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Yomiuri Shimbun
25-04-2025
- Politics
- Yomiuri Shimbun
Trump's ‘Might Makes Right' Upends World Order
'We both know that, in this world, the question of what is right only matters between equals. Otherwise, the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.' So spoke a delegation from ancient Athens to the people of Melos, according to Thucydides in his book, 'The History of the Peloponnesian War.' Athens, the prototype for democracy, was seeking the submission of the small Aegean island in the 5th-century-B.C. war. 'You should not destroy what protects us both, the privilege of being allowed in danger to invoke what is fair and right, and even to profit by arguments that fall a little short of the mark. This is in your interest as much as it is in anyone's,' the Melians reply to the delegation. This dialogue resembles to some degree the recent White House confrontation between U.S. President Donald Trump and his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Trump and the Athenian delegation share in the conviction that might makes right. Democracy, as long as it values free competition, induces a belief that might is the only political reality. Both Trump and the ancient Athenians apparently want to argue that, in negotiations, the weak countries should always accede to the strong countries. They also seem to maintain that conflicts occur because the weak insist on their territorial rights despite lacking in capabilities. The Melians patiently explain to the Athenian delegation that when countries share common values, the strong should use their might wisely and show compassion for the weak countries, where many people are less fortunate. However, Trump, who values dealmaking, appears to favor Russian President Vladimir Putin, who believes that strength is justice, over Zelenskyy, even though the Ukrainian leader holds similar values to the United States. Reviving territorial ambitions Trump has announced his plan for the United States to 'take over' and 'own' the war-torn Gaza Strip so as to bring an end to decades of strife and develop the territory into a casino resort. It has also been learned that the U.S. government approached South Sudan and Somalia and considered Albania and Indonesia as potential hosts for the relocation of the 2.2 million Palestinians in Gaza. However, Trump's plan to convert Gaza into a resort, which threatens Palestinians' right to self-determination and undermines the dignity of the Arab world, has made Saudi Arabia, the leader of the Arab world, think twice about the U.S.-backed initiative for Riyadh to join hands with Israel to create an axis against Iran. Trump has thrown out more ideas, saying that he wants Canada to become the 51st U.S. state; that the United States should purchase Greenland; and that he wants to 'take back' the Panama Canal — which the United States formerly controlled through a lease. He seems to be trying to revive 19th-century-style territorial imperialism. But his approach to 'making America great again' is unexpectedly peaceful, and is more like a property transaction. The United States has a history of expanding its territory by cutting treaty-based deals for land. This includes the purchase of the Louisiana territory in 1803 from France for $15 million, and the 1867 purchase of Alaska from Russia for $7.2 million. If Trump is considering acquiring Greenland and the Gaza Strip through purchases similar to those made in the past for land, it will not be enough to simply ridicule his ideas as the thinking of a real estate mogul. Trump's approach resembles that of Athenian statesman Alcibiades. The ancient Athenian tended to unsettle the people around him because he ignored and even deviated from customs, in a manner akin to a tyrant. And yet, Alcibiades still emerged as a darling of Greek democracy as Pericles, a statesman who advanced Athenian democracy, and the philosopher Socrates protected him. Just as Alcibiades boldly made friends with Sparta, the enemy of ancient Athens, as well as with the Persian Empire, Trump does not hesitate to accommodate the demands of Putin and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu by ignoring Ukrainians' and Palestinians' right to exist. When Athens dispatched a military expedition to Sicily, Alcibiades dreamed of a massive Mediterranean campaign in which he would conquer Carthage (present-day Tunisia) and Libya, before laying