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Carnage and Culture: Landmark Battles in the Rise to Western Power

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Hanson's "Carnage and Culture" is worth reading for its vigorous style as well as its thought-provoking thesis. Books about military history are often fairly dry, but Hanson writes clearly and in the active voice, perhaps unconciously emulating the Western military tactics he describes.

He argues that Western success on the battlefield is a cultural phenomenon, not just the result of good fortune in the allocation of resources or the serendipity of technology. Free nations produce leaders and soldiers who take the initiative. Citizens who are protected by law against arbitrary action feel free to "audit" battles and criticize soldiers, leading to improved strategy and tactics. Western military commands are heirarchical, but not unduly so, so that they adapt well to changing circumstances. The result is an approach to battle that has been evolving since the time of the ancient Greeks, and that now involves applying maximum disclipline and violence at the point of engagement in order to annihilate, not merely defeat, an opponent.

Hanson discusses a series of battles to illustrate the differences between the "Western" style of war and the practices of cultures that he deems to be "non-Western": Salamis (480 BC); Gaugamela (331 BC); Cannae (216 BC); Poitiers (732); Tenochtitlan (1520-21); Lepanto (1571); Rourke's Drift (1879); Midway (1942) and Tet (1968). Each of these struggles illustrates a Western preference for decisive battle that inflicts enormous and disproportionate casualties on the loser.

Throughout, Hanson is very careful to stress that the losers are brave, smart individuals--he is not a racist and goes out of his way to explain that, person for person, the citizens of the West are no better than their non-Western counterparts. He does, however, argue that Western culture, for better or worse, produces better results on the battlefield than non-Western culture does. This position is sure to be viewed as politically incorrect, but it is certainly worth pondering.

"Carnage and Culture" is particularly interesting in these troubled times. I began reading the book shortly after the September 11 attacks, and I have found it to be highly predictive of the American conduct of the war in Afghanistan, as well as America's relentless success in that war. The collapse of the Taliban that seems remarkable to media