starting in 431 BC the ancient Greek world turned on itself as Sparta and Athens locked horns the result of this rivalry as is captured vividly and analyzed thoroughly by historian Thucydides was a dynamic conflict that pitted a land power against a naval power the hostilities lasted on and off for decades but the events fundamentally shaped the study of geopolitics it was a war like no other the catalyst of this conflict and steady manner in which it grew into all-out hostilities has inspired strategic concepts and thinkers throughout the ages so to draw parallels with the present we must analyze through Citadis trapped and go through the origins of the Peloponnesian War my name is strategy stuff and welcome to Caspian report the growth of the power of Athens and the alarm which this inspired in Sparta made war inevitable with these famous words lucidity lays out his analysis for why the Peloponnesian War happened not by accident not by individual leaders but instead a natural outcome of long-term power shifts as Sparta the traditional hegemon of the Greek city-states found itself threatened by the growing power of Athens we can appreciate the radical nature of this analysis with a timeline of how the war actually began Sparta and Athens had crossed swords barely ten years prior in the first Peloponnesian War but the spark this time came from a dispute between Coursera a non-aligned State and Corinth a member of the Spartan Peloponnesian League competing over a peripheral town in modern Albania Coursera and Corinth originally kept the dispute between themselves eventually however Coursera went to Athens for help and the resulting alliance repulsed a Corinthian invasion Corinth then appealed to Sparta who then consulted with its Peloponnesian League allies and sent an ultimatum to Athens only after this was rejected that Sparta go to war with Athens so on a purely chronological basis we could view Coursera and as the main drivers of the war calling in the major powers as allies in their dispute this is not the view of Thucydides who argues that an athenian spartan showdown had been widely expected for some time with the core siren crisis being a mere excuse to start the war he demonstrates this by showing how Athens and Sparta when reacting to the Corps siren crisis were not really focused on the dispute at hand but instead about how said dispute would affect the balance of power between themselves when Athens back to course ira against corinth it wasn't worried about the immediate consequences of corinth defeating course IRA but rather what a strengthen the corinth in league with Sparta would do to Athenian maritime dominance similarly Sparta's final ultimatum to Athens essentially demanding the latter relinquish its stranglehold over its Delian League allies did not aim to resolve disputes in Coursera or the simultaneous flash points of Potidaea and Megara but instead was a wide-ranging set of demands whose collective aim was to end the Athenian Empire this is therefore the first idea contained within what has become known as lucidity strap we have to analyze conflicts not simply on the basis of events at the surface level but also be aware of potential historical and Jews strategic undercurrents we see such undercurrents in our current world as well with geopolitical points of friction in the Balkans and the Middle East responsible for flare-ups within seemingly unconnected issues for its time lucidity 'z interpretation was a revolutionary step in the study of political science they feared the growth of the power of the Athenians seeing most of Greece already subject to them if through Citadis is right and spartan fear was the actual driver of the Peloponnesian War then it's worth asking what exactly Sparta feared about the Athenians the standard answer is the dramatic growth of Athenian power particularly hard power in the form of Imperial subjugation and colonization and the military and economic power which stained it and it's not difficult to see why in the hundred years between the Persian invasions to the Peloponnesian War Athens grew from a second-tier power to the premier maritime force in Greece the establishment and the expansion of its Delian League so Athenian political influence spread beyond the city to include much of the Aegean and beyond by contrast Sparta during this period was in decline between 480 to 430 BC it's citizen population shrunk by 50% and its economy remained insignificant Sparta strategic horizons accordingly shrank - with fewer men to spare for foreign adventures Spartan foreign policy became even more cautious and conservative and inevitably this allowed Athens to gain at Spartan expense but we should always recognize the limits of explaining this conflict using hard power alone for if that were the case Spartan Athenian rivalry should actually be cooling off given the results of the first Peloponnesian War during the latter half of that war Athens lost hundreds of ships on failed expeditions to Egypt and Cyprus it also gave up control over central Greece and the Corinthian Isthmus meaning that Sparta now had an unobstructed land route to Athens yet not only that Spartan concerns not decrease they were increased to a point where Sparta became determined not just to wage a war but one that would dismantle the Athenian Empire once and for all so when thinking about Thucydides trap we should look beyond mere hard power and think about other factors that might have added to the Spartan fear of losing their hegemony one factor may be the growing efforts by Athens to seal its empire off from Spartan influence without the manpower for constant intervention or policing duty Spartan hegemony had to rely on webs of indirect influence to be sustainable the key focus was on maintaining friendly governments in major allied cities which would then exercise influence over their colonies and minor allies and so forth resulting in smart and wishes filtering across all of Greece even Athens whose tributary allies contained colonies of pal Keynesian origin would in such a way be exposed to Spartan influence seen in this light the Potter day in crisis and what it revealed about Athenian intentions may actually have alarmed Sparta more than Athenian power Potidaea was both a corinthian colony and an Athenian tributary so both corinth a spartan ally and athens saw themselves entitled to influence the town yet in four three two BC Athens demanded that Potidaea expel all corinthian personnel