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Yesterday, while listening to a discussion at a seminar, a thought occurred to me. People often complain that “Japan has no national strategy.” But the nation-state itself is something of a mirage.
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Once a society begins producing a surplus—in other words, once it accumulates wealth—people emerge who take it upon themselves to use that wealth. They have no practical job of their own and are, in a sense, a “superfluous class.” They usurp society’s wealth in an attempt to realize their own ambitions and preconceived notions. Is that what we call a national strategy?
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What individuals want is quite simple: a decent life, security, and freedom. It is enough for the state to guarantee their security. People can earn their livelihoods through their own skills or by working for a company.
The elites who control society’s wealth should simply keep quiet and refrain from meddling.
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The neoconservatives who once held sway in the United States and today’s Russian imperialists are all people who stir up unnecessary trouble around the world・・・・・・
（After Greece, the history of the Mediterranean shifts to Rome. However, in between, we have the conquest of Alexander the Great. Often, this event is portrayed as an advanced European civilization sweeping in to civilize a backward East, but let’s examine what the situation was really like.
IIncidentally, it must be noted that his power was largely sustained by the vast quantities of gold that Macedonia once produced. Backed by this wealth, Macedonia maintained a large standing army, much like the European nations after the 17th century.)
Did Alexander the Great Conquer the East, or Was He Conquered?
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Macedonia, Alexander’s homeland, was part of the Greek civilization in terms of ethnicity and language, but it was a latecomer within that sphere. Macedonia was a poor region, divided into powerful clans. It was Philip II, who reigned from 359 to 336 BC, who transformed Macedonia into a strong country. Philip developed a gold mine at Pangaion, which produced an amount of gold equivalent to 30,000 metric tons of silver,worth about $23 billion in today’s terms, or around one-tenth of modern Greece’s annual GDP.
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This fortune allowed him to expand trade, strengthen his army, and centralize his rule. Unlike Athens, which relied on citizen soldiers, Macedonia had a standing army. Camaraderie between the king and his soldiers was emphasized, and in theory, the people’s assembly chose the king’s successor.
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Riding on his father’s achievements, Alexander set out to conquer the East, including Greece. According to Arrian’s ‘The Anabasis of Alexander’, written during the Roman period, Alexander’s motives remain unclear. He may have been driven by a desire to avenge Greece’s past conflicts with Persia and by a boundless ambition to reach the fabled “Pacific Ocean.” Around 50,000 soldiers were mobilized, with a core of cavalry, making it a formidable standing force. All of this owes to the Pangaion gold mine.
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Almost all cities on the Greek mainland were forced to submit to Alexander, but when he marched further east, some Greeks felt relieved to be rid of him. Although tutored by Aristotle, Alexander’s view of the world was somewhat primitive. He revered Athens as the pinnacle of Greek civilization, yet sometimes regarded Egypt as Greece’s cultural origin. While he used propaganda to frame Greece as a land of “freedom” and Persia as a land of “despotism and servitude,” he also had a superstitious side, often relying on prophecies when making decisions.
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Alexander promoted “freedom” and even brought his court sculptor with him to Asia, preserving Hellenistic style for posterity. However, he was also heavily influenced by Persian culture. He married a Persian princess, adopted the title Iskander (monarch) in Persian, and wore Persian-style clothing. The name Iskander remains in use across Eurasia today, appearing in Russian names and in the name of a Russian short-range missile system deployed in places like Belarus.
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Was Alexander genuinely fascinated by Persian civilization, or was he simply trying to win over the people of the East? It appears to have been the former. As his army advanced eastward, the soldiers’ anxiety and discontent grew, but so did Alexander’s authoritarian tendencies. In a tragic incident, he killed his close friend Cleitus in a fit of rage, which he deeply regretted.
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Nonetheless, his system for governing conquered territories largely preserved the Persian model of centralized rule. Greek officials held top positions, but Persian bureaucrats continued administering the territories much as before. This arrangement likely helped Alexander maintain a stable retreat route even as he pushed further east. In a despotic system, the bureaucrats tend to support whoever holds power at the top.
（This chapter deals with ancient Greece. It is not known where the people of ancient Greece came from. As can be seen from the statues that have survived to the present day, they differed from the people of the Orient. While Athens is considered Ionian and Sparta Dorian in origin, their cultures share commonalities. Furthermore, the reverence for “freedom” and the rule of law, along with an individualistic way of thinking, is evident not only in Athens but also in Sparta. Nevertheless, Greek civilization evolved while surrounded by the civilizations of Egypt and the Orient, and Herodotus writes that many of the names of the gods originated in Egypt.
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Europeans tend to claim that “Greek civilization was invented by white people who came from the north,” but this is just as absurd as the attitude of some Japanese people who are reluctant to acknowledge that their civilization was transmitted from the Korean Peninsula or the Chinese mainland.
. Although Athens is considered the birthplace of democracy, its citizens harbored strong imperialist tendencies.
When cities attempted to break away from their alliance with Athens, the Athenians would dispatch their navy, destroy and plunder them, and then sell the inhabitants into slavery.
Furthermore, the wealthy citizens of Athens disdained engaging in crafts and commerce, delegating these tasks to slaves while keeping the profits for themselves.
. Nevertheless, ancient Greece was the birthplace of individualism and democracy. What strikes one when reading the writings of the ancient Greeks is how prominently the “individual” is present. This is not seen in Egypt or Persia. Sparta had a king, but his authority was incomparable to that of the monarchs of Egypt or Persia.
. Interestingly Greece also served as the first example to demonstrate that democracy can degenerate into mob rule, populism, and ultimately fascism—a pathology that plagues today’s developed nations as well. Even so, it remains unclear why Greece, amidst the sea of Oriental civilizations, was able to build a society founded so firmly on the “individual” and reason.)
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Greece—a Mutant of Mediterranean Civilization
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When I think of the concept of the “individual,” ancient Greece comes to mind. So, I’ll focus specifically on Greece here.
It’s worth emphasizing that Greece is not a land of abundance. Unlike Egypt or Mesopotamia, it lacks great rivers and fertile plains. Instead, the Greeks made a living by trading the grapes and olives they could cultivate on their rugged, mountainous land. Athens became a powerful city-state, particularly after the discovery of silver mines at Laurion just before the Persian Wars.
