Abstract
The causes of the Peloponnesian War in Ancient Greece have long obsessed international relations (IR) scholars, who often claim that Thucydides’ proto-realist History offers the definitive ancient account. But not everyone in Athens agreed with Thucydides’ bleak view that fear of the Other inevitably leads to violence. This chapter reflects on Aristophanes’ play Lysistrata, which depicts the war between Athens and Sparta as rooted in political processes dividing people along gender and cultural lines. Themes in Lysistrata illuminate the role of protest, economic divestment and social non-cooperation in disarmament campaigns, including on killer robots and nuclear weapons. The chapter draws on the insights of feminist IR theory and the story of women’s occupation of the Greenham Common nuclear weapons base.
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Bolton, M.B. (2020). Act 3. Lysistrata: Meaningful Human Control. In: Imagining Disarmament, Enchanting International Relations. Palgrave Pivot, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-17716-4_3
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