Victor Davis Hanson, CARNAGE AND CULTURE: LANDMARK BATTLES IN THE RISE OF WESTERN POWER (New York: Anchor Books, 2001), 486 pp.
“The West’s rise to dominance was not an accident. Its military prowess over the centuries has been the result of larger social, economic, political, and cultural practices that themselves seemingly have little to do with war.”
In Carnage and Culture, Victor Davis Hanson argues that, though there are many factors that contribute to victory in war, culture is the most influential, and Western armies the most lethal. The trend that Western armies are always victorious over their non-western counter parts, is no accident. The winning strategies and lethalness of Western armies is a direct result of the freedom and liberty of Western culture. For the purposes of this book, West refers to cultures of a Greco-Roman heritage. Through the citation of nine, bloody, and graphically detailed battles, Hanson shows that when a Western society arms its self for war, there is no more effective a killer, and no militia more victorious. Hanson argues that at the heart of Western victories are freedom, decisive battles, the citizen soldier, technology, innovation, and consent of the citizenry.
Freedom to live as you please strengthens a Western Army. Hanson sites The Battle of Salamis, in 480 BC, in his argument that the cultural influence of freedom leads to victory. In this early naval battle, gravely out numbered Greek troops decimated a Persian Armada to save the foundations of Western civilization. Herodotus, a greek historian, believed that free citizens are better warriors, since they fight for themselves and not an autocracy. The small Greek fleet at Salamis believed in eleutheria. Eleutheria is the Greek belief that freedom has four parts; freedom to speak, freedom to buy and sell goods and land, freedom of action, and a belief in the consent of the citizenry. Freedom in battle is an asset that enhances the morale of troops, improves confidence in military action, and relies on a consensus that the military’s action is in the just interest of the people. A Greek defeat at Salamis would have ensured the end of Western Culture. Instead the Greek fleet prevailed. Salamis proved to be the first in a long line of Western military victories. Greeks knew no threat until clashes with the Roman Republic.
In contrasting the armies, methods, and motives involved in Alexander the Great’s victory over the Persians at Guagamela, Hanson explores the Western tradition of decisive battles. Darius II, commander of the Persian army, refused to meet Alexander III in battle. Darius was intent on securing the best ground for a fight, and waiting for the troops of Alexander to reach him. Alexander wished to fight Darius in a decisive battle, that is one fought face to face, where the victor wins by physically driving the enemy off the battle field into defeat. As illustrated in Hanson’s scrutiny of the First Battle of Poitiers, in 732 AD, victory in war is impossible with out a soldier who can approach, cut down the enemy, occupy the battlefield, and take possession of the land under dispute. Infantry, foot soldiers, are an important part of winning a decisive battle.
Decisive battle is destructive and lethal. In Hellenistic times decisive battle resulting in an hours worth of heroics followed by a quick resolution meant saved lives and confined conflict. Hanson reflects on how today we face a dilemma. Western decisive battle has the opposite effect in modernity resulting in massive casualties, and abject slaughter. It is, however, still the most effective way to fight.
In 216 BC, Carthage general Hannibal defeated the Romans at Cannae. Despite the single worst defeat in history, Rome rebounded to destroy Carthage. The idea of civic militarism provided Rome with better soldiers and equipment. Civic militarism is the idea that a citizen has particular rights that transfer into battle. Roman soldiers were fighting for the “idea” of Rome, their personal liberties, and freedoms. The idea of the Citizen Soldier is what allows the loss at Cannae to be a prime example of Western superiority in warfare, even though it was a defeat. Cannae was a battle, but ultimately the West won the war. Hanson argues that Cannae was more like Pearl Harbor, where the attacked nation resolved that the defeat would be avenged, no matter how long it took. The ability of Rome to bounce back after loosing 50,000 shows the resilience and superiority of the citizen soldier to the warrior, the Romans refused to be beaten. The citizen soldier can not exist in a non-Western society. The citizen soldier is a development of Western culture that stems from the freedoms and liberties that are its backbone.
The other cultural attributes of individual freedom, inquiry, and innovation, expressed in society at large, would eventually lead to the capitalist economies that could arm troops with the latest weapons and keep them supplied far from home.
