutions and cultural traditions remain firmly entrenched. In the past two-centuries, industrialism and now newer quantum technologies have rolled over and completely reshaped the landscape, fascinatingly enough, both lacked great political innovation — the corporation and representative republicanism maybe the great exceptions. However, in the last fifty years, American militarism has resulted in more complex results than the past’s simple gains from land conquests. Looking at Central America, the Middle East, and now the Ukraine, the last decades of US militarism incurred the subdued regions devastatingly high, unending costs, alongside growing, though ignored and unaccounted costs for the United States. Conquering of territory is no longer the wealth generator of the past, in fact it increasingly becomes a burden for the conquered and conqueror.
All technology bestows certain political characteristics. Agrarian technology instituted the land defined civilizations we know across most of recorded history. In the last two-centuries, industrial technologies transcended many long established agrarian processes and values. Newer technologies create both an older or renewed sense of immediate locality, alongside for the first time a radically new identity, an understanding, despite every older cultural identity, all homo sapiens share an existential relation to the planet.
Understanding the undeniable equality of each and every person in this relationship, along with the potential apocalyptic destruction of contemporary weaponry, one political solution presents itself – democracy. For while historically, democracy offered no advantage in peaceful relations amongst states, it has indisputably proved capable of nonviolent internal politics among enfranchised equals. If there is one scientific, cultural, political, and moralistic imperative of the 21st century it is understanding the essential need of democracy for a species searching to contend with an increasingly shrinking planet.
# # #
Happy Birthday Martin
“Through our scientific and technological genius, we’ve made of this world a neighborhood. And now through our moral and ethical commitment, we must make of it a brotherhood. We must all learn to live together as brothers—or we will all perish together as fools.” - Dr. Martin Luther King Jr
Subscribe to Life in the 21st Century
History, Science, Energy, Technology, Environment, and Civilization