Today is one month and one day(!) since the inauguration of Donald J. Trump for his second term as President of the United States (US).
In that time, he delighted in claiming dominion over Greenland, the Panama Canal, and the Palestinian territory of Gaza. He has humiliated treaty allies, cuddled up to recently acknowledged enemies of the US and her (former?) allies, and threatened trade wars against friends and foes alike. He has unleashed Elon Musk on the federal bureaucracy, effectively closing congressionally legislated departments. He has withdrawn life-saving medicines from millions of people around the world and declared ethnic cleansing a US policy.
Donald Trump is stomping on the norms of US democracy. He has the constitutional pardon power in one hand and US Supreme Court protection from prosecution in the other. He is basking in the absolute power of a monarch and turning the global, rules-based order (of which the US was the principal architect) into a plaything.
Louis XIV of France (reign: 1643–1715)—the “Sun King”—owned canons bearing the inscription Ultima Ratio Regum (“The Last Argument of Kings”). It was a pun-filled reference to the idea that the ultimate recourse of a ruler is violence. He was reminding friends, enemies, and subjugates that when his laws (canon) failed, his capacity for violence (cannon) would triumph.
Political Realists see Louis’s cannons as reifying the political idea that “might is right” (MiR). That is, power and not morality ultimately determines outcomes. As they watch Donald Trump tear down democracy and attack the global rules-based order, they make coded references to the ancient Greek historian Thucydides—hero of Realpolitik and the guy who wrote the History of the Peloponnesian War. It is to him the phrase “might is right” is attributed, based on a brief passage known as the Melian Dialogue.
The dialogue is a brutal exchange between envoys from Athens and the leaders of the small island of Melos—the same Melos famous for the statue of the Greek goddess Venus (“di Milo”). The Athenians explained that neutral Melos would have to side with Athens in their war against Sparta or be destroyed by the larger army of Athens. They did not prevaricate of sugar-coat the delivery of their message. And it is this exchange that has been reduced to MiR.
There are, however, significant problems with this position. First and foremost, Thucydides never actually wrote, “might is right”—not even close—and the suggestion that he did becomes a self-serving distortion used to justify ruthless power politics. Thucydides actually recorded the Athenian envoys saying, “The strong do what they can, and the weak suffer what they must.”
To be pedantic—necessarily so—he actually wrote, “οἱ μὲν δυνάμενοι πράσσουσιν, οἱ δὲ ἀσθενεῖς ξυγχωροῦσιν.”
The nuance in translation is crucial. The standard English rendering, “The strong do what they can…” relies on the modal verb “can,” which in English (and in French with pouvoir) suggests freedom of will—the idea that those with power act as they choose. But ancient Greek had no direct equivalent to modal auxiliaries like can or must.
The critical verb here is δυνάμενοι, a participle of δύναμαι (to be able). Rather than conveying a sense of willfulness, it implies something closer to necessity—that the strong act as circumstance dictates in accordance with their power, just as the weak yield because they also have no choice. This translation reflects the broader Thucydidean theme that power operates under the constraints of ἀνάγκη (necessity).
It is tragedy rather than psychopathy that is the binding relationship between Athens and Melos. Melos, for all its appeals to justice, is doomed. It refuses to bow to Athenian demands and is annihilated. However, the fate of Athens itself is no less bleak. The logic that drives The Athenians to subjugate Melos ultimately consumes them as well, leading to their downfall in the Sicilian Expedition and, eventually, their total defeat in the war. The same compulsion that led them to destroy Melos leads to their destruction.
Thus, when “might is right” is used too quickly to explain the actions of a leader, there is a danger that political scientists give moral cover to the immoral. They fall back on relativistic notions that the whim of the caveman with the bigger club determines societal norms.
Donald Trump is not acting out of tragic necessity. He does not wield power because it has to be wielded. It appears that he does what he does because he is an aggrieved psychopath who revels in the opportunity to put metaphorical kittens in a sack and drown them.
Thucydides would not recognise Donald Trump as any of the actors in the Melian Dialogue.
There was no necessity to put millions in the path of death by withdrawing life-saving treatment. There was no necessity to propose the ethnic cleansing of Gaza. There was no necessity to threaten to take a NATO ally’s territory. There was no necessity to begin to tear down the multilateral system.
A socially and fiscally conservative leader might share many policy objectives with Donald Trump and his followers. There is no necessity, however, to reach those objectives by choosing the most cruel and destructive path possible.
Donald Trump is not a brilliant or tragically compelled leader; he is a psychopath.