🇨🇦 Original
But I would also say that Great powers can afford to go it alone. They have the market size, the military capacity, and the leverage to dictate terms. Middle powers do not.
But when we only negotiate bilaterally with a hegemon, we negotiate from weakness. We accept what is offered. We compete with each other to be the most accommodating.
This is not sovereignty. It is the performance of sovereignty while accepting subordination.
In a world of great power rivalry, the countries in between have a choice: to compete with each other for favour or to combine to create a third path with impact.
We should not allow the rise of hard power to blind us to the fact that the power of legitimacy, integrity, and rules will remain strong — if we choose to wield it together.
Which brings me back to Havel.
🏛️ Translation
§53 τοῖς μέντοι, ὦ οἱ συνελθόντες, μέγιστον δυναμένοις ἔξεστι νυνὶ μόνους καθ’ ἑαυτοὺς πράττειν· ἔχουσι γὰρ τήν τε τῶν χρημάτων εὐπορίαν καὶ τὴν τοῦ στρατοῦ ἰσχὺν καὶ τοσαύτην ῥοπὴν ὥστε αὐτοὺς ἐπιτάττειν ὅ τι βούλωνται· αἱ δὲ μέσην δύναμιν ἔχουσαι οὐχ ὁμοίως.
To those, however, O you here gathered, of greatest power, it is open at present to act each by himself: for they have abundance of money, strength of armies, and weight enough to dictate whatever they wish. Those of middling power are not in the like case.
§54 ὅταν δὲ πρὸς ἕνα τῶν ἡγεμόνων μόνοι διαλεγώμεθα, ἀσθενεῖς ὄντες διαλεγόμεθα. δεχόμεθα ὅ τι ἂν προτείνωσιν. ἁμιλλώμεθα δὲ πρὸς ἀλλήλους ὅστις τὸ μάλιστα ὑπείξειν φανήσεται.
When we negotiate, by ourselves alone, with a single hegemon, we negotiate as men in weakness. We accept whatever they put forward. We strive against one another, each to appear the most yielding.
§55 ταῦτα δ’ οὐκ ἔστιν αὐτονομία· σχῆμα μέν ἐστι τῆς αὐτονομίας, ἔργῳ δὲ ὑποτέλεια.
But this is not sovereignty: in outward form it is sovereignty, but in deed it is vassalage.
§56 ἐν τοίνυν τῇ τοιαύτῃ τῆς οἰκουμένης ἀμίλλῃ τῶν μέγιστον δυναμένων, αἱ ἐν τῷ μεταξὺ πόλεις δυοῖν τούτων αἵρεσιν ἔχουσιν· ἢ πρὸς ἀλλήλας φιλονικεῖν περὶ τοῦ ἀρέσκειν, ἢ συνελθοῦσαι τρίτην τινὰ ὁδὸν ἀνιστάναι, ἧς ἂν εἴη τι κῦρος.
In such a contest of the inhabited world among those of greatest power, the states that lie between have these two choices: to strive against one another in pleasing, or, coming together, to raise up some third road that may have weight to it.
§57 ἀλλὰ μὴ ἐάσωμεν, ὦ οἱ συνελθόντες, τὴν τῆς βίας ἀνάστασιν οὕτως ἡμᾶς ἀποτυφλοῦν ὥστε λανθάνειν ὅτι ἡ τοῦ νομίμου τε καὶ τοῦ ἀκεραίου καὶ τῶν κανόνων δύναμις ἰσχυρὰ μενεῖ, ἐὰν κοινῇ χρῆσθαι αὐτοῖς προαιρώμεθα — ὅπερ δὴ ἐπὶ τὸν Ἁβέλον αὖθις ἡμᾶς ἀνάγει.
But let us not, O you here gathered, suffer the rising up of brute force so to blind us that it escape notice — that the power of legitimacy, of integrity, and of the rules will remain strong, if we choose to wield them in common. Which thought brings us back again to Havel.
💬 Commentary
🤖 First pass
Introductory. This is exactly the terrain Demosthenes spent his career cultivating: σχῆμα versus ἔργον, the appearance of sovereignty versus its actual loss. The pivotal line in §55 is the line he could have written.
Commentary.
- The σχῆμα / ἔργῳ antithesis in §55. This is the line I most wanted to land in the whole project. σχῆμα (outward form, posture, schema, pretense) versus ἔργον (deed, fact, what is actually done) is Demosthenes’ core rhetorical move — he uses it constantly to expose Athenian complacency, Philip’s mendacity, Aeschines’ dishonesty. In σχῆμα sovereignty, in ἔργῳ subjection. The antithesis is sharper than the English because Greek can drop the verb in the second half (ellipsis is natural), and because the two words sit symmetrically at the head of each clause: σχῆμα μέν / ἔργῳ δέ.
- ὑποτέλεια as the choice of word. “Subordination” in English is mild; ὑποτέλεια is precise and politically loaded. It is the technical term for what Athens reduced her supposed allies to inside the Delian League — tribute-paying subjection. The actual Athenian distinction was between αὐτόνομοι σύμμαχοι (sovereign allies) and ὑποτελεῖς (subjects who paid the φόρος, the tribute). So calling middle-power deference to a hegemon ὑποτέλεια activates the full historical resonance: Athens herself behaved exactly as Carney is now accusing today’s hegemons of behaving. The Greek does not let this go unnoticed. Demosthenes’ audience would have heard a quietly devastating moral comment. (First-pass English back-translation: “in deed it is subjection.” The Greek ὑποτέλεια was unchanged in the second pass, but the back-translation was refined to “in deed it is vassalage” — see D54.)