siege to the Italian and Peloponnese peninsulas. (Sparta was located on the Peloponnese.) Thucydides characterized Alcibiades' political style as that of an 'unprincipled rogue.' Somehow, I'm reminded of Trump. In a 2020 speech, Trump declined to stress such common values as freedom and justice, but instead declared, 'We have rejected globalism and embraced patriotism.' What new kind of international order will emerge should the United States purchase Greenland to keep Russian control of the Arctic in check, take control of the Panama Canal, whose key ports are operated by a Hong Kong-based company, and acquire the Gaza Strip, which has received military aid from Iran? There is no answer for this question. All I can envision is a gloomy sense of nihilism, a world in which there are no shared values or universal norms. Not a true conservative In any case, Trump can hardly be called an authentic conservative. His decision to exempt Russia from his tariff measures but slap China with significant tariffs can be called audaciously destructive and revolutionary. And recall that those who carried out the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol without any hesitation were Trump supporters. Trump's political tactics clearly have some elements of destruction and revolution, which are ill-suited to democracy. Given Trump's excessive support for Israel, he cannot be considered an isolationist. And given his trust in Putin, he cannot be called anti-communist or neoconservative. (Neoconservatives advocate for democracy.) One critic has labeled Trump a 'sovereignist,' linking him to a group of Republican senators who blocked the United States from joining the League of Nations in 1919. Indeed, what best symbolizes his political stance is his series of orders withdrawing America from United Nations organizations and multilateral agreements. For example, he has signed an executive order to pull the United States out of the U.N. Human Rights Council, and pause funding for the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), alleging it is a haven for terrorists. Trump's nihilistic view that might makes right has allowed Netanyahu and Putin to feel increasingly confident in their high-handed policies. In the Gaza Strip, more than 50,000 people have been killed. In Ukraine, people in both urban and rural areas have been killed. The conclusion drawn from these atrocities is that indiscriminate and ruthless tactics are the only effective ones, a typical example of nihilism. Netanyahu has prioritized military campaigns to destroy Hamas over the release of hostages in order to protect himself, widening divisions in Israel while allowing the deaths of hostages in the Gaza Strip. Gaza is also growing more divided. Residents there have staged demonstrations five times since late March to protest against Hamas for its continued armed struggle and disregard for the lives of ordinary citizens. However, once Hamas disappears, there will be no central organization in Gaza to continue resistance to Israel, a situation that will make it easier for Israel to expel Gaza's civilians en masse and reoccupy the territory. This is the paradox that lies at the heart of the tragedy. Even with the death of family members having become an everyday occurrence, Trump is unlikely to abandon his nihilism. For people in Gaza and Ukraine who have no outlet for their anger or sadness, the following passage from the Maqamat al-Hariri, a collection of Arabic stories, may express something they too have felt: 'If luck of time has not turned its back on me, I wish it would let me and my children leave this bitter world. Should only my children die, leaving me bereaved of them, I would be tormented by pain and remorse and at a loss about where to go and what to do.' Masayuki Yamauchi Yamauchi is a special adviser to Fujitsu Future Studies Center Ltd., where he specializes in Middle Eastern and Islamic area studies and the history of international relations. He is also a professor emeritus at the University of Tokyo, where he previously headed the school's Center for Middle Eastern Studies, and a special visiting professor at Mohammed V University of Rabat in Morocco. He was a professor at Musashino University in Tokyo from 2018 to 2023. The original article in Japanese appeared in the April 20 issue of The Yomiuri Shimbun.
New York Times
07-03-2025
- Politics
- New York Times
What Is Trump's Worldview? Call It Neanderthal Realism.
