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Posted on 12/01/2001 11:11:52 AM PST by Pharmboy

Book Review

December 1, 2001

Why Western Soldiers Have Always Been Such Fierce Fighters
By EDWARD ROTHSTEIN

[a review of:]
CARNAGE AND CULTURE

Landmark Battles in the Rise of Western Power
By Victor Davis Hanson
Doubleday. 455 pages. $29.95

In 480 B.C., near Salamis off the coast of Greece, an armada of perhaps a thousand Persian ships attacked some 300 Greek vessels. This was, as the military historian and classicist Victor Davis Hanson writes in this provocative book, "one of the most deadly battles in the entire history of naval warfare." Lured by a brilliant Greek strategy through the narrow straits, and rammed by Greek ships, hundreds of Persian vessels were sunk; more than 40,000 Persian soldiers were drowned or killed.

But Mr. Hanson, who teaches at California State University in Fresno, says this battle is more than just a textbook example of warfare. Herodotus pointed out that many of the Persian fighters were mercenaries or slaves; any soldierly hesitation was typically punished by beheading. Free citizens, Herodotus argued, made better warriors — more motivated and more flexible. The Greeks were fighting, as Aeschylus pointed out, for their freedom; the Persians, out of fear or greed.

For Mr. Hanson, these differences were not only evident at Salamis. Mr. Hanson also examines nine battles extending over 2,500 years, including the defeat of the Romans by Hannibal in 216 B.C.; the battle between Christians and Muslems at Lepanto in 1571; the massacre of the British by the Zulus in 1879; and the confusion of the 1968 Tet offensive of the Vietnam War. In his view, the distinctive characteristics of Western culture ran through each of these battles.

Western armies tended to rely on warriors who were not mercenaries but free citizens with something personal at stake. The mixture of discipline and autonomy led to a particular style of engagement. Unlike the Persians, the Aztecs, the Zulus, the Ottomans and the Japanese, who brutally enforced absolute obedience, Western fighters have been relatively free to react to shifting events. This flexibility helped determine the American victory in the bloody battles against Japan at Midway in World War II, Mr. Hanson says.

It also permitted debate before, during and after battles, debate that has given Western accounts of military history extraordinary variety and authority. In addition, individualism and innovation, partly spurred by economies freer than those of opponents, led to the invention of weapons that have been adopted by every major military force in the world.

In many of these battles, of course, Western culture could also contribute to its own defeat. Hannibal and his motley army took advantage of what Mr. Hanson characterizes as Western assault strategy to kill 50,000 Roman soldiers in 216 B.C. In Vietnam, the Tet offensive was widely considered a Western defeat (a mistaken judgment, in Mr. Hanson's view), partly because American planners "completely ignored the tenets of the entire Western military heritage"; the Western tradition of dissent, he suggests, also overwhelmed that heritage. But Mr. Hanson asserts that in the West, defeats have not been final; they have led to introspective revision. Rome rose again; the experience of Vietnam led to decades of analysis.

In his interpretation, Mr. Hanson combines two visions of the West that have themselves been at war during the last 30 years: the celebration of the West for its democratic vision of human liberty, and the condemnation of the West for militarism and imperialism. The tendency is to see these positions as incompatible.

Mr. Hanson argues that the reverse is true: they are inseparable. Democratic ideals have led to greater military power. "Adherence to structures of constitutional government, capitalism, freedom of religious and political association, free speech and intellectual tolerance," he says, has produced a soldier who can "kill like none other on the planet." These characteristics have made war between Western countries among the bloodiest, but have also led to the triumph of the West.

In making this argument, Mr. Hanson joins a group of scholars who do not explain Western dominance as a result of modern imperialism. Jared Diamond (in "Guns, Germs, and Steel") sees geography and environment as the primary influences on the development of Western technology and power; David S. Landes (in "The Wealth and Poverty of Nations") argues that differences in cultural values and social organization made the difference. Mr. Hanson disagrees with Mr. Diamond but amplifies Mr. Landes's argument, suggesting that culture, however admirable, creates a "very deadly reality" in the outcomes of war. The West, he writes, possesses a "weighty and sometimes ominous heritage" in which its manner of war ideally "serves, rather than buries, our civilization."

Military historians will have to analyze Mr. Hanson's accounts. Indeed, not everything is convincing in his generalizations. Mr. Hanson also does not successfully address the nature of modern guerilla warfare, the nature of Islamic triumphs, the wide variations among Western nations or the ways in which Western strategic style grows out of Western culture.

But after Sept. 11, other issues come to mind while reading the book. Even applying Mr. Hanson's interpretation, the culture of Western warfare is being tested against a very different kind of opponent. Certainly, Western individualism and improvisation could remain important. His view of Western military technique could arguably be found in October's swift frontal assaults of air power on specific targets. And disagreements about strategy among the leaders of the war — hidden or forbidden in many other societies — have already become the subject of public debate.

Yet given the international reach of the enemy, its networked cells, the absence of a traditional battlefield and the resilience of terrorist passions, that military heritage may be challenged. Both the Defense Department and the Rand Corporation have already called for a structural revision of the military by creating decentralized networks better prepared for new forms of battle. It may be that in this case not only will Western culture influence styles of war, but styles of war will also begin to transform Western culture.

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