and let athens monopolize its politics from the spartan point of view this would have looked like the beginning of an Athenian attempt to break the ties linking its tributaries with their Peloponnesian mother cities and to seal off even the most indirect Spartan influence left unchecked the end result would have been an Athenian zone impervious to smart indict an making a mockery of the latter's claim to hedge M&E it was inevitable therefore that Sparta would take drastic measures to stop this process regardless of the actual power Athens possessed if Potidaea demonstrated that Athens was seemingly committed to eroding a cornerstone of Sparta's hegemony then the megarian decree would have again shown the city's commitment to bypass yet another one the megarian decree was issued by athens in response to Megerian insults banning the spartan ally from trading with or sailing to any port in its Delian League and since the Athenian Empire was Greece's commercial and maritime hub such an embargo sent the Megerian economy into freefall placing immense pressure on Megara to concede to Athenian demands Athens may have seen the decree as a way to defend its rights without going to war with Sparta but if that was the intention it was a complete failure because the Titanic potential of a weaponized Athenian economy could only have been seen as an attempt to bypass Spartan military dominance by threatening economic destruction Athens could force Greek cities to do its bidding without risking its military in battle and clearly that would end Sparta's ability to be the only one calling the shots so here we come to the second idea in Thucydides trap which is that we need to analyze the trap beyond mere comparisons of material power Rowing power remains a major contributor to fear but at the same time the questions of how states use their existing power and what they intend to do with their additional power remain relevant this may answer one of the key problems in Thucydides trap the question of why some trap relationships like the UK and US didn't lead to conflict while others like the UK and Germany did in the case of Athens vs. Sparta we can say that Athenian growth may have been the major contributor to Spartan fears but the city did itself no favors by acting in a way that suggested rightly or wrongly a sustained attempt to overthrow smartos hegemony do not sacrifice friends and kindred to their bitterest enemies and drive the rest of us in despair to some other alliance so far we have analyzed the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War from the viewpoint of the leading powers Athens and Sparta now we go full circle and refocus on the role of the minor players particularly Coursera and Corinth in the story now of course we already said that through Citadis analysis debunked the idea that the minor states were the main drivers of the war but that doesn't mean that they were passive bystanders to the unfolding drama instead we should view them as enablers of conflict latching on to the athenian spartan rivalry for their own ends after all it was Coursera and Corinth not Athens or Sparta that first linked their dispute with a broader rivalry in order to sell their cause in seeking an alliance with Athens Coursera linked Corinthian success back to Sparta claiming that Athenian refusal would mean fighting against the United fleets of course IRA and the Peloponnese this argument was made despite the fact that Corinth had vetoed a Spartan attack on Athens 10 years ago and in appealing to Sparta Corinth listed the many times Sparta failed to support its allies how these failures had benefited Athens and further warned that this time would mean the city's defection from the peloponnesian lead so not only were both cities linking their dispute to the rivalry but they were also increasing the pressure on said rivalry threatening to tip the balance in one direction or another unless their demands were met public policy theory has a concept known as a focusing event a crisis that cuts through the normal process of policy deliberation and demands drastic and immediate action impossible under regular circumstances we can characterize the course IRA crisis as a focusing event especially for Sparta without it the conservative nature of Spartan foreign policy may never have reached a point where an all-out attempt to destroy the Athenian Empire would have become the likely policy outcome lucidity 'z may even be hinting at this when he contrasts the Spartan King Arkadiy masses detailed and logical reasoning against a median war versus what was essentially Rara nationalism by the Spartan Statesman Stena ladis but the key point here is unlike most focusing events which are the result of accidents or error the stakes over the course siren crisis were deliberately raised by course IRA and Corinth in order to further their own goals and in this there are both hugely successful in removing obstacles that unless pressured circumstances might have restrained Athens and Sparta from war this is an important idea that sometimes gets lost in discussions about Thucydides trap the danger does not just come from the attitudes of the two major powers but also from third parties who latch on exploit and stoke the rivalry for their own ends in fact the latter is far more dangerous because wallet is often in the major powers self-interest to react in a way that avoids a ruinous war or at least one that they are unprepared for it is instead in the minor powers self-interest to turn up the heat as quickly as possible to force allied intervention this is the third idea within Thucydides trap while we can still characterize the trap as a relationship between two major powers ignoring third party dynamics threatens to cut out what is potentially the most dangerous of that phenomenon for example the role of Serbia austria-hungary or even France in world war 1 and the role of Cuba and China during the Cold War in this study of the origins of the Peloponnesian War we have drawn attention to several strategic ideas within Thucydides trap first is the radical nature of Thucydides analysis second is the idea that the trap is not just about hard power considerations but also about state intentions lastly we reintroduce the role the third parties play in escalating the trap I have been your host strategy stuff and this was a collaborative video series between Caspian report and my channel if 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