The destruction of U.S.A.I.D. Threats to make Canada the 51st state. The humiliation of Ukraine. What is going on with U.S. foreign policy? Some see it as driven by President Trump's personal greed or fondness for dictators. Both might ring true, but neither tells the whole story. What matters most to Mr. Trump is not the wealth or ideology of a country but how powerful it is. He believes in dominating the weak and giving deference to the strong. It's a strategy as old as time. It's called realism. Don't get me wrong. So much of what Mr. Trump does abroad, like what he does at home, is ham-handed, shortsighted and cruel. But I also detect in his administration a recognition that the liberal international world order was possible only because of U.S. military might and that Americans don't want to pay the bill anymore. That's realism — a crude, unstrategic, 'Neanderthal realism,' as the political scientist Stephen Walt once called it — but a form of realism nonetheless. Realists see the world as a brutal, anarchic place. For them, security comes not from spreading the ideology of democracy and creating international laws that we then must enforce but from being the strongest bully on the block — and avoiding battles with other bullies. Mr. Trump wants to avoid a war with Russia. That means hardening our hearts to Ukraine's plight. The origin story of realism dates back to the Peloponnesian War, when Athens, a superpower of that era, laid siege to the island of Melos and announced that if its people didn't pledge their loyalty, the men would be slaughtered, the women and children enslaved and the island colonized. The Melians protested that Athens had no right to do that. Athens didn't care. Noble ideas are only as durable as the army enforcing them. The Athenians uttered the still famous line in Thucydides' history: 'The strong do what they can, and the weak suffer what they must.' If I'm honest, I probably would have bent my knee and lived to fight another day in secret resistance. But the leaders of Melos were braver than me. They chose to fight. The result? The men were slaughtered, the women and children were enslaved, and the island was colonized. Were they heroes or fools? If you think of them as heroes, you are a liberal internationalist, who believes that peace and security depend on just governments that abide by enlightened rules. If you think they were fools, you're a realist. Last week at the White House, Mr. Trump played the part of an Athenian. When he told President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine, 'You don't have the cards right now,' he was speaking of the country's strategic position, not of noble ideas or shared values. One reason this administration is so disorienting is that U.S. foreign policy has been guided for decades by the opposite of realism. The key fights in Washington, especially in recent decades, were between neocons who wanted to spread democracy through war and liberals who wanted to spread democracy through soft power like U.S.A.I.D. contracts to bolster civil society. For years, realist thinkers have been banished to academia or ignored. Hans Morgenthau, a major 20th-century political scientist who was one of the most famous realists of his generation, advised the Johnson administration not to expand the Vietnam War and was dismissed in 1965. George Kennan argued against NATO expansion in these pages in 1997, predicting that it would inflame Russian militarism and undermine Russian democracy. No one listened. Brent Scowcroft told President George W. Bush that invading Iraq would be a grave mistake. He was treated as an outsider after that. But in recent years, realism has been rising in Washington. Realist policy shops like the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, Defense Priorities and the Center for Analysis of U.S. Grand Strategy at the RAND Corporation have appeared. The 'realist' label is being thrown around to describe people across the new administration, such as Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and the director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard. One of the most important realist thinkers of this era, Elbridge Colby, is Mr. Trump's nominee for under secretary of defense for policy. 'We're entering into a new age of American realism,' Senator Eric Schmitt, Republican of Missouri, declared recently on Fox News. What's brought about this turn? In part, it is insecurity, the motivation of all bullies. Back when the United States was the world's unrivaled superpower, Americans could afford to use their military might to promote democracy, essentially ignoring China's interest in Taiwan and Russia's interest in Ukraine. Today Russia and China have hypersonic missiles that the U.S. military does not yet know how to counter effectively. China already has the ability to knock out U.S. satellites in space, destroying the GPS systems upon which the American military and our economy depend, and Russia is believed to be testing such weapons. Americans are not ready for a war with China. In fact, much of the industrial capacity needed to fight such a war is now in China, thanks to the naiveté of liberal internationalists who decided to make China the world's factory. Even so, the United States and its allies are stronger than Team Russia and China if they stand together. But a lot of Americans no longer want to fight with our allies for noble ideas overseas, especially after disastrous wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The question now is which flavor of realism Mr. Trump will embrace. Offensive realists like John Mearsheimer see war with China as a very real and deadly serious possibility and everything else as a distraction. Defensive realists argue that great powers should avoid doing things that trigger weaker states to build up their own strength. That's where Mr. Trump parts ways with many realists. No true realist would threaten to annex Canada, Gaza and Greenland, Mr. Walt told me. While Mr. Trump embraces some elements of realism — giving in to the strong and sacrificing the weak — his tariff wars and threats against peaceful neighbors could end up being as costly as the military adventurism of the previous liberal order. Rajan Menon, a professor emeritus at the City College of New York, told me that people who expect the Trump administration 'to follow the playbook of realism' by showing restraint 'are going to get very disappointed.' At the White House meeting, Mr. Zelensky reminded Mr. Trump that the war could hurt Americans, too, one day. 'You don't feel now, but you will feel it in the future,' Mr. Zelensky said. Mr. Trump took offense, retorting: 'You don't know that. Don't tell us what we are going to feel.' To Mr. Trump, America is a great power that Russia wouldn't dare attack, and Ukraine is a pawn that can be sacrificed. But here's the thing about great powers: They all decline eventually. Neanderthal realism doesn't save them. After Athens sacked Melos, word of its brutality spread. Its allies turned against it. Athens lost the war. Noble ideas, it turns out, do matter.