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(Laurion silver mine: the source of Athen’s emergence)
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Artifacts unearthed in Greece date back to the Early Bronze Age, around 3000 BC, though we don’t know who the people were at that time. This region then experienced two major collapses. The first occurred at the end of the Early Bronze Age, around 2000 BC. While the civilization on Crete survived, a new culture later emerged in Mycenae around 1650 BC. This civilization was again destroyed around 1177 BC, this time by the mysterious “Sea Peoples.” After these two periods of collapse, civilization in the region (Greece) regressed significantly, with the latter period following the Sea Peoples’ invasion often referred to as the “Dark Ages,” a time from which we have no historical records.
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By the 8th century BC, “city-states” began to reappear in Greece, although city-states had already existed earlier in Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Greece. However, it’s important to consider who founded these Greek city-states in the 8th century BC. European scholars have long theorized that the Dorians, a people of European descent, migrated south and established Greece, conquering the region with iron weapons. Yet, the Ionians, who founded the city of Athens, had already been there before the Dorian arrival. In Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War’, a Spartan general refers to his people as Dorians, distinct from their enemies, the Ionians of Athens.
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Whether we consider the Ionians or the Dorians, Greek sculptures depict people who resemble northern Europeans more closely than the diverse peoples of the ancient Near East. As I’ll explore further, the ancient Greeks—whether from Ionian Athens or Dorian Sparta—differed from the more authoritarian societies of the Orient, as they tended to reason from an “individual” perspective. It is interesting to note, though, that while the Greeks valued oratory and persuasion, they also took divine prophecies and omens seriously when making decisions. The Oracle of Delphi, where priestesses delivered prophecies, was held in high regard, symbolizing the coexistence of rational thought and ancient religious belief in Greek culture.
Finally, we have to keep in mind that the name “Greece” originates from the Latin “Graecia”. The region used to be named as “Hellas”. The tribes in the region believed they were descendants of the god Hellen, which connected the various tribes, such as the Ionians and Dorians. These tribes likely recognized their shared language and ancestry, a unity that enabled them to resist the Persian invasion in 492 BC.
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Greece in the Orient civilization
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As stated above the period of about 500 years between the destruction of the Mycenaean civilization and the re-emergence of the city-states of Greece is known as the “Dark Ages”, but in reality Greece was a remote part of the Mediterranean and Orient civilizations, and we must recognize that even during the “Dark Ages” there was probably active progress in civilization in the surrounding areas. The exchange between Egypt, Phoenicia and the Greek region continued consistently.
This was pointed out by Martin Bernal, author of “Black Athens” (1987), causing a sensation, but it was actually something that had been pointed out since ancient times. A typical example is the ancient Greek historian Herodotus’ “History”, in which he points out that the hometown of the Greek mythological hero Perseus is the town of Kenmis in Egypt, and he also writes, “Not only Dionysus, but almost all the names of the gods came from Egypt to Greece. This is something I have confirmed through my own research. The exceptions are Poseidon (from Libya), Hera, and Themis…”
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Even though there was communication between Egypt and Greece, in ancient times Egypt had become a part of the Achaemenid Empire of Persia. Even so, many of the cultural artifacts of Egypt originated in Egypt, not Persia, and these came to Greece.
In his “History of the Peloponnesian War”, Thucydides wrote that the system of final tax returns was introduced to Athens by Solon, the ruler of Athens, from Egypt. And in 548 BC, when the Temple of Delphi in Greece was destroyed by fire, King Amasis of Egypt (reigned 570 – 526 BC) donated 1,000 talents of alum, and the Greeks living in Egypt donated 20 mnas. This probably shows that trade was flourishing between the two sides.
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Persian Wars—Battle between autocracy and democracy
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The battles between the Achaemenid Empire and ancient Greece, the “Persian Wars” – which took place three times between 499 and 449 BC – were a turning point in history that led to the rise of ancient Athens. In school history lessons, we learned that the far-off, backward autocratic nation of Persia attacked the land of Greece, the birthplace of democracy, but the truth seems to be the opposite. Persia was not “far away” but rather was at the center of the Oriental civilization sphere, while Greece was on the periphery. It seems that the cause of the conflict with Greece was the establishment of the powerful Achaemenid Empire in Persia, which expanded into what is now Turkey and Asia Minor and began to aim for control of the Aegean Sea trade routes.
In any case, a man named Demaratus, who had lost a political dispute in Sparta at the time, had gone into exile in the Persian Empire, and Alexander the Great, who later fought against the Persian Empire, recognized the presence of Greek mercenaries in the Persian army. Persia was always in the sights of the Greeks. It was like China for Japan.
There is an interesting story. It is said that there were lions in Greece at this time. According to Herodotus’s “History”, the camels of the Persian army of Xerxes the Great, which invaded Greece, were attacked by lions around the time they crossed the Dardanelles.
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The Forgotten Phoenicians
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When discussing the contributions of Greek civilization, we should also remember the Phoenicians. The Phoenicians were a Semitic people who migrated from regions that are now Turkey or the Red Sea to what is present-day Lebanon. There, they established a major trading center that connected the entire Mediterranean with the Orient. Serving as a crucial link between the Silk Road and the Mediterranean—much like Constantinople would later—they monopolized the silver trade from Tartessos, located in modern-day Spain. They also traded tin, an essential metal for producing bronze. Following the devastation of Mediterranean civilizations by the “Sea Peoples” around 1177 BC, the Phoenicians expanded their reach into the western Mediterranean. It’s believed that they even achieved a circumnavigation of Africa in the 6th century BC, using nautical techniques that allowed them to navigate even against adverse winds.
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The Phoenicians are also credited with developing a writing system that facilitated widespread trade. Drawing from Egyptian hieroglyphs and Mesopotamian cuneiform, they created an alphabet with just 22 letters, which could be used to write anything—a revolutionary step for its time. In comparison, China, with its many languages, used Chinese characters to enable trade across diverse linguistic regions, while Persia developed a phonetic alphabet similar to the later Latin alphabet.
The Phoenicians may have faded from the historical record after their colony Carthage was destroyed by the Romans, but their legacy endures. Their genetic lineage can still be found in prominent individuals of Lebanese descent around the world. These include Steve Jobs, who built Apple into a major corporation; Carlos Ghosn, who restructured Nissan; Carlos Slim, who commands the Mexican telecommunications industry; and Michel Temer, a former president of Brazil. Even the people of the Catalonia region in Spain are said to have Phoenician ancestry.
