Who heard Freeland’s brilliant speech?
We joined together over six decades ago, the speaker said, when it was a war against tyranny that would have enslaved us both. We stood side by side in the fight, and though we were small and you were big, our shared sacrifices in the end won out.
We were proud, then, to have stood by your side, and watched you rise thereafter to become a beacon of liberty, learning, and democracy that the rest of the world looked up to.
But times have changed, the speaker continued. Now you are going down a different path, forsaking justice and relying instead on brute force to get your way. You no longer seek allies to co-operate with, but instead look to squeeze as much as you can, from those who are weaker than you. You say that the strong have always dominated the weak, that might makes right, and that we had better get on board with this new reality, or you’ll really make us suffer.
The speaker concluded simply, saying that we don’t think that justice means that the lions get to eat the lambs. And also warning you that you won’t be strong forever, and that when you fall, you’ll regret having abused your power today — since your conqueror will do to you then, what you do to us now.
This speaker, of course, is the Melian ambassador negotiating with the invading Athenian generals, in the summer of 416 BCE. But maybe you heard something like this in Chrystia Freeland’s recent speech, as she accepted the Diplomat of the Year Award from the journal Foreign Policy. I can’t help hearing the echoes, and if you can hear them too it means that we’re in real trouble, in 2018.
The Melian’s speech comes down to us through the text of the Athenian historian Thucydides, who wrote History of the Peloponnesian War almost 25 centuries ago. That speech is preserved in what is now known as “The Melian Dialogue,” which occurred when the Athenians invaded Melos and demanded that the islanders give over control of their island to the Athenian military.
Athens was engaged at the time in a long, bloody war against Sparta and its allies, which Athens would go on to lose, and wanted Melos as a naval base. The Melians wanted to stay
neutral in this superpower struggle, though they had previously sided with Athens against the Persian invasion some 64 years earlier.
Chrystia Freeland, as Canada’s Foreign Minister, finds herself in a similar position. Sure, Canada is not under imminent threat of being invaded. But honestly, how secure do you feel today?
The United States under Trump has decided to cosy up to dictators like Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un, begin a trade war with Canada for no reason, and eviscerate any international institutions — like the UN, G7, or WTO — that it can’t bully into submission.
If Freeland is feeling a little like the Melians, can you blame her? Which is why she took exactly their strategy to heart, when she gave her speech in Washington. I don’t know if she meant to riff on Thucydides’ account of the Melian’s speech, but it certainly sounded like she did.
We fought together with you in Second World War, she said. You’re the superpower, but that doesn’t mean that you should use that power to force yourself on your friends, she said. We’re not going to give in to your unjust demands, she said. And she concluded with the loudest Melian echo of all: when your power fades one day, as it does for all superpowers, you’ll look to the protection of the very international laws that you scorn today … and woe to you if you
destroy those laws now.
Freeland’s speech was brilliant: deft, wise, timely, and rhetorically powerful.
She said about everything you can and should say, when you’re a small country trying to convince a superpower not to subjugate you (and bring the whole international system crashing down, too).
Oh, did I mention what happened to the Melians? The Athenians didn’t listen to their advice, and the Melians refused to surrender. Eventually Melos was conquered after a long siege. All the men over 17 were killed, regardless of whether they were soldiers or not, and everyone else — women, children, the elderly — was sold into slavery.
I did say these echoes were tragic, didn’t I?
Playing the part of the Melians is not a role anyone should relish. But here we are, in 2018 CE, saying nearly the same words they uttered in 416 BCE.
Let’s hope someone down South remembers Thucydides’ History, and that Athens lost the war and everything else just a dozen years after murdering and enslaving the Melians.
I hear the American president is a lover of books, right?