International Society, Health, and Defiance:An English School Analysis of Melian and Belgian Responses to Wartime Ultimata

Abstract

ABSTRACT This analysis argues that two conceptual tools – the idea of international society used by English School theorists and a concept of health derived from Thucydides’ Hippocratic analysis in The History of the Peloponnesian War – provide a powerful explanation for why Great Powers make unreasonable demands on small states and why small states choose to resist them. Two examples – the Melian refusal to accede to Athenian demands in 416 BC and the Belgian refusal to grant the German Army free passage in 1914 AD – illustrate smaller Powers choosing to resist a far superior military force. By contextualising the Melian Dialogue in a larger analysis of the Peloponnesian War, this exegesis develops the concept of “health’ and relates it with the English School concept of international society. These concepts then apply to Belgium’s security dilemma of August 1914. Germany’s military leadership assumed that Brussels would acquiesce or defend its territory only nominally; however, Belgian leadership, like the Melians, chose to resist, denying Berlin its military objectives whilst encouraging Britain to intervene.