James A.
Andrews Structure and process and the
causes of the Peloponnesian War
International
Relations scholars working in the realist tradition have
often claimed Thucydides as the first writer in that
tradition (Viotti & Kauppi 1999). Contemporary
neorealists have found in the ancient Athenian a
scientist with theoretical moorings in certain axiomatic
beliefs: the primacy of states as actors, the anarchy of
international relations, the primacy of power and
security in human motivation, and the state's rational
calculation of self-interest. They have also found in his
famous pronouncement about the "truest cause" that sort
of structural determinism which sometimes is said to
characterize their own theories about growth of power,
systemic disequilibrium, and war. Thucydides, when he
speaks of the growth in Athenian power causing Spartan
fear and making war inevitable, becomes "the first
political scientist" to take note of the connection
between differential growth of power among states and
hegemonic war (R. Gilpin 1981). The problem with all
this, says R.N. Lebow 1991, is that Thucydides' statement
about the truest cause "is contradicted by evidence from
(his) own narrative. This indicates that war was neither
inevitable nor primarily the result of Spartan fear of
Athens." The narrative in fact discloses the important
role of "the remarkably bad judgments made by the leaders
of the several involved powers." But that is not all. The
narrative also forces us to see the explanatory limits of
structural realism (i.e. distribution-of-power
structuralism) and to show greater appreciation for other
aspects of state- and system-structure, and in particular
for the effect on these structures of "process," i.e.
"patterns of interaction" such as those arising from
"communication and cooperation" (Keohane and Nye 1977).
D.
Garst 1989 similarly stresses the limitations of
structural realism, faulting it for "its inability to
account for the speeches and debates." Citing J.B. White
1984, Garst stresses the need, when dealing with
Thucydides' work, to "unravel its "'complex rhetorical
universe' and 'culture of argument,' consisting of the
'discourse, the conventions of argument and action' by
which the Greek city-states 'maintain and regulate their
relations with one another'." This culture of argument is
a culture shared by all the Greek states and as such
constitutes a mode "communication and cooperation," one
which establishes a "pattern of interaction."
This
paper studies ways in which diplomatic and foreign policy
speeches exhibit the rhetorical use of shared political
ideology. To understand this ideology, we must begin with
the rhetoric of Athenian domestic politics, focusing our
attention on the position of such concepts as freedom,
equality, personal prestige, distributive justice, and
pleonexia within the Athenians' democratic ideology.
These same concepts, when viewed in the context of Greek
interstate diplomacy and negotiation, may help us
understand how communication processes contributed at
least as much to the outbreak of war as did structure and
concerns about distribution of power.