Some years back, in calmer times before the storm, we officers at sea held the wardroom mess in accordance with that classic naval tradition. It was modernized and conducted over secure video, so those of us in the Med studied with those in the Gulf and those in the BAM,1 but it was all the same. Our study was Thucydides.
So after each session, I filled my evening with further reading. As the Oak Hill2 passed Sicily, I was drawn to the history of the Sicilian Expedition. History is studied to draw lessons for present times. Athens’ lessons are abundant for ours.
In the midst of the 30-year Peloponnesian War, factions of Athens deemed an invasion of Sicily critical to overall victory. Inherent to their argument was the reality that Sicily would be impossibly lucrative if victorious. So it was then, so it is now: potential profit often clouds sound judgment.
The opposition lost and the attack proceeded. It took the entire fleet and all its citizen manpower and it was entirely defeated. During the multi-year effort, the factions that drove it fused into an oligarchy that perpetuated itself and its war until its incompetence and complete defeat undermined its despotism. It still took the Demos physically overthrowing the Oligarchy for democracy to be restored in Athens.3
Athens could rebuild the ships. But it could not rebuild the men. Thirty thousand citizen sailors were lost in the expedition – the heart of Athens’ civilizational power. The demographic catastrophe is considered a cause of Athens’ eventual defeat in the war and its civilizational decline.4 […]
— Read More: www.zerohedge.com
