The Classics Rock

BY JAKUB GRYGIEL
Is the study of classical history pointless? What useful knowledge will I glean from reading about some dead Roman governor of Britain? How will studying what the Delphic oracle had to say about the Persian advance into Greece help me in my future job at the State Department?

I hear such questions often in my seminar on Thucydides and other classical writers, which I teach at Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies in Washington. My students -- future policymakers, pundits, and managers -- approach the class with a good dose of skepticism about the value (aside from mere amusement) of reading about ancient times. Thucydides's history of the Peloponnesian War -- in particular the Melian Dialogue, a quintessential tale of the small, neutral Melians defending themselves against the strong Athenians -- is relatively common reading among budding wonks. But Tacitus, Herodotus, Julius Caesar, Plutarch? Most students favor the latest tome on the rise of China over the insights of these long-dead writers.

My students' predilections reflect a wider skepticism about the present-day relevance of old texts. For modern academics and policy analysts, ancient authors are guilty of adopting an unscientific approach, relying on anecdotes, and showing a primitive fear of natural events. What good does it do the reader to know that before battle the Romans often consulted a pullarius, a chicken-feeding augur? Such texts say nothing about modern life, critics say, and certainly will not help one get a job at Goldman Sachs or the Pentagon. The ancients were not worried about the movement of the IS and LS curves.

But that's precisely the point. Reading Thucydides's description of the revolution in Corcyra, Tacitus's praise of Agricola, or Julius Caesar's tale of Vercingetorix's uprising is refreshing because these works do not simplify human affairs to logical models. These books are full of contrasts and contradictions, showing above all that not everything can be understood. Human affairs cannot be fully understood through a single lens, whether politics or economics; we are often at the mercy of incomprehensible and uncontrollable forces. Events can sometimes only be appreciated when taken as they are.

With that understanding, let me relate 11 ancient lessons relevant to today's world.

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1. Superstition bests logic. Today's leaders, like those of ancient times, do not think exclusively in terms of gains and losses, balance sheets, costs and benefits, and legal constraints. Rather they are moved by hearsay, superstitions, and dreams. Consider, for instance, the Athenian general Nicias, who spent more time in divination than pondering how to extricate his troops from Sicily. He took a fateful decision to stay at Syracuse because of a nocturnal eclipse of the moon and ended up being executed by the Sicilians.

2. Theology is far more important than economics. People are humans, not cash registers. And humans, even today, tend to hold strong beliefs about the Supreme Being, eternity, and what happens when you drink the waters of the Lethe River. They act here and now on the basis of those beliefs. Many will be led to great sacrifices, incomprehensible to those without an appreciation for the divine, in defense of their faith. Witness the Jews who refused to allow Caligula's statue in the Temple and were spared his full wrath only by his timely and violent demise. Others, notably the early Christians in Rome, were not so lucky, and their bodies littered imperial streets and stadia.

3. Political leaders care about public opinion, but they also care about history and their place in it. They might be willing to trade present public support and admiration -- or even the survival of their city or army -- for a shot at immortality and a place in history books. As a British rebel put it to encourage his men to fight the Roman legions, "Think of those that went before you and of those that shall come after!" Well, they lost, and, in Tacitus's description, an "awful silence reigned everywhere." But he fought not as much for that day as for the past and the future. People engage in politics and war sub specie aeternitatis, with all of its consequences.

4. Money is not the sinews of war. Men are. Wealth is nice, but an enemy's center of gravity is his soul, character, mind, and faith, not his arms or his cities. As Xenophon wrote, "It is not numbers or strength that bring victories in war. No, it is when one side goes against the enemy with the gods' gift of a stronger morale that their adversaries, as a rule, cannot withstand them." On another occasion, the Persians ate on tables of gold and still had a hard time defeating 300 Spartans who ate porridge. Persia's large reservoirs of money and manpower could not bend the Greeks' disdain for the Medes and love of independence. The Greeks never surrendered.

