The very purpose of strategy is, after all, to translate violent behavior into political effects and, to do so, violence needs to be channeled and controlled. The time and space of conflicts are also defined by the attempts, not always successful to be sure, to contain and circumscribe them. Take, as a timely example, World War I: it begun on a specific date (28 July 1914 when Austro-Hungary declared war on Serbia, followed by a cascade of declarations of war in the following week) it was fought in well defined geographic theater, and the Western Front in particular was a thick bloody line separating combatants it also had a clear conclusion (11 November 1918, the day of the Armistice, followed by its formal end on 28 June 1919). The impression one receives from studying the past two or three centuries of international politics is that strategic interactions among states, and war as their violent expression, are defined by clear geographic boundaries, are marked by precise dates delimiting the beginning and the end of a period of violence or of peace, and can be mitigated by traditional tools of statecraft such as diplomacy or deterrence. What ancient history can show us is, in some ways, the flip side of the lessons of modern history, which imbue the study of international relations in general, and of war in particular.
It will demand recurrent offensives to mitigate rather than eliminate the threat. As in ancient history, the future may see prolonged low-level conflicts that cannot be resolved through negotiations or through a decisive application of force. These features result in strategic landscape characterized by unstable frontiers and the necessity of using constant force to manage them. I examine here reasons for this different – ancient and, I suggest, future – security environment, focusing on the proliferation of lethality and on the pursuit of violence as a source of social cohesion, suggesting parallels with current trends. The length, the place, and the purpose of violence were different in ancient times, and we ought to start looking at current and future strategic challenges through the lens of ancient, rather than exclusively modern, history. The security landscape we face is, in fact, acquiring tints of ancient times, characterized by proliferation of lethality, the pursuit of violence as a social glue, and the existence of unstable frontiers. We have to move farther back in time and study ancient history to find more appropriate parallels. Modern history does not offer many analogies for such security conditions.
Instead of well-demarcated states jousting for influence and power by waging wars and engaging in diplomacy, we see fierce groups rising in ungoverned areas, revelling in violence and eschewing negotiated settlements. We analyze international relations through the lens of modern history, and as a result we remain puzzled in front of current strategic realities that have no apparent historical equivalents. © Papadimitriou | – Greek Ancient Alike Plaque At Great Alexander Monument, Greece Photo
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