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Some scholars suggest that the Greeks adapted the Phoenician alphabet to create the Greek alphabet, using it to write Homer’s epic poems, such as the Iliad and the Odyssey. This may have played a role in shaping Greek identity. In other words, Phoenician civilization, alongside Egypt—both integral parts of the “Orient”—were foundational to ancient Greek civilization.
Many Europeans hold on to the belief that “Greek civilization was created by white people from the north,” but this is as misguided as those in Japan who deny that their civilization was influenced by the Korean Peninsula.
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Is It Really True That “Sparta = Tyranny” ,and “Athens = Democracy”?
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When the Persian Wars began, it appears that Sparta held leadership among the Greek city-states. The Ionians and Aeolians of Asia Minor (now Turkey) sent envoys to Sparta, seeking help against the Persian threat.
Sparta’s economy was based on agriculture, and the city-state was known for its rigorous “Spartan education” system. However, contrary to the popular image of a strict autocracy, Sparta was more like a community of independent warriors under a capable leader, somewhat like the Viking societies that emerged later.
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Sparta’s political system was structured and complex. Decision-making began with the five Ephors (chief ministers), who would draft proposals. These were then submitted to the Gerousia (Council of Elders), the highest decision-making body, consisting of two kings and 28 elders. Once the Council approved a proposal, it was put before the Assembly of the People, where citizens gathered to cast their votes.
While the kingship was hereditary, the kings were subject to audits by the Ephors and bound by the law. Sparta was a society governed by law, as documented by the historian Herodotus in his ‘Histories’, where he describes the events of the Persian Wars.
In one account, Demaratus, a Spartan who went into exile in Persia after losing a political struggle, describes Sparta to Xerxes, the Persian king preparing to invade Greece. Xerxes asks, “What kind of country is Sparta?” Demaratus responds:
“The Spartans are formidable even as individuals, but when united, they become the strongest army in the world. This is because, although they are free, they are not free in every respect. They have a master called nomos (law), and they fear this more than your retainers fear you.”
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Demaratus portrays Sparta as a country bound to the rule of law, referring to the word “freedom” as well. But another Spartan makes an even bolder statement to a Persian general advising surrender:
“You know what it is to be a slave, but you have not yet tasted what it is to be free. Once you experience the taste of freedom, you would urge us to fight for it, not only with spears but with hatchets as well.”
When the Spartan messenger above meets with Xerxes, he refuses to bow down in worship, as was customary. Xerxes, though generous in sparing the messenger, also makes a pointed statement, suggesting that if the Greeks understood the might of Persia, they would give up their “freedom” without the Persians having to invade. If we imagined this sentiment today, it could sound like something Chinese President Xi Jinping might say: “If the Taiwan realizes our military strength, they would abandon their so-called ‘freedom’ without us needing to make an expedition.”
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During the Persian Wars, Athens was already viewed as a large power among the Greek city-states and excelled more in naval than in land warfare. The historian Thucydides notes that Athenian residents (limited to those with citizenship) sold their property and manned the warships, fully committing to the defense.
The decisive victory over the Persians came at sea, with the Athenian navy playing a central role. Following the war, Athens’s power grew. It established the Delian League, purportedly to counter the Persian threat, and collected “alliance fees” from other city-states. Athens then used these fees for its own projects, such as building the Parthenon, and the Delian League effectively became the Athenian Empire. The “alliance fees” functioned more like taxes imposed on subordinate states.
When certain cities tried to leave the League, Athens responded with military force, sometimes looting and enslaving the residents. In 469 BC, for instance, the island of Naxos suffered this fate at Athens’s hands. This act of aggression parallels the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, which aimed to stifle liberalization.
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Fast forward to 2002, when the Bush administration in the United States deployed troops to Iraq, a country which had fundamentally opposed to the United States in many ways. This action was taken under the pretense of “democratizing the Middle East and stabilizing the region.” The reasoning went, “If we democratize them, they will stop fighting.”
However, history challenges the notion “democracies don’t engage in war”. The United States, purportedly the most democratic entity in the world, has frequently been involved in conflicts since World War II. Going further back, ancient Athens, as we saw above, was a “democracy” that was also highly belligerent. Athens not only expanded its overseas colonies but also harshly repressed its allies when they defied it.
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While it’s true that ordinary people usually don’t like being sent off to war, Athens incentivized its lower-income citizens by allowing them to serve as rowers on its warships, granting them political rights in exchange. Athenians, moreover, avoided handicrafts and commerce, relegating such work to slaves while keeping the profits for themselves. Rather than promoting peace, Athenian “democracy” took on a predatory character, reminiscent of the colonial spirit seen in Western countries in the early modern era.
.This aggressive approach led other Greek city-states, fearing Athens’s power, to rally under Sparta’s leadership, sparking the Peloponnesian War (431 BC – 404 BC), which split Greek region into two. This conflict was somewhat analogous to the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union, in which the two powers divided the world after defeating their common enemy, Nazi Germany. The Peloponnesian War became a struggle between the Delian League, dominated by Athens, and the Peloponnesian League, centered around Sparta.
He describes how the Delian League, initially a noble alliance against Persia, gradually degenerated to serve Athens’s interests:
“At first, there was a great cause: to fight against Persia. But soon, Athens’s own vanity and greed took over, until it bought the hatred of the majority. This led to repeated rebellions and crackdowns within the alliance. Once trusted friends, you have now become nothing more than a source of suspicion and discord. If you ease the pressure on allied states, your own safety will be jeopardized.”
Once a state becomes the leader of an alliance, it cannot simply step down at will. Thucydides reasons further, “Should the leader be forced from power, it risks facing the resentment it incurred during its time in control. Therefore, understand that you will no longer be able to abandon your leadership role. It is too late now to try and be a mild-mannered figure.”
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Regarding those who dream of non-alignment and neutrality, he offers a harsh perspective:
“Those who hope for peace will always need the protection of the strong to survive. Such people can live safely as slaves in a slave state. But they bring no benefit to the leading city-states that hold power over the weak.”
For nations aligned with a hegemon, they desire a leader who is as fair and generous as possible. This sentiment is expressed by Thucydides as follows:
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“When a prize that can be seized by force appears, it’s unrealistic to expect someone to refrain from taking it based solely on notions of right and wrong. But a person who can control his power to govern others with morality is truly worthy of praise.”
