A Californian scholar surveys warfare over two and a half millenia,
from the battle of Salamis to the Tet offensive in Vietnam. He
concludes that victory in war is most likely to lie with the side
that most prizes individuals. Free societies, he thinks, contain a
cultural ingredient which makes them superior to despotisms.
Besides Salamis and Tet, he discusses seven other battles:
Gaugamela, Cannae, Poitiers (Charles Martel's victory, not the
Black Prince's), Tenochtitlan, Lepanto, Rorke's Drift and Midway.
Dozens of asides make clear that his knowledge of military history
is much wider. For each battle, he summarizes its strategic weight
as well as going into a gruesome mass of tactical detail; assesses
the impact of ground and weather; and sums up the results. He has
many telling phrases, such as this : 'the garrison at Rorke's Drift
proved to be the most dangerous hundred men in the world.' He lays
stress on just those features of battle that get left out by most
strategic analysts: he discusses in detail the impact of weapons on
flesh, and leaves his readers in no doubt about what a shocking
business war has to be. Shock, in fact, is what the 'Western'
fighting man is most eager to impose on his enemy. He begins each
chapter with an extract from a classical Greek author, and
maintains that the Greeks and Romans in turn developed the concept
of the citizen soldier, who has a say in how and why he is to
endanger himself for his community. He insists, as Aristotle did,
that war is a normal way of life for mankind, gloomy though the
prospects of modern war with modern weaponry have become. He is
sounder on tactics and on armament than he is on political theory.
This is a most thought-provoking book, of lasting interest and
value. (Kirkus UK)
Victor Davis Hanson proposes that the military superiority and
global dominance of "The West" has been intimately linked to its
faith in democracy and personal liberty. Rather than measuring the
worth of the West through its cultural or literary accomplishments,
Hanson engages with the much starker record of its successes in
combat against non-Western armies. In place of the "Great Books",
he studies the "Great Battles" and augments his bold thesis with
some evocations of the intensity of warfare.
General
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