Victor Davis Hanson

Review: A War Like No Other

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A War Like No Other, Victor Davis Hanson. New York: Random House, 2006.

Summary: An account of the Peloponnesian War tracing the history, the politics, the strategies, key figures, battles, and how the war was fought.

The war went on for twenty-seven years toward the end of the fifth century BC. One of the first great works of history by Thucydides chronicled the battle. Both Athens and Sparta experienced horrendous losses culminating in the near total destruction of the once-great Athenian naval power at Aegospotami in 405.

Victor Davis Hanson, a noted classical scholar, renders an account both of the history of the war but also who fought it and how they fought. The two principle powers were quite different. Sparta was an oligarchy, Athens a democracy. Sparta had a more powerful land army. Athens was a sea power with a protected port and good walls allowing them to endure siege as well as project their power. To begin, Sparta invaded every year or two overland, ravaging the countryside but exhausting itself while the population of Attica sheltered in Athens. Very few Athenians died in battle but the city was eviscerated by plague resulting from crowded and unhygienic conditions. Meanwhile the Athenian navy raided the coastal cities of Sparta. They fought ten years to a draw ending with the temporary Peace of Nicias.

The peace lasted until 415 when Athens decided to mount an attack on Sicily, a Spartan ally, stirred up by charismatic general Alcibiades. A diffident landing followed by an inconclusive siege gave time for Syracuse to arm and be reinforced. In 413 they defeated Athens navy and then chased down the land forces for a crushing defeat. Still Athens rebuilt while Sparta, aided by Alcibiades, who had changed sides, and material help from Persia, finally built a navy to rival what was left of the Athenian navy. They fought a series of battles in Ionia culminating in the utter defeat at Aegospotami in 405, and Athens surrender to Sparta, led by Lysander.

War has always been gruesome. Hanson describes the particular gruesomeness of war in this time, whether it was destruction by fire or the ravages of disease, which took Athens singular leader Pericles. War unravels any war ethic. Hanson chronicles the killing of civilians and captives, especially in later stages of the war. He considers the hoplites and the vulnerabilities of their armor to thrusts to the groin and neck, and lightly armored fighters with spears or armors. Hoplites were mostly fitted to fight other hoplites, and often suffered relatively light losses. They need mounted forces to protect their flanks. The lack of horses was a key factor in the defeat at Syracuse. Siege warfare had not yet been mastered. Siege towers and catapults emerged after these wars. Mostly, they built siege walls, rams, and tried to penetrate walls and gates with rams.

Ultimately the war hinged on the trireme, the three-tiered rowing vessel. The impasse between the two powers ended when Alcibiades, rejected by Athens, persuaded the Spartans that only by becoming a sea power could they defeat Athens. The defeat at Syracuse pointed the way. The trireme depended mostly on slaves, up to 200 per vessel in three banks of rowers. A rammed trireme could quickly sink with the likely death of all. This happened to 170 of 180 triremes of the Athenians at Aegospotami.

The fall of Athens resulted from a variety of unforeseen errors. Pericles was an unparalleled leader, but with no able successor. Alcibiades was brilliant but never trusted, and often absent at key moments. The Sicilian venture spelled the beginning of the end, depleting both manpower and treasury. The Athenians ignored Alicibiades, once again on their side, exposing themselves to surprise attack at Aegospotami.

Hanson traces the errors that arise from both hubris and the “fog of war.” These wars, like many were filled with folly. The protracted conflict inevitably deteriorated to greater and greater brutality. Mediocre leadership cost the lives of thousands. The inadequacies of the technology of war led to innovation and more effective ways of killing. Alliances end up feeding the allies. Eventually both Persia and Thebes become the real threat.

It all began with the decision of Sparta to challenge the growth of Athenian power. A venture intended to last a few months turned into a 27 year conflict. Such are often the illusions of war. Hanson uses the lens of one protracted war to challenge us to ask the same questions about war in our own day.

Review: The Father of Us All

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Father of Us All

The Father of Us All, Victor Davis Hanson. New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2010.

Summary: A collection of essays arguing from history that war is a tragic but persistent feature of human existence that explores some of the particular challenges that democracies from Athens to the present day United States face as we are faced with the prospect or reality of war.

It seems that, along with the poor, we will always have war. Victor Davis Hanson would say that this is in fact one of the lessons of history. Hanson, in this collection of essays draws upon both ancient history going back to the wars between Athens and Sparta, and the wars of a post-9/11 age to make this point.

In his opening essay he sounds themes that recur throughout this collection. Military history is an oft-neglected but useful discipline of study. It shows us that war is indeed a persistent feature of human nature. Efforts of appeasement to avert war often only make the situation worse. The idea of war as a miscommunication is mistaken–the fact is there are adversaries who are only too clear concerning their malevolent intent. Asymmetrical methods, such as IED’s versus Humvees are hardly a new invention, but rather the inevitable resort of an inferior but determined foe. Those who make war must always be aware of political considerations. At the conclusion of this essay, Hanson introduces the unfamiliar reader to the riches of military history writing, from the ancients to contemporary.

The essays, originally articles or presentations, are grouped under four headings. The first part, as already alluded to, explores the “orphaned” discipline of military history. The second considers war writing from Thucydides through the battle of Lepanto in 1571, a critical example of conflict of east versus west. Part three then looks at the contemporary phenomenon of war–how we as a nation like to fight battles, and the result in a post 9/11 war of asymmetrical conflicts between the west and radical terror organizations. The last section explores the unique challenges of democracies in war-making, and that often we are our own worst enemies, and yet also, that a democracy aroused, mobilizing the full resources of free peoples is a fearsome foe.

As you may be able to tell, Hanson speaks against a prevailing progressive notion that if only we communicated better, understood our enemies better, and so forth, we would not fight wars. He would contend we engage in far too much self-criticism, and far to little moral assessment of the evil of the ideologies of radical elements in the world. Paradoxically, he observes that often, Democratic presidents such as Roosevelt have often done a better job of leading in war, explaining both their reluctance to make war, and its necessity rather than engaging in sabre-rattling. What this should reveal to us is the persistent character of war in the world, and like it as little as we do, that if we are confronted with war, the worst thing that can be done is to shrink from it, but rather meet it with resolve.

I do think that Hanson’s essays challenge progressive notions cogently. But I wonder if he insufficiently wrestles with what Barbara Tuchman once called “the march of folly.” Perhaps it is also part of human nature that we often pursue foolhardy courses of bellicosity that make war inevitable, but must we? Is not war often a failure of political leadership, as in our own Civil War, or the bellicosity and incredible build-up of arms that led to World War I? Likewise, the argument that war must be fought such that foes are utterly defeated and humiliated seems to be the argument at the end of World War I that gave us World War II out of the grievances of the German people, played upon skillfully by Hitler.

In the end, Hanson has history on his side in arguing war’s persistence, and that this is a reflection on human nature. What he doesn’t explore here, which I think perhaps is more curious is why we are this mixture of noble ideals as well as malevolent motives? If this is indeed the human condition, then what hope is there for us?