The United States after World War II somewhat embodied this ideal, but it seems there is little room left for such an approach now.
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The Prominence of the Individual
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When reading ancient Greek writings, one gets the sense that the individual held a prominent place. To put it another way, while the Persians and Egyptians relied on commands to move people, the Greeks used reason—or, more precisely, logic. The former approach reflects a hierarchical relationship between people, whereas the latter reflects a relationship between equals.
Even in Sparta, tyranny was absent, and in Athens, as demonstrated in the many speeches in Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War’, it seems that all members of the army thought independently, and acted only after they had personally committed to the rightness of their actions.
Of course, not all residents of Athens had these rights, and even those who did sometimes showed flaws in behavior, as in the case of condemning the philosopher Socrates to death. Even so, their way of life contrasted sharply with the despotism found in the East.
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Aristotle’s Politics’ analyzes politics through categories that remain relevant today, from monarchy to democracy, making the work a foundational text in political science courses in American universities. In Aristotle’s writings, the individual is foundational, which creates a strong affinity with modern Western scholarship. Indeed, Western intellectuals of the Renaissance rediscovered Greek classical texts and used them as a foundation for developing modern philosophy and science.
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On the other hand, “Introduction to History” by Ibn Khaldun (1332-1406 AD), a renowned historian from the East, also provides profound insights. However, the cases he addresses are largely limited to the Eastern monarchic and despotic systems, making his work less applicable to the present day.
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Why is there such a contrast within the same Mediterranean civilization sphere? Records indicate that the Persian rulers knew of democracy and deliberately chose dictatorship. One telling example comes from Herodotus’“Histories”.
Darius I, who restored the Achaemenid Persian Empire, discusses with his peers the form of government to adopt before his coronation. Otanes warns against dictatorship, advocating instead for “entrusting the affairs of state to the entire Persian people” (democracy). Megabazus, however, argues in favor of an oligarchy, pointing out that democracy can easily fall to populism and saying, “Nothing is more foolish or insolent than the masses, who are good for nothing.” Darius I, on the other hand, claims, “Of the three systems—democracy, oligarchy, and dictatorship—dictatorship is by far the best. … Who gave us our freedom in the first place?” Thus, he adopts a dictatorship—though the veracity of this account remains uncertain.
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So, living in the same Mediterranean environment, societies centered on individualism and those with solely a king did coexist. Given the shared environment, might the difference lie in ethnic characteristics? Must we accept the opinion of some European scholars that “the ancient Greeks were white people from the north and thus had a strong sense of individualism”?
Certainly, the “white people from the north”—those who migrated to present-day Iran and India around 1200 BC—called themselves aryas (aristocrats, warriors) and took pride in their freedom.
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However, their society differed from modern Western individualism; in their sacred texts, such as the Rig Veda and the Avesta, the family formed the core of life rather than the individual, with the patriarch wielding considerable power. This structure, where only self-aware warriors had rights, was more authoritarian than later Germanic (also “Northern White”) societies.
That said, we cannot claim that the Semitic and Hamitic peoples, who shaped Eastern civilizations, were inherently authoritarian, or that Indo-European “white” peoples inherently prioritized the individual. The question remains: why did Greece, surrounded by Eastern civilizations, create a society based on individualism and reason?
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Democracy in Athens, Compromised by Populism
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Ancient Greece was the birthplace of individualism and democracy. Interestingly, however, it also provided the first example of how democracy can devolve into mob rule, populism, and even fascism—a pathology that many developed countries face today.
In ancient Athens, people with shared interests formed factions and frequently engaged in political disputes with opposing groups. These factions often tried to expand their support by distributing money and positions. Early Athens had no formal bureaucracy, and public office was typically filled by senior citizens volunteering their time. Later, however, nearly all public offices (except some senior roles, such as generals) were opened to all citizens, regardless of their background or qualifications. Public posts were awarded by lottery rather than by election, and the lure of bribes and other benefits made these positions attractive.
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Plato and Socrates, advocates of governance by the wise, criticized this system. Yet Socrates was ultimately sentenced to death by a court selected by lottery.
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In this way, ancient Athens experienced virtually every type of government still relevant today: beginning with monarchy, moving through aristocracy, and finally shifting between military oligarchy and mass democracy. This journey makes Aristotle’s ‘Politics’ essential reading for modern political science.
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Incidentally, it is estimated that at the height of its power, ancient Athens had 30,000 “citizens” with rights and 60,000 slaves; thus, people without rights—including the families of “citizens”—constituted the overwhelming majority of the population. (this sentence was added on Sep. 19)
Yesterday, I went to see Christopher Nolan’s much-anticipated film The Odyssey. It was superb.
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That said, one line spoken by Odysseus’s wife, Penelope, caught my attention:
“I hear that bands of marauders known as the ‘Sea Peoples’ have been attacking city-states everywhere. They would finish the civilization.”
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In ancient times, the “Sea Peoples” attacked cities along the Mediterranean coast, ushering in several decades of civilizational decline. But did this really happen around the same time as the Trojan War, in which Odysseus fought?
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I asked ChatGPT to look into it. It turns out that, if both events occurred when tradition says they did, they were indeed almost contemporaneous—sometime around the beginning of the twelfth century BC.
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(Odysseus’s voyage took him back and forth across the Aegean Sea.)
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That opens the door to all sorts of intriguing hypotheses. As ChatGPT and I batted ideas back and forth, we began to wonder whether the allied forces sent against Troy by the Greek city-states might themselves have been part of the “Sea Peoples.”
After all, the Sea Peoples were not a single unified group, and their true identity remains uncertain to this day. So the idea is entirely plausible. From the viewpoint of Troy at the time, the Greeks—the Achaeans—who came from the west were uncivilized barbarians.
Then a thought occurred to me. What follows is a reconstruction of my conversation with ChatGPT.
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Author:
So they really were contemporaries. The idea that the Achaeans were among the “Sea Peoples” is fascinating—and quite plausible. It makes me want to turn the whole thing into an absurdist comedy in which the “Sea Peoples” are either the Russian army led by Putin or the American military led by Trump and his cohort.
