Quick Take: Why Do Liberal States Dream of World Conquest?
The importance of understanding Sparta, and China
The Peloponnesian War pitting Athens against Sparta is remarkable because of many reasons, not least the fact that it was the world’s first conflict between what we (in modern parlance) would describe as a “liberal” state and an “authoritarian” state.
Of course, Sparta was far, far from being a “Fascist” state under any recognized definition of Fascism. But Sparta certainly was not a democracy either, under any recognized definition of that term either, while Athens proudly was one.
It’s worth reflecting on a few facts about the war: that is was started by the “liberal” state; that the “authoritarian” state twice offered peace with no repercussions or indemnities, and it was twice rejected by the “liberal” state; that the vast majority of war crimes and massacres during the war were committed by the “liberal” state; that it was the “liberal” state that pushed for total war, including the expulsion of the authoritarian state from international institutions such as they existed at the time (the Olympic Games); that the “liberal” state eventually lost and, when it did, the “authoritarian” state accepted a remarkably generous peace settlement that didn’t involve military occupation and, when this settlement was breached by the “liberal” state, the “authoritarian” state preferred to ignore the issue and to avoid resuming a highly destructive war between Greeks.
These are all facts that I discussed at length in multiple posts, so I won’t detail them here:
Those are the facts. One can put on them whichever lipstick one wants but the truth is that it sounds very much like the “liberal” state, Athens, was very, very much inclined to war, while the allegedly hyper-militaristic Sparta behaved throughout like pretty reluctant almost-hippy peace lovers.
This is something that we see consistently throughout history. The truth is that in history there’s only been four kinds of states with real ambitions of global domination at whichever scale they could achieve: and the first group is liberal states like the Roman Republic, the British Empire or the US, with “values” or “ideas” that they present as superior to others (and may actually be superior to other, at least some times). You know, they hate us because of our freedoms!
The other three groups are religion-driven states convinced that they must save everybody else’s soul or else, like the Spanish or the early Islamic empires; states led by charismatic, ambitious conquerors like Napoleon’s France or Alexander’s Macedon; and racist, or at least ethnic-based polities like Genghis’ Mongols or Nazi Germany.
There are no other examples of states that have even attempted, even taken the very first few steps towards global domination. Persia under the empire’s founder Cyrus may be said to have been akin to Alexander’s Macedon, but any dreams of world domination died with Cyrus: even his most ambitious successors, like Darius, were more interested in well-defended borders.
Outside of the Eurasian core, no Chinese empire ever really seriously attempted to project power much beyond China’s borders, and the same can be said of even the most successful and powerful Indian states. In the Americas, every powerful polity that ever existed, from the Toltecs to the Incas, had limited horizons and was surrounded by huge chunks of terrain that they didn’t intend to conquer under any circumstances.
The Maya, arguably more warlike than any Eurasian power that ever existed, killed each other with abandon and clockwork regularity, and yet never made any attempt to conquer central Mexico or much beyond modern Honduras, finding the whole idea pointless. All known states in Sub-Saharan Africa have behaved similarly, no matter their militaristic instincts.
The root of much liberal hate towards long-dead Sparta is perfectly rational, in that one shouldn’t present Sparta as any sort of example for a liberal, expansionist power like the US or the olden British Empire: because Sparta was not expansionist at all, and was indeed very content with its small niche in south Greece and a thin string of allies/subjects to protect itself from well-meaning, blood-thirsty Athenian and later Theban liberals, thank you very much.
It’s important to grasp this context when one uses history to understand our present predicament. For example: when I hear from people concerned about the “rise of China,” their assumption always boils down to a very Athenian “you know, the moment we stop punching them in the face, they’re gonna start punching us in the face.”
That’s a pretty dim view of human relations that perfectly peaceful people often applies to international relations, and it’s a very widespread one — even though the Spartans, like I just explained, left the Athenians alone after their war. In a recent political debate held in China, the distinguished
made a key point that leaves his mostly Chinese audience shocked: that the US is seeking to stop China from becoming a regional hegemon because it’s self-evident, according to broadly accepted theories of international relations, that once China becomes a regional hegemon with no threats in its backyard it will aspire to global dominance of the kind the US enjoys today (or used to enjoy until 2022).You can see the whole debate here, in Bili Bili (the Chinese Youtube), with the discussion I just cited starting around the minute 70. Interestingly, Mearsheimer’s debating partner Yan Xuetong (阎学通) responds, in a very Chinese way, that even the word “hegemon” is tainted with negativity in the Chinese language.
People who don’t know a great deal of Chinese history know about Zheng He, the Chinese 15th century admiral who took a big fleet of high-tech Chinese ships to eastern Africa, got some trinkets and souvenirs there, and sailed back to China to report that, yeah, Africa is cool and all, but it didn’t really have anything that China needed desperately. So the Chinese shut down the route and never strayed into Africa again for half a millennium.
Every time I heard (or more commonly, read) this story told by a Westerner, it was in a derisive tone, often shaking their heads: those Chinese, so stupid, they had these great ships, could have plundered the Africans blind before we even got there and didn’t. It’s perhaps the time to pause and reflect that not everyone on the planet shares the same mindset.
Fair critique. Much of what I write about China's geostrategic ideals and practices is paywalled, I may have to do a follow-up regarding that.
About Communism, on the other hand, it's just no longer a thing in China. The country is Communist like United Kingdom is a Kingdom: yes, there's a king; no, nobody pays any attention to him, and he's irrelevant.
Words like "democracy", "authoritarian", "state", and "empire" are frequently used as categories for comparative purposes in historical narratives. This is problematic because the placement of a particular entity in a category can easily be contested. Instances: Do states that are monarchies with aristocracy owning significant inherited properties qualify as democracies? (England?) Are states that exclude or grossly limit participation of some residents democracies? (The US prior to the voting rights act?) (Isreal today?) Is there a deeply democratic state anywhere on Earth? My takeaway from Mr. Roman's narrative is to question the meaning and value of the construction "liberal democracy." Certainly, very contestable. The problems of categorization that I am raising suggest to me that the "liberal democracy" category may not be the useful category in which to put the offending nation states.