Chicago Tribune
06-03-2025
- Politics
- Chicago Tribune
Shadi Bartsch: The age-old debate behind the war in Ukraine
As Ukraine's president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, listened in increasing dismay to President Donald Trump's display of global whataboutism at the Oval Office on Feb. 28, it was clear he had not braced himself for the United States' foreign policy shift from self-professed global watchdog over the values of democracy and liberalism to hard-line international pragmatism. Zelenskyy's appeals — the few he was allowed to voice — were to principles of fairness and justice backed up by ideals: The strong should not invade the weak at will. The innocent should not die. Allies should not be suddenly judged on the criterion of: 'What's in it for us?' And victims, of course, should not be held up as aggressors. Who's surprised? It's an age-old debate. The political historian Thucydides anticipated the Trump-Zelenskyy conversation in detail in his 'History of the Peloponnesian War,' in which the islanders of Melos make a case for their freedom to Athens, which wants from them only surrender and tribute. The Melians have shown no aggression, but the Athenians need to build their empire up against Sparta. The context may be different, but the issue faced by the ancient Melian delegation is the same as that faced by Zelenskyy: How do you compel a more powerful body to observe what you, the weaker state, call the laws of justice, or fairness, or loyalty? Thucydides had his Melians try every argument a nation could. There is the argument from utility: It is more useful for you to treat us justly, lest others rebel against you. There is the argument from morality: The gods will punish you for these bad deeds. There is the golden rule: We have done nothing to you, so why do you turn on us? There is the argument from logic: The outcome of war is always uncertain, so why take this risk? There's the mention of allies. There's the argument Zelenskyy hinted at: Our enemy will come for you next. For each argument, the Athenians had an answer. Others will fear us, not rebel against us. The gods are fickle. A show of strength is necessary. Where are your allies now, Melians? And your odds of winning are miniscule. Don't be fools. Swallow your pride. Become a satellite state and pay tribute, or we will wipe you out. As Trump told Zelenskyy, 'You don't have the cards.' The Melians, cards or no cards, refused to give in. When the Athenians inevitably took over the island, they executed all the men and enslaved the women, then resettled the island with 500 Athenians. The U.S. is not at war with Ukraine, even if in allying ourselves with Russian President Vladimir Putin on this issue, we have become proxies for his worldview. Still, in both cases, we see the working of stark realpolitik pitted against a world that the West thought would last longer but is already starting to crumble — the world of mutually agreed-upon rules of behavior, of the post-World War II U.S., of the idealistic presence of the United Nations. The horrors of WWII were apparently enough to give us a 75-year boost in such beliefs. But that time is over, and we are back to the cruelties and injustices so visible in history — both ancient and modern. Can realpolitik ever be a winner? The answer is yes. But only temporarily. Nations rise and fall. Classical Athens would be surprised to see where she stands these days in the world order. Her gift to the rest of us was not a pile of dead Melians, but the historian who showed us that justice is not a utility, but a luxury of civilized nations. It is costly to maintain. It brings no reward except itself. It can be warped. And yet some nations — like the Melians — will perish for the principle. Will the Ukrainians? It remains to be seen.