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ChatGPT:
Ha! There is definitely a film in that. And if you superimpose modern politics on the ancient historical structure while leaving that structure intact, it will work far better than a mere parody.
Imagine the eastern Mediterranean around 1200 BC. One palace civilization after another is collapsing. Then a mysterious people known only as the “Sea Peoples” appears in front of Troy. Panic spreads through the coastal city:
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“Who on earth are these people?”
The trouble is, the Sea Peoples themselves are not quite sure.
One contingent declares, “We are the Russian army,” led by a man who looks exactly like Putin. Beside him, a man who looks exactly like Trump proclaims:
“No, we are the greatest Sea Peoples in history. Nobody has ever seen Sea Peoples like this.”
The Achaeans grumble and say, “Wait a minute. Aren’t we the Sea Peoples?”
And through it all, only an Egyptian scribe remains perfectly serious, faithfully recording every last detail on the stone walls.
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——Good heavens, what a glorious mess. Apparently, AI can write absurdist comedy too.
（This installment points out that little is known about how politics and the economy in the Mediterranean region unfolded during the 1,000 years leading up to the rise of ancient Greek civilization, as epitomized by Athens.
This period also spans the 1,000 years following the legendary Trojan War and the invasions by the “Sea Peoples” during that same era.
Because we do not fully understand what happened during these 1,000 years, the relationship between ancient Greek civilization and the civilizations of the Orient remains vague and unclear.）
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Greco-Roman Civilization
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Before Greece
In the history we learned in school, we’re often told, “After Egypt and Mesopotamia, the Greek city-states suddenly emerged, and democracy blossomed in Athens.” However, if we look closer, there’s actually a gap of more than a thousand years between these civilizations. So, the truth is that while Egypt and Mesopotamia continued for centuries without major changes, the Greek city-states eventually rose to prominence, challenging the existing order.
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Greek city-states, in fact, date back to as early as the 16th century BC, in areas like Mycenae, Troy, and Crete. The Minoan civilization on Crete, thought to have developed around 3000 BC, engaged in trade and conflict with contemporary powers in Egypt, Syria, and Turkey. Other influential cultures outside of Egypt and Mesopotamia included the Hittites, Mitanni, Cypriots, Canaanites, Minoans, and Mycenaeans, all contributing to the region’s dynamic history.
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One of the most intriguing events in Mediterranean history occurred around 1177 BC, when a mysterious group known as the “Sea Peoples” attacked cities across the area, in some cases causing significant destruction. Egypt managed to repel the Sea Peoples, while Mesopotamia appeared relatively unaffected. But in Greece, this invasion plunged the region into chaos and left a historical void lasting almost 500 years.After the “People of the Sea,” the Greek region experienced a decline in terms of the scale of its architecture and the quality of its crafts..
( Egyptian campaign against the Sea Peoples)
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For many years, a popular theory among European scholars proposed that around 1100 BC, a group called the Dorians—a northern people with fair skin who were thought to be democratic and intellectually advanced—migrated to Greece and founded prominent city-states like Sparta. This supposedly ended the “dark age” in Greece.
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However, this theory oversimplifies a complex history. While the Dorians likely migrated into Greece, it doesn’t mean they introduced an “advanced” civilization. People from the Indo-European language family, often classified as “white,” had already settled in Greece by around 2200 BC, so the Dorian arrival around 1100 BC did not represent a complete cultural reset.
And even during this “lost” period in Greece, Egypt and Mesopotamia continued to evolve, and it’s known that the language spoken in Greece before the Sea Peoples’ arrival remained in use afterward.
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Greece has poor, mountainous soil and was never a particularly wealthy region to begin with. Scholarship, too, did not suddenly emerge in Greece. Later Europeans concocted a “romanticized view of civilization,” positing that “civilization evolved from Greece to Rome to post-Renaissance Western Europe.” In reality, Western European civilization is also a derivative of the civilization in the Orient. .
Nevertheless, as I will discuss later, post-Renaissance Western European civilization was built upon the foundation of the “individual”—a person with a well-defined sense of self—a characteristic not found in modern Islamic regional civilizations. And its origins may lie in the civilization of ancient Athens.
Navigation is becoming dangerous not only through the Strait of Hormuz, but also through the Bab el-Mandeb Strait at the entrance to the Red Sea.
This is intolerable for both oil-producing nations and trading nations. Nor does the United States military appear to retain the ability to secure these waterways by force.
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If military force cannot solve the problem, perhaps money can. Both Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and the Houthis need money. Iran, moreover, cannot export its own oil if the Strait of Hormuz is closed.
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The tolls would hardly be high enough to seriously hit the maritime transport. We could simply regard these waterways as toll routes, much like the Panama and Suez Canals—although, unlike Hormuz, neither is an international strait.
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Why not establish a system under which the coastal states receive agreed shares of standardized transit fees, with the scheme jointly administered by representatives of the coastal states, the principal user nations, and the United Nations?
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Should—or could—a similar system be created for the Strait of Malacca or the Taiwan Strait? That is another question altogether.
（This installment serves as an introduction to the upcoming section on ancient Greek civilization. The author draws the reader’s attention to the fact that ancient Greece was situated on the periphery of the civilizations of the Orient (Mesopotamia, Egypt, etc.) and incorporated various elements from the Orient. This can be collectively referred to as “Mediterranean civilization.”）
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The Mediterranean Civilizational Sphere: An Extension of the Orient
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Thus, Mesopotamia serves as the “epicenter” of culture and civilization in this vast region. Trade and communication flourished among the Indus, Margiana, and Egyptian civilizations, and for a period in the 7th century BC, Egypt and Mesopotamia were united under Assyrian rule. These regions can collectively be called the Orient.
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The societies and cultures of the Orient shared many similarities. Crafts, music, and musical instruments were nearly identical, and social relationships tended to emphasize a strong patriarchal system over individualism.
.(from above: Arabic, Chinese and European “lute”)
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In Mesopotamia, the economy was initially supported by highly productive agriculture and later by the transportation industry, which played a crucial role in the Silk Road’s central section.Mesopotamia, a fertile plain between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, saw record crop yields; a Sumerian city record from 2350 BC shows that wheat yields were 80 times the amount sown. In medieval Europe, by comparison, the yield was only five to six times the seed planted.