5. Thus, to conquer an enemy, change him. Julius Caesar, when expanding the Roman Empire across Gaul and Britain, knew he needed to sap his new and unwilling constituents' desire to rebel. Calgacus in Caledonia and Vercingetorix in Gaul could be defeated on the battlefield, but the Romans had to assimilate the British and Gauls to rule. Thus, Caesar made the enemies into Romans, providing them with things like schools. Tacitus described the result: "The unsuspecting Britons spoke of such novelties as 'civilization,' when in fact they were only a feature of their enslavement."

6. Fear is powerful, but love can overcome it. Our modern understanding is that fear motivates individuals and states. (Thank you, Thomas Hobbes!) Politics is then the attempt to calibrate fear to achieve stability, deterrence, or whatever other desired outcome. Yet the ancients teach that love of one's brother in arms, family, city, nation, honor, prestige, justice, and god will make one do things deemed impossible or even suicidal. For instance, the Melians' faith in justice and their gods led them to naively believe that Sparta would help them against Athens.

7. States are fragile, no matter how wealthy, strong, or cohesive. The "school of Hellas," Athens, collapsed into a whirlwind of violence when the plague struck its people. The Athenians ceased to fear their gods and respect the law and "coolly ventured on what they had formerly done in a corner," as Thucydides wrote. In fact, even families, the rock of societies, can fall apart. In the "bloody march of the revolution" in Corcyra, as Thucydides put it, fathers killed their sons, and there "was no length to which violence did not go." Polities may break up unexpectedly, and the beastly state of nature is always around the corner.

8. Expect the unexpected; not everything makes sense all the time. A respected, beloved, and experienced general can be, in a key moment, a pusillanimous and superstitious leader whose actions border on the treasonous. The Athenian general Nicias, mentioned earlier, refused to retreat speedily at the end of the siege of Syracuse -- for no clear reason at all. Much cannot be understood. The ability to comprehend is limited. Live with it.

9. For some, war is not a means to an end, but a goal in and of itself. Some fight because they love the glory of the battlefield, the pleading of the defeated, the plunder, the women, the gold, and the social cohesion of the battalion. For some, war is a way of life and peace the beginning of the end. Take, for instance, Julius Caesar, who loved the Germanic soldiers who fought on his side even though their fellow tribes were threatening Roman imperial interests from across the Rhine. They simply enjoyed a good fight. Similarly, Tacitus describes a Roman officer who "exulting less in the prizes that danger wins than in danger for its own sake, ... sacrificed the assured gains of the past to a novel and hazardous gamble." Or, as Achilles put it in The Iliad, "What I really crave is slaughter and blood and the choking groans of men."

10. Technology extends man's power over nature, but nature is powerful too. An earthquake stopped a Spartan invasion of Attica; a plague devastated Athens and upset its political order; and Julius Caesar barely made it back from Britain to Gaul across the British Channel. Nature can redirect history in unexpected and uncontrollable ways.

11. Success is elusive. Sometimes naiveté, arrogance, and dumb luck turn the most powerful into a loser. (Looking for a Ph.D. dissertation topic? "Stupidity as an independent variable in international relations" would be useful and rare.) Accept this as a tragedy of the human condition. You will never engineer the perfect political administration. Often a group of brilliant generals can lead to a disaster, as the Athenians found out in Sicily.

In the end, we will never fully comprehend power, war, or life. The biggest danger for modern leaders and students of politics is that we think we know more than we do and that we can play with political realities as if they were hard sciences. Reading these classical texts is a good antidote to modern arrogance. Politics is an art, after all.
F.P
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/04/02/the_classics_rock?page=0,1

Iran says sanctions will not stop nuclear programme

Matthew Weaver
International sanctions will not stop Iran's nuclear programme, Tehran's most senior nuclear negotiator has said in the face of growing pressure from China and the US over Iran's nuclear ambitions.

Following talks in Beijing with Yang Jiechi, China's foreign minister, Saeed Jalili said China agreed that sanctions were "not effective", Reuters reported.

Earlier this week China had signalled that it would back US calls for a draft UN resolution to impose sanctions against Tehran.

Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Qin Gang said: "China expresses its serious concern about the Iran nuclear issue situation. China is in close contact with relevant parties and is striving for a proper settlement of the issue through diplomatic means."

The defiant message from Iran's negotiator came as Barack Obama stepped up his efforts to secure Beijing's backing for sanctions with an hour-long phone call to the Chinese president, Hu Jintao. During the call Obama "underscored the importance of working together to ensure that Iran lives up to its international obligations", a White House statement said.


China has a veto on the UN security council and its support would be vital to passing a resolution against Iran. Tehran insists its nuclear programme is only for peaceful power generation.

China traditionally opposes sanctions as it depends on Iran for 11% of its energy needs. But there is speculation that Beijing is willing to drop its opposition in return for US officials not citing China for undervaluing its currency in an annual report due on 15 April, days after Hu's visit.

US officials say a Chinese representative made a commitment in a phone call on Wednesday to discuss the specifics of a potential security council resolution.

The Obama administration is hoping to get a UN resolution on Iran passed by the end of this month.
Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/apr/02/iran-sanctions-nuclear-us-china

Afghan President Rebukes West and U.N.

By ALISSA J. RUBIN
KABUL, Afghanistan — Hamid Karzai, the Afghan president, delivered extraordinarily harsh criticism on Thursday of the Western governments fighting in his country, the United Nations, and the British and American news media, accusing them of perpetrating the fraud that denied him an outright victory in last summer’s presidential elections.

Just days after meeting with President Obama, Mr. Karzai, who has increasingly tried to distance himself from his American backers, said the coalition troops risked being seen as invaders rather than saviors of the country.

The speech, later broadcast on local television, seemed a measure of Mr. Karzai’s mood in the wake of Mr. Obama’s visit, in which Mr. Obama rebuked the Afghan president for his failure to reform election rules and crack down on corruption. At points in the speech, Mr. Karzai used inflammatory language about the West.

“There is no doubt that the fraud was very widespread, but this fraud was not committed by Afghans, it was committed by foreigners,” Mr. Karzai said. “This fraud was committed by Galbraith, this fraud was committed by Morillon and this fraud was committed by embassies.” Mr. Karzai was referring to Peter W. Galbraith, the deputy United Nations special representative to Afghanistan at the time of the election and the person who helped reveal the fraud, and Philippe Morillon, the chief election observer for the European Union.

Later in the speech he accused the Western coalition fighting against the Taliban of being on the verge of becoming invaders — a term usually used by insurgents to refer to American, British and other NATO troops fighting in Afghanistan.

“In this situation there is a thin curtain between invasion and cooperation-assistance,” said Mr. Karzai, adding that if the perception spread that Western forces were invaders and the Afghan government their mercenaries, the insurgency “could become a national resistance.”

On Wednesday, Mr. Karzai suffered a political defeat when the lower house of Parliament rejected a revision of the election law that would have allowed him to appoint all the members of the agency that investigates election irregularities. Currently the United Nations appoints three of the five members.

The American Embassy and the United Nations mission in Kabul had no comment on Mr. Karzai’s speech. Both, along with other Western governments, are trying to persuade Mr. Karzai to make election reforms that better safeguard against a repeat of the fraud, since without changes Western countries are unlikely to want to help pay for the parliamentary elections scheduled for September.

Mr. Galbraith, who was dismissed by the United Nations after the disputed election, called Mr. Karzai’s speech “so absurd that I considered it an April Fools’ Day joke.” He also said Mr. Karzai’s speech “underscores how totally unreliable this guy is as an ally.”

Mr. Morillon could not immediately be reached.

Mr. Karzai also sharply criticized The New York Times, the BBC, The Times of London and CNN, all of whom he accused of spreading the accusations of fraud. “They know the election was right, but on a daily basis they are call me a fraudulent president in order to pressure me,” he said.

He further singled out The Times for criticism. “Every day my dignity as a president of this country is being attacked. The New York Times and their papers, though, they know the election was right, but on a daily basis they call me a fraudulent president in order to pressure me and put mental pressure on me,” he said.