Boston Globe
06-03-2025
- Politics
- Boston Globe
The ancient Greeks realized a sad fact about bullies like Trump
Get The Gavel A weekly SCOTUS explainer newsletter by columnist Kimberly Atkins Stohr. Enter Email Sign Up It's probably the most famous statement of the belief that in international affairs 'might makes right.' Advertisement It was hard not to think about this brazen proclamation from the Athenian generals as one watched the Trump administration's handling of the Ukrainian war. First, there were the talks in Saudi Arabia in which the Americans and the Russians negotiated Ukraine's future Then there was Trump's breathtaking formulation of an alternative history in which Ukraine instigated the war with Russia and the Ukrainian leader, Volodymyr Zelensky, was a dictator for failing to hold elections in the midst of war. Next, there was the 'deal' Senator Lindsey Graham orchestrated, in which the Ukrainians would give up valuable natural resources to the Americans in order for the Trump administration to take Ukrainian interests seriously in the negotiations to end the war. And finally, there was the humiliating dressing down in the Oval Office on Feb. 28, during which President Trump and Vice President JD Vance ganged up on President Zelensky, demanding expressions of gratitude and telling the Ukrainian leader that he simply did not have the political strength — 'the cards' — to resist what amounted to an unconditional surrender to the Russians. Advertisement What are the consequences of this understanding of international relations, espoused by the Athenians and the Trump administration, where force dictates law and strength determines truth? For one thing, it encourages Vladimir Putin to engage in further acts of belligerence. After all, once he sees that there is no pushback to his expansionist adventures from the Americans (and not much more than an anemic response from the Europeans), what is there to hold the Russians back from reprising their murderous Ukraine rampage in some of the Baltic states? Second, dismissing the idea of an international rule of law, or what is sometimes called the 'rules-based international order,' encourages would-be bullies, calculating the costs of their own aggressive designs, to get off the fence. What conclusions did the Chinese draw about the prospects of invading Taiwan as they watched the deep American curtsy to Russian authoritarianism? What lessons did the North Koreans take regarding their relationship with the South? And, of course, this view of international relations makes a mockery of the ideas of sovereignty and respect for national self-determination, precepts that it took two world wars and many tens of millions of lives to cement. But beyond these ramifications, it might be interesting to go back to the fifth century BC and pay heed to the desperate warnings that the Melians imparted to the Athenians before the Melians made their last stand. Claims of justice, the Melians reminded the Athenians, benefit everyone. They are a 'common protection.' The big wheel could turn, the Athenians might find themselves weaker in the future, and then their present cruelty 'would be a signal for the heaviest vengeance and an example for the world to meditate upon.' Advertisement A day might come, in other words, when the Athenians would wish that they had taken the protections of justice more seriously, when they would wish they could invoke them in their own self-defense. But by then it would be too late, and all those who suffered under their domination would be pleased to kick them as they fell. Further, what would neutral observers of the international scene take away from Athens's behavior toward Melos? Weren't the Athenians just sowing mistrust all around them? Thucydides writes that the Melians asked, 'How can you avoid making enemies of all existing neutrals [who will worry that] one day or another you will attack them?' Athens's cynical view of international relations created unnecessary suspicion, dissuaded others from collaborating with the powerful city-state, and increased the chances that observers would rejoice in its downfall. How could all that amount to protecting self-interest? The Athenian behavior and the behavior of the Trump administration, the Melians seem to be telling us over the expanse of the centuries, is shortsighted. You can get away with it for a while, but the conviction that might makes right presumes that power lasts forever. It doesn't. The Melians decided to fight and were wiped out. But 12 years later, the Athenians, after several more displays of overconfidence culminating in a ruinous expedition to Sicily, surrendered to the Spartans on humiliating terms. Their navy was decimated, the walls of their city torn down, their democracy disbanded. Athens lived on as an intellectual powerhouse for a while, but it never recovered political power. Many in the Trump administration bemoan the erosion of classical education and are keen on restoring the great works of Western civilization. They might want to read their Thucydides. Advertisement