However, irrigation led to salinization, as evaporating water drew salts up from the soil, eventually reducing agricultural productivity. This may have driven many to shift toward trade along the Silk Road. Similar conditions of salinized fields can still be seen in Central Asia today.
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Today, the term “Orient” often refers to the “Islamic world.” However, Islam did not emerge independently of the ancient Oriental civilizations that preceded it. Established in the 7th century AD, Islam can be seen as a synthesis of customs and traditions that had developed in the Orient over millennia. While Islam replaced ancient polytheistic beliefs with monotheism, it preserved much of the cultural heritage of Mesopotamia.
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Oriental culture also left a significant legacy in later Greek and Roman civilization. The most evident example is the pantheon of gods in Greek and Roman mythology, many of whom seem to have originated from Oriental deities. As we will explore further, the ancient Greek historian Herodotus acknowledged these influences in his own research.
I just had an amusing conversation with ChatGPT, so I thought I’d post it here.
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I said to ChatGPT:
“I sometimes tease Russians about their excessive anti-Americanism. ‘Come on. What you really want is to be able to throw your weight around and do whatever you want, just like America. You’re anti-American because you can’t. Deep down, you actually like America. You’re dying to be like America.’ A Russian friend of mine laughed and said, ‘Exactly. You got us.’”
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Chat replied:
“Yes. I think that teasing gets pretty close to the heart of the matter. There is a peculiar mixture of resentment and envy in Russian anti-American discourse that cannot be explained simply as ‘hating America.’ Russians may bitterly condemn American unipolar dominance, extraterritorial sanctions, and military interventions. But ask, ‘If Russia possessed the same degree of power, would it exercise that power with restraint?’ and things suddenly get a little murky.
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So if you push them by saying, ‘You don’t really hate America. What you hate is that America gets to do whatever it wants and you don’t,’ the answer, surprisingly often, is something like, ‘Well…yes.’ (Laughs.)
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There are also Russian intellectuals who know the United States extremely well, speak English, admire American movies and universities, and respect the dynamism of American technology and business — while at the same time expressing fiercely anti-American political views.
Rather than a contradiction, this becomes much easier to understand if you see it as the great-power mentality of ‘Why them, not us?’”
(note: I am not payed either by Russia or by Mr. Trump and his associates)
(This is a slightly revised version of my article to be published in Newsweek Japan on September 8.)
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The Post-Cold War Era and the Expansion of American Power
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The international situation today can broadly be described as the “post-Cold War” era. The Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union, which divided the world for decades after World War II, ended with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, leaving the United States as the overwhelmingly dominant global power.
This was sometimes called a G1 world. Later, with the rise of China, people began talking about a G2 world—or, alternatively, a G-Zero world, on the grounds that no single country was now powerful enough to dominate the international system.
Such labels are usually invented by think tanks or experts hoping to make a name for themselves. Since they inevitably capture only one aspect of reality, there is not much point in arguing over which label is the “correct” one.
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Postmodernism and Euphoria
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Even during the Cold War, beginning in the 1960s, young people in the United States, Western Europe, and Japan increasingly rebelled against the frameworks created by “grown-ups”—the state, corporations, and other established institutions.
In the United States, opposition to the military draft during the Vietnam War provided a major catalyst. In Western Europe and Japan, there was growing resentment against “capitalists” for creating inequality, exploiting workers, and depriving people of their humanity.
Even the central ideals of modernity—progress, parliamentary democracy, and rationalism—came under skeptical scrutiny. Hippies, free love, and even the practice of Zen became fashionable.
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A broad collection of ideas and movements—including decentralization, grassroots democracy, respect for minority rights, multiculturalism, environmentalism, and suspicion of giant corporations—came to be grouped under the label postmodernism.
As the Soviet Union collapsed, the American political thinker Francis Fukuyama advanced the idea of “the end of history.” His argument, broadly speaking, was that the great modern goals of freedom, democracy, and the market economy had essentially been achieved. As the economy became globalized, the nation-state would lose much of its significance.
The French thinker Jacques Attali, meanwhile, helped popularize the idea of the “nomad”: a highly educated and capable individual able to operate across national borders and racial or ethnic divisions.
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At first glance, these ideas seemed to herald a new world beyond modernity. But they also reflected the euphoria produced by the West’s great victory represented by the collapse of the Soviet Union. That euphoria would eventually collide with reality.
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American Hubris: “Exceptionalism”
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The United States had long possessed a belief that, because America had a special mission to democratize the world, it deserved special treatment—and could therefore get away with things that other countries could not. This is one version of what is known as American exceptionalism.
Its origins probably lie partly in the pride Americans felt when they broke away from Britain and Europe (I’m not referring to the current situation, but to the late 18th century). To many Americans in the early years of the republic, “international law” was essentially a set of rules devised by the great European powers to suit their own interests. America had its own ideas and its own interests.
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That attitude has never entirely disappeared. There remains a particularly strong American distrust of international organizations and institutions. It can be seen today in Trump’s disregard for WTO rules and his hostility toward the International Criminal Court.
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Democratization by Force: The Neocons and “Regime Change”
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After the terrorist attacks of September 2001 killed thousands of Americans, the rise of the neoconservatives, or neocons, became increasingly conspicuous, as did their advocacy of “regime change.”
This approach rested on the idea of America as an exceptional nation: the United States has a mission to spread freedom and democracy throughout the world—even by military force if necessary—and should not allow itself to be constrained by international legal principles such as territorial integrity and the prohibition on the use of force. This thinking gained influence among both Republicans and Democrats.
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A number of organizations and NGOs emerged that sought to bring down authoritarian governments—in other words, to promote regime change. Many received funding from the U.S. government. They provided money to local opposition movements and advised them on political tactics.
In this way, pro-Russian or authoritarian governments fell one after another—in Georgia in 2003, Ukraine in 2004, Egypt in 2011, and elsewhere. The result was to deepen suspicion of the United States among former socialist countries and authoritarian developing nations.
This, in turn, helped create the conditions for today’s alignment among China, Russia, and North Korea, as well as the rise of the so-called Global South—which, it should be remembered, is hardly a coherent organization.
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Trump’s America: Back to the Age of Imperialism
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Trump put a stop to much of this activity. Presumably, one of his motives was to prevent Democratic-leaning organizations from using government funds for such purposes. In 2025, his administration crudely dismantled the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), which administered much of America’s foreign assistance. That move was part of the same trend.