At times Mr. Karzai almost seemed to be having a conversation with himself, saying that he needed to let go of his anger over the election, but then was unable to do so. “We have our national interest, and by confronting the foreigners our national interest will be damaged,” he said.

“We should put the reality and the interests of our people before us and go forward towards the future. But we have a knot in our heart; our dignity and bravery has been damaged and stepped on,” he said.

One motive for the angry speech might be an attempt to protect himself politically, since it is probable that he will have to accede to Western demands that he remove the officials on the election commission who were seen as most complicit in the fraud. For months the United States, other Western countries and the United Nations have quietly urged him both to change the leadership of the commission and the system of appointing the commission’s members. Mr. Karzai currently appoints the commission’s chairman, which heightens suspicions about its independence.

“These foreigners came to me several times asking me to bring reform. When I asked what reform means, it means to sack Mr. Ludin and Mr. Najafi,” said Mr. Karzai, referring to Azizullah Ludin, the commission’s chairman, and Daoud Ali Najafi, the head of the commission’s secretariat, who were present at the speech and whom he lionized several times over, lauding their patriotism and courage.

He went on to say that he might be forced to comply with the demand, but he promised that the two men “will go to other major national posts.”

Mr. Karzai appeared about to agree to the West’s demands to change the election process because, he said, if he did not, Western donors would withhold the money Afghanistan needs to hold the parliamentary elections.

“He wants to portray himself as a national figure who stands against the foreigners,” said Ahmed Wali Massoud, a strong supporter of Abdullah Abdullah, the candidate who ran closest to Mr. Karzai in last summer’s election.

Diplomats quietly worried about another problem: that the anger toward the West would be used by antiwar advocates in countries with troops here to bolster their arguments for withdrawal. “People will hear this and say ‘Why are we helping this man?’ ” said a Western diplomat in Kabul.


Abdul Waheed Wafa contributed reporting.
N.Y.T
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/02/world/asia/02afghan.html?th&emc=th

Iran Plays Host to Delegations After Iraq Elections

BAGHDAD — Iran may seem an unlikely place to turn for guidance when it comes to putting together a democratic government, but that is exactly what most of Iraq’s political class did immediately after last month’s parliamentary elections.

The ink was hardly dry on the polling results when three of the four major political alliances rushed delegations off to Tehran. Yet none of them sent anyone to the United States Embassy here, let alone to Washington.

Nor has Washington tried to intervene. Even Ayad Allawi, the secular candidate whose Iraqiya coalition won the most seats — and renounced Iranian support in seeking a parliamentary majority — has heard nothing from the Americans.

“Maybe they don’t like my face, I don’t know,” he joked, then added more seriously, “I think they don’t want to be associated with any visit, so they wouldn’t be seen as siding with one against the other.”

The Iranians, however, have shown no such qualms, publicly urging the Shiite religious parties to bury their differences so they can use their superior numbers to choose the next prime minister. Their openness, and Washington’s reticence, is a measure of the changed political dynamic in Iraq. Even though more than 90,000 American troops remain in Iraq, no one seriously doubts they are leaving, taking a slice of America’s political influence with them.

Before the full results were announced here, President Jalal Talabani, from the Kurdistan Alliance, and Vice President Adel Abdul Mahdi, from the Shiite-dominated Iraqi National Alliance, flew to Tehran on Saturday, ostensibly to attend celebrations of the Persian New Year, which had actually begun weeks earlier. Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, who ran a close second to Mr. Allawi, sent a delegation from his State of Law alliance at the same time.

“Iraqiya is the only one who doesn’t flock to Iran,” said Rend al-Rahim, an Iraqiya candidate. “They think Iran is an arbiter and broker in Iraqi politics and that they need Iran to put their house in order.”

Mr. Allawi himself said he had no intention of making that pilgrimage. “I don’t think it’s wise to do so,” he said. “I don’t think it’s in the interest of Iraq, nor in the interest of Iran, to go and discuss the formation of a government.”

When Mr. Allawi, whose party was propelled by millions of Sunni Arab voters, toured neighboring Arab states during the election campaign, his Shiite opponents cried foul, accusing him of encouraging Arab meddling in Iraq’s electoral affairs. Some noted that he spent more time in Saudi Arabia than he did at campaign appearances in Iraq.

