Greenland and the Melian Dialogue

Trump as a figure from Thucydides

Few historical episodes capture the harsh realities of great power conflict better than the Melian Dialogue. Recorded by Thucydides in his History of the Peloponnesian War, this brutal exchange between the imperial Athenians and the small island of Melos in 416 BCE serves as a sobering reminder of what happens when idealism collides with cold, hard power.

The Athenians, at the height of their empire, arrived on Melos with a simple proposition: surrender and live, or resist and face annihilation. The Melians, believing in their right to neutrality and trusting in divine justice - and Spartan aid - chose defiance. Their arguments—appeals to morality, fairness, and the laws of nations—were met with unflinching Athenian pragmatism:

The strong do what they can, and the weak suffer what they must.

For the Athenians, the logic was clear. Justice, as noble as it may sound, was irrelevant in a world where power dictated outcomes. They saw Melos not as a sovereign state with inherent rights, but as an object lesson to deter other potential defectors from their empire. In contrast, the Melians clung to hope—a hope that the gods would favor their just cause and that their Spartan kin would come to their rescue. Neither happened. Melos was besieged, conquered, and its people slaughtered or enslaved.

Almost from the beginning, when the Spartans razed to the ground the city of Plataea and executed its defenders, the Peloponnesian War had an unprecedented brutality that broke through the thin veneer that separates civilization and savagery.