Theatres of War discusses Kagan’s new book on the Peloponnesian War:
Twenty-five years ago it was easy to teach Thucydides; all you had to do was talk about the Cold War. For most of the four decades from the end of the Second World War to the fall of the Soviet Union, the parallels between the Peloponnesian War and the Cold War seemed self-evident. You knew, as you read about Athens, about its boisterous democratic politics and fast-talking politicians, its adventurous intellectual and artistic spirit, that these were the good guys. They were clearly our own cultural forebears. And you knew, just as surely, as you read about Sparta, about its humorless militarism, geriatric regime, and deep antipathy to democracy, that these were bad guys. They, too, looked awfully familiar.You also knew what it was like to live in a world divided between two sides “at the very height of their power and preparedness,” as Thucydides puts it, and how blind adherence to the policies dictated by such polarization could result in fearful illogic. (As Kagan observes, the Spartans went to war to save an alliance they had created precisely to protect themselves from conflict.) In the bipartite world of the Cold War, you could choose to read Thucydides? carefully structured presentation of Athens? decline as a cautionary tale about the moral decay that accompanies abuses of imperial power. Or you might take Thucydides’ apparent detachment to be a cautious endorsement of Machtpolitik as the grim requirement for being a superpower. (“It is a general and necessary law of nature to rule whatever one can,” the Athenians blandly opine during their confrontation with the Melians.)
But whichever way you read Thucydides the bipolar structure of his world was instantly recognizable.