Hanson feels his view is opposite that of many historians on the Battle of Tenochitlan during Cortez’s conquest of Aztecs in 1520. The encounters core was a conflict of cultures. The Aztecs fought wars for the religious health of their community, and as a result were no match for the Spanish who fought wars of technology and reason. The Spanish fought to kill and destroy the Aztec. They used swords and other advanced weaponry, while the Aztec fought back with stones, blunt spears, and wooden sticks. With the conquest of Mexico, Hanson makes a point of how Cortez used locally available materials to restock his gunpowder supply and build a small but overwhelmingly powerful navy to take control of the lake surrounding Tenochtitlan. This use of raw materials was a consequence of Western tradition and scientific know-how. In contrast, Cortez’s native allies and Aztec enemies never were able to fully exploit the available materials in any way capable of challenging the Spanish on their own technological terms. Even thought they lived in a resource rich environment, the Aztec culture fought to capture not kill. The necessity of lethal weapons was not embedded in their culture, and thus they did not innovate such tools.
Contrary to the lack of innovation by the Aztec, individualism resulted in the impromptu ingenuity on the part of ship builders, welders, and ironworkers at Pearl Harbor. They developed innovations that allowed the Yorktown, to return to the US Pacific fleet after 68 hrs of repairs. This provided the United States with the necessary support to hold back a Japanese offensive. At the same time two damaged carriers sat in a Japanese harbor awaiting orders for their repair.
At Midway, the Western-modeled Japanese fleet faced off with the American fleet. Hanson attributes this defeat to American scientific inquiry that led to the breaking of Japanese navy codes, to Yamamoto’s overly complicated but unquestioned plan, and to the initiative shown by the American pilots in finding and attacking the Japanese carriers.
The Tet Offensive is Hanson’s example of public scrutiny gone bad. He falls back on the notion that critical, negative media coverage of the Vietnam War contributed to eventual American defeat, despite overwhelming American military victories. Such criticism caused Americans to throw away the Western preference for decisive battle in favor of limited rules of engagement and prohibitions against a decisive invasion of North Vietnam. Hanson notes that domestic critics of the war are falling back on a long tradition going back to Pericles, and that these criticisms did help in eventually correcting serious flaws in the American military.
Carnage and Culture is a straight forward presentation of historical precedent that supports Victor Davis Hanson’s claim of the superiority of Western warfare. Hanson does a good job of sticking to the facts, and leaving ideology out of his arguments. The book often reads like a text book, with lists of dates, people, places, and important facts. Each battle is broken down in to smaller sub chapters, there is always a section that tells you about the battle, followed by a section that explains the culture of the civilizations involved, followed by a section that ties that battle into Hanson’s thesis. The book is well organized.
Victor David Hanson is classical and military historian, and professor of classics at California State University, Fresno. As a classical historian, Hanson has great knowledge of Hellenistic Greece, and often this interferes with the readability of Carnage and Culture. Hanson takes every opportunity to site Greek precedent for all his arguments, and at times this can be come quite repetitive.
Although Carnage and Culture was written prior to 9/11, its relevance cannot be over looked. Victor Davis Hanson re-published Carnage and Culture following the 9/11 attacks, with an afterword that discusses the books impact on our current war in Iraq, and the future of American warfare.
The Iraq war illustrates a deficiency in Hanson’s view of West versus non-Western militaries. Western military victories through decisive battle tend to be only a part of a continual battle with another countries army. In the case of Iraq, decisive defeat of the Iraqi army was the first, relatively easy phase. Hanson’s analysis is incomplete. How does Western warfare prevail over cultural insurgencies when decisive battle is no longer an option?
In a post 9/11 world many say a “new way of war” is necessary. Hanson cautions against it. History proves Western warfare to be more lethal, and ultimately victorious. Hanson has no doubt that we can be victorious in our current military engagements, although this claim is not directly supported. He says all we have to fear is another Western army. The West has dominated the world militarily for over 2500 years. Political, Social, and Economic freedoms are at the heart of our culture, and culture is at the heart of our military success. There is no clearer example of the difference in ideas and values that form the basis of cultures than when East and West send their militaries to defend it.