Entifadh Qanbar, a senior aide to a leading Shiite politician, Ahmad Chalabi, and a spokesman for the Iraqi National Alliance, said the official visits were simply for celebrations of the Persian New Year, or Nowruz, and were not an attempt to win Iranian backing for Iraqi political groupings.

“It’s very mutual,” he said. “Iran has influence inside Iraq and Iraq has influence inside Iran, we have the Marjiya here for instance.” The Marjiya, Shiite Islam’s highest religious authority, is located in Najaf, Iraq.

“Allawi goes on a tour of Arab countries, and they accuse the Arabs of meddling in Iraqi politics,” said Ms. Rahim of Iraqiya. “When half of the Iraqi politicians rush to Tehran, nobody comments.”

“The border with Iran is a continuous stretch of history and civilization,” Mr. Qanbar said, “while the border with Arab countries is a desert.”

But Iran and Iraq have their differences as well. While Iranians are overwhelmingly Shiite, they are Persians, while Iraq’s Shiites are mostly Arabs, and make up only 60 percent of its population.

The Shiite religious parties dominate two of Iraq’s four biggest electoral alliances. Mr. Maliki’s Dawa Party is the major component of his State of Law alliance, which won 89 seats to Iraqiya’s 92. In the Iraqi National Alliance, the largest grouping belongs to followers of the radical Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr, who has been living in Iran since 2007. Sadrists account for about 40 of the I.N.A.’s 70 seats in the next Parliament. Most of the rest belong to the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, formerly the largest Shiite party.

In the months leading up to Iraq’s March 7 election, Iranian diplomats were openly pushing for Mr. Maliki to join the I.N.A. But the Sadrists — who blame Mr. Maliki for a military crackdown that destroyed their militia’s power — blocked any agreement that would have made him their candidate for prime minister. So Mr. Maliki decided to start his own alliance.

Together, the two Shiite-dominated alliances would easily have bested Mr. Allawi’s, though they may still have needed support from Kurds or other parties to make a majority — 163 of the 325 seats in Parliament.

Some see that as evidence that Iran’s role in Iraq is weakening, or at least being limited. Brett H. McGurk, who worked in Iraq for the National Security Council during the Bush and early Obama administrations and is now at the Council on Foreign Relations, says Iran will remain influential but not decisively so.

“Iraq, ironically, is the one place in the Middle East where people are pushing back against the Iranians, and succeeding,” Mr. McGurk said. “Maliki broke away at great personal courage, and under tremendous pressure from Tehran. Now, they will try to bring Maliki and the I.N.A. back together. But at best it’s a Humpty Dumpty alliance, fragile and fractious as ever.”

Many analysts say Mr. Allawi can hope to win over enough Shiite and Kurdish supporters from the other blocs only if he gets some support from Iran.

“I don’t have any relations with Iran, basically, which is regrettable,” Mr. Allawi said.

“I don’t think there’s any opportunity for Allawi to win the support of Iran,” said Jabir Habib Jabir, an expert in Iraqi politics at Baghdad’s Mustansiriya University. “It’s been years, he cannot undo it in days.”

Within days, though, there were signs that Mr. Allawi might be trying to do so. Iraq’s deputy prime minister, Rafie al-Issawi, who is with Mr. Allawi’s Iraqiya alliance and in charge of leading his negotiations toward forming a governing coalition, met with Iran’s ambassador Wednesday.

“The formation of the next government is an internal Iraqi issue,” Mr. Issawi said afterward.

The Iranian ambassador, Hassan Kazemi Qomi, was equally circumspect. “Just as we do not accept any interference in our internal affairs, we do not allow ourselves to interfere in the affairs of others,” he said.

Nonetheless, the two officials talked for three hours. And when President Talabani returned from Iran on Wednesday, his first official visit was a private one to Mr. Allawi’s home.
By ROD NORDLAND
N.Y.T
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/02/world/middleeast/02iraq.html?th&emc=th