- ῥοπή for “leverage” in §53. ῥοπή is the inclination of a balance — the moment when one pan starts to drop. The English metaphor of leverage comes from the physical lever; the Greek metaphor comes from scales. Both point at the same thing: which side has weight enough to dictate. Demosthenes uses ῥοπή repeatedly when arguing that Athens has not put enough weight in her own pan against Philip. So translating “leverage to dictate terms” with τοσαύτη ῥοπή lands the line in the exact bin where Demosthenes’ own arguments live.
- The tricolon of weakness in §54. Three short successive sentences: we negotiate weak. We accept what is offered. We compete to be the most yielding. Greek loves this rhythm — three plain clauses, each adding moral weight to the picture of subjection. The final ὅστις τὸ μάλιστα ὑπείξειν φανήσεται (literally “who will appear to be the one yielding most”) puts the question into the indirect form of a contest, which is more biting than a direct assertion. The middle powers don’t merely yield; they compete to be seen as yielding more than the others. The shame is in the performance.
- The “third road” in §56. τρίτη ὁδός maps cleanly. The phrase ἧς ἂν εἴη τι κῦρος (“of which there might be some authority/weight”) preserves Carney’s “with impact.” κῦρος is the noun cognate of κύριος (lord, master, having authority) — the technical Greek word for binding force, the quality that makes a decision actually decisive rather than merely uttered. To have κῦρος is to count, to be sovereign in your action.
- One thing I’m slightly uneasy about. φιλονικεῖν in §56 means “to strive for victory” or “to love victory”; it can shade either positive (healthy ambition) or negative (vainglorious rivalry). Carney’s “compete with each other for favour” wants the negative shading — middle powers debasing themselves before a hegemon. φιλονικεῖν περὶ τοῦ ἀρέσκειν, “striving for the pleasing,” embeds the criticism in the syntax: the object of striving (pleasing the hegemon) makes the striving contemptible. But a careful reader might wish for a more openly disdainful verb. αἰσχρῶς ἁμιλλᾶσθαι (to strive shamefully) would have been more pointed. I left it neutral because Carney’s English is also neutral; the moral judgment is meant to emerge from the picture, not from adjectives.
(Sign-off: “The next stretch is Carney’s enumeration of what ‘living the truth’ actually means for middle powers — and then his pivot back to Canada specifically. The list structure is short and pointed; it should translate well. Shall I continue?”)
🤖🧐 Second pass
D38 — §53 “dictate terms” tightened. First-pass had αὐτοὺς τοὺς ὅρους τῶν συμβολαίων τίθεσθαι, “to lay down the terms of the agreements themselves” — six words. Second-pass replaces with αὐτοὺς ἐπιτάττειν ὅ τι βούλωνται, “to dictate whatever they wish” — four words. ἐπιτάττειν (“to command, to enjoin”) is Demosthenes’ standing word for unilateral order-giving across an asymmetrical relationship; it carries the right edge that “dictate” has in English without needing the periphrasis of laying down terms. The compression sharpens the line.
D39 — §57 redundant pronoun dropped. First-pass §57 had a double ἡμᾶς in the phrase οὕτως ἡμᾶς ἀποτυφλοῦν ὥστε ἡμᾶς λανθάνειν, “so to blind us that it escape us.” Second-pass drops the second ἡμᾶς: οὕτως ἡμᾶς ἀποτυφλοῦν ὥστε λανθάνειν. The pronoun was carrying over from the main clause and weighing the construction down; once it can be inferred, it is dropped. A small grammatical tightening typical of Demosthenic compression.
D40 — §57 τῶν κανόνων extends the D13 rules-set. First-pass had τῶν νόμων (“of the laws”). Second-pass replaces with τῶν κανόνων (“of the rules”), extending the D13 keyword distinction (rules = κανόνες, laws = νόμοι) into §57. The phrase ἡ τοῦ νομίμου τε καὶ τοῦ ἀκεραίου καὶ τῶν κανόνων δύναμις, “the power of legitimacy, of integrity, and of the rules,” now uses κανόνες in the same sense it has carried since §5: agreed standards, not statutes. Consistency across the speech.
D54 — §55 “vassalage” replaces “subjection” in the English back-translation. Greek unchanged (σχῆμα μέν ἐστι τῆς αὐτονομίας, ἔργῳ δὲ ὑποτέλεια). First-pass back-translation rendered ὑποτέλεια as “in deed it is subjection” — accurate but the bland posture-word rather than a status-name, and underloaded relative to ὑποτέλεια’s Delian-League technical sense (tribute-paying subjects opposed to αὐτόνομοι σύμμαχοι). Second-pass refines to “in deed it is vassalage”: a single substantive parallel to “sovereignty” in the σχῆμα/ἔργῳ antithesis, naming a specific dependent-political-status condition rather than a posture, and immediately decodable for the ungreeked reader. The medieval-feudal register-anachronism is a small seam of the same kind already accepted at D5 (καύσιμος) and D32 (κοινοπραξία), and is the price of giving the casual reader an unambiguous word in the climactic antithesis-slot. Alternatives “subjugation” (overshoots — implies active conquering rather than the tributary state), “tributary subjection” (breaks the single-word parallelism with “sovereignty”), and “subservience” (loses the political-institutional specificity) considered and declined.
D8 — §53, §57 quotidian kernel. Both keep the kernel ὦ οἱ συνελθόντες; the full anchor was deployed at §52 (just behind us) and will be deployed again at §69.
The Havel return at §57. Which brings me back to Havel (ὅπερ δὴ ἐπὶ τὸν Ἁβέλον αὖθις ἡμᾶς ἀνάγει) is the structural hinge that connects this post to Post XIV. The §13 keyword τὸ ἐν ψεύδει διαζῆν will be inverted in §58 (Post XIV) into τὸ ἐν τῇ ἀληθείᾳ διαζῆν — the long-range verbal echo that makes the Havel-return more than a rhetorical hand-wave.