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At the beginning of his second administration in 2025, Trump appeared eager to stop virtually any war he could, apparently with an eye on winning the Nobel Peace Prize. But after failing to achieve his goals in Ukraine and Gaza, he shifted sharply.
In January 2026, the United States intervened militarily in Venezuela and captured President Nicolás Maduro. At roughly the same time, Trump tried to force Denmark to sell Greenland to the United States. Then, in February, Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was killed.
By this point, Trump’s rhetoric and actions increasingly looked less like twenty-first-century diplomacy than a retreat into nineteenth-century imperialism.
That may at least be less hypocritical than the neoconservative practice of expanding America’s sphere of influence under the banner of “freedom and democracy.” But it is hardly a way to win friends—and it leaves the United States with little claim to moral superiority over China or anyone else.
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Economic Globalization
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After World War II, the U.S. economy reached the height of its power. But it was not long before the hollowing-out of American manufacturing began. Cheap manufactured goods poured into the United States, first from Japan and then from South Korea and other Asian countries. Ironically, these countries were taking advantage of the very system of “free trade” that postwar America itself had championed — partly as a means of breaking into the colonial empires and protected markets of Britain and France. The United States increasingly found itself on the defensive.
American manufacturers required profit margins far higher than those of their Japanese counterparts. Unlike Japanese companies, which traditionally relied heavily on bank financing, American companies depended more on equity markets and therefore faced stronger pressure to generate profits and returns for shareholders.
They responded by moving production overseas. Japanese and Western European companies did much the same, expanding production into lower-cost Asian countries and, in some cases, into the United States itself. Corporate activity became increasingly global.
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Then the Soviet Union collapsed and China entered the world economy on a massive scale. It was around this time that the word “globalization” came into widespread use.
For Western and Japanese corporations, operating globally was nothing new. But to elites in the former Soviet republics, China, and many developing countries, it sometimes looked quite different: Western corporations seemed suddenly to be moving in, exploiting their countries’ weaknesses, using the power of money to seize economic interests, impose political systems, and even change local values.
Together with the idea of “regime change” discussed above, “globalization” thus came to be regarded in many of these countries as virtually synonymous with American imperialism. Developing countries increasingly rallied under the banner of the “Global South” as a counterweight to the advanced industrial countries.
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Supply Chains
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Economic globalization led companies to build networks across national borders for procuring machinery, components, and materials — what we now call supply chains. Behind this was a simple reality: a product no longer had to be made entirely within one country. Companies could obtain the best machinery and components from different parts of the world and assemble them somewhere else.
This way of thinking was initially less familiar to many Japanese manufacturers, which traditionally produced a large proportion of their components within their own corporate groups and domestic supplier networks.
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Apple provides a classic example of the new model. Rather than manufacture its products in the high-wage United States, it sourced sophisticated components from Japan, South Korea, and elsewhere, contracted with companies such as Taiwan’s Foxconn, and had final assembly carried out in mainland China, where wages were then much lower.
When someone like Donald Trump raises tariffs country by country, he disrupts the supply chains of American companies themselves. That is the world we now live in.
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The Frustration of Modernity: Bubbles, Bursts, and Bubbles Again
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The sheer size of the U.S. economy enables the country to maintain enormous military power. And because the United States is also a giant consumer and importer — American private consumption is roughly one and a half times that of China — it has enormous leverage over countries whose economies depend heavily on exports to the U.S. market.
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But the American economy has in fact grown beyond its underlying strength in part because of bubble-like forces. Fiscal deficits and abundant liquidity have helped sustain this expansion, but they have also contributed to repeated cycles of bubbles and crashes. Each time one of these bubbles bursts, the entire world economy seems to go into convulsions.
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The Frustration of Modernity: The Return of the State and Populism
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As American-style capitalism begins to reveal its limits, postmodernism is also facing a severe test. During the COVID-19 pandemic beginning in 2020, strong state authority suddenly became necessary. And to ordinary people in advanced countries suffering from economic inequality and unemployment, postmodernism increasingly looked like little more than the hypocrisy of intellectual elites. As noted above, many began demanding that the state use its power to redistribute wealth from the rich to themselves.
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The Trump administration, meanwhile, places naked power above the modern values of freedom and democracy, while downgrading — or simply ignoring — the alliance system and pursuing power games with other “great powers” such as China and Russia. In this sense, the Trump administration seems to inhabit the imperialist world of the nineteenth century and earlier.
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The Frustration of Modernity: The Degradation of Public Discourse
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In Europe, the United States, Japan, and Russia alike, there has been a conspicuous decline in the quality of elites who discuss politics, economics, and society. Their perspectives have narrowed: some talk endlessly about politics while scarcely considering economics, for example.
In the United States, techniques have been refined for winning popular support by replacing reality with a compelling “narrative” or an applause-winning label. Calm debate based on facts has correspondingly lost ground.
Republicans, for example, routinely throw the label “socialist!” at Democratic candidates. It is a political trick designed to associate Democrats with the negative image of the old Soviet Union and thereby discredit them. Yet “socialism” can mean very different things. A Nordic-style system combining a market economy with a strong social safety net might in fact suit many of the needs of Americans today remarkably well.
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An Age of Chaos
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The world is thus moving deeper into chaos. The global alliance system is fraying, and countries are increasingly being left to pursue their own paths and fend for themselves. Meanwhile, the U.S. economy, which has continued to expand with the help of ever-increasing government debt, now faces the danger of another periodic bursting of its bubbles.
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The U.S. military, which has long possessed overwhelming power, has proved unable even to guarantee the security of the Strait of Hormuz and has fallen behind in adapting to inexpensive new weapons such as drones. America has lost much of its shipbuilding capacity, while it has also proved unable to halt nuclear proliferation to countries such as North Korea.
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At the same time, AI threatens not only to eliminate jobs but potentially to usurp human knowledge and eventually subordinate human beings themselves — the possible emergence of the “Singularity.”
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The modern values of freedom, democracy, and individual rights are being trampled underfoot. The world risks being torn between, on the one hand, a return to the imperialist law of the jungle and, on the other, a value-neutral technological world dominated by AI, “room-temperature” nuclear fusion, quantum computing, genetic engineering, brain-wave manipulation, and other technologies — a kind of “techno-nihilism,” to use a term of my own.
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Humanism — Putting Human Beings at the Center
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I believe humanism offers a way out of this chaos. In Japan, the word is often used in the narrower sense of compassion or benevolence. Historically, however, humanism emerged in Renaissance Europe. Its essential proposition was that judgments about the world should be grounded not in the dogma of the Church but in human beings themselves. This intellectual shift helped make the subsequent development of modern science possible.
Jeremy Bentham famously spoke of “the greatest happiness of the greatest number.” In this tradition, economic growth should ultimately serve the rights and well-being of individual human beings.
Humanism could therefore become a banner under which we resist all forms of domination: authoritarian and coercive states, imperialism, populist mass rule, the excesses of capitalism, and even a future dictatorship by AI.
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Planetary Defense: Asteroid Deflection
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If human beings want to stop endlessly fighting over the interests of individuals and nations, perhaps we should all start defending the Earth together.
NASA in the United States and JAXA in Japan are developing technologies for dealing with asteroids that might threaten Earth — sending spacecraft toward them and, if necessary, changing their trajectories by impact of collision or other means.
The United States and China currently lead much of the competition in space. But when it comes to precisely navigating a spacecraft toward a distant asteroid and landing on or closely approaching a tiny target, Japan is actually in a very strong position.
I hope the day will come when young people of Generation Z can bring AI aboard as a partner, devote their energies to planetary defense — and make a living doing it.
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In such a world, there is something we Japanese must do.
Ever since the Meiji era, when Japan opened itself to the West roughly 150 years ago, we have had a tendency to treat Western institutions, ideas, and discourse as absolute truths instead of thinking things through for ourselves. It is time to abandon that habit.
We need to identify our own interests and decide for ourselves what freedom, democracy, and the individual should mean. Then we must ask how those principles and interests can be reconciled with those of the people around us and with those of other nations.
This installment highlights what the author considers to be the most important aspects of Mesopotamia. While ancient Greek civilization drew many of its elements from the “Orient,” Mesopotamia constituted a significant portion of that “Orient.” In contrast to the ancient Egypt, where the history seems to revolve mostly around accounts of shifts in pharaonic power, the history of Mesopotamia involves the evolution of the economy and society as a whole.
Furthermore, the origin of the Sumerians—who are considered to be the founders of this civilization—remains unknown to this day. In the author’s view, there is a certain romance to Mesopotamia.
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The French historian Fernand Braudel observed, “In ancient Babylon, there were bankers, merchants involved in long-distance trade, and all the tools of credit transactions, such as bills of exchange, promissory notes, and checks.”
The author sees the origins of the “modern era” in Mesopotamia.
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Mesopotamia – A Prototype of Modern Times
Much has been written about Mesopotamia, so here I’ll focus on the aspects I find intriguing or unclear. Like the Indus Valley, Mesopotamia was repeatedly invaded by different peoples who established their own kingdoms in this fertile region, sometimes even coexisting in multiple kingdoms. It was a rich land that became home to many cultures and civilizations.
The history of Mesopotamia began around 3000 BC, when the Sumerians built city-states in the southern region. However, ruins in Hamqal, near the upper Tigris in northeastern Syria, are thought to date back to around 4000 BC. Over time, Mesopotamia was invaded and ruled by various outside forces, including the Semitic Amur, Hittites, Assyrians, Achaemenid Persians, Alexander the Great (in 331 BC), the Roman Empire, the Mongols, and the Ottoman Turks.
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The Mysterious Sumerians
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The Sumerians, the founders of early Mesopotamian civilization, remain a mystery: no one knows precisely where they came from or where they eventually disappeared to. Were they of Asian or Indo-European origin? Curiously, their language contained particles similar to the Japanese postpositional particles te, ni, o, and wa, and it was distinct from the languages of surrounding cultures.
In modern-day Turkmenistan, ruins bearing similarities to Sumerian structures have been discovered. Did the Sumerians migrate south to Mesopotamia from this area, or did they later travel to Turkmenistan from Mesopotamia? If the former, the Margiana civilization in Turkmenistan could predate Mesopotamia itself.
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The Sumerians developed legal and social systems, including notaries and monetary compensation, which are still in use today. Interestingly, the Japanese word hanko (seal), still used in official capacities, is thought to have Sumerian roots. Around 3200 BC, the Sumerians also introduced cuneiform writing—1,800 years before the appearance of the Chinese oracle bone script, the ancestor of Chinese characters.
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A fascinating theory suggests that the Sumerians were hybrid between an alien from the planet Nibiru, called the Anunnaki, and the early humans. According to this legend, the Sumerian hero Gilgamesh claimed, “I am half god and half man, and two-thirds of my blood is divine.”
If they truly possessed an advanced civilization, it’s intriguing to consider why they didn’t prevent the chaos that followed in human history. Incidentally, there is a Japanese legend of the “heavenly grandson” descending to Earth. Some internet theories even link the term Sumeramikoto, referring to the emperor, to the word “Sumer,” though the truth of this connection remains uncertain.
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Assyria: The Prototype of a Centralized State
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In the 13th century BC, Assyria established a centralized state that unified much of Mesopotamia. It boasted a formidable military force, equipped with iron weapons, horses, and chariots. Regions conquered by Assyria were governed directly as provinces, while those that pledged submission were ruled indirectly as vassal states. The number of provinces eventually exceeded 100, and a bureaucratic structure led by governors managed these areas. This state structure closely resembled those of later empires, such as the Persian and Roman empires. In other words, Mesopotamia (perhaps, like Egypt) can be seen as the birthplace of the ancient centralized state model.
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On a related note, Mesopotamia saw the rise of prominent trading companies, such as the Egibi and Murashu Trading Companies, around 600 BC. These companies are believed to have engaged in investment-banking-style finance, funding voyages and sharing in the profits. The Hammurabi Code also regulated interest rates for loans given to farmers, whether in money or seeds.
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Although Venice and Genoa were known for pioneering finance in the Mediterranean during the Middle Ages, financial practices in the Mediterranean may have originated in Mesopotamian times. Similar businesses likely existed in ancient Alexandria, an Egyptian port, and in Athens, where trade was financed through pooled investments from smaller investors.
The French historian Fernand Braudel observed, “In ancient Babylon, there were bankers, merchants involved in long-distance trade, and all the tools of credit transactions, such as bills of exchange, promissory notes, and checks.”
