“The strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.” Self-confessed “realists” claim that these words capture the essence of world—and worldly—affairs. They supposedly set out the ultimate truth: that international politics is all about a struggle for power in which the weak are routinely crushed. That morality has no place in it. And that a proponent of morality is an idealist who is out of touch with reality.
This neat and elementary wisdom can cause the observer, the analyst and the activist to adopt a cynical approach to international politics. But do these words actually represent realist wisdom? The truth is that they distort realism—not only because they are inaccurate but also because they are used out of context. A close reading of their source—the Melian Dialogue in Thucydides’ Peloponnesian War —reveals a layered and morally engaged realism, one that is captured in another set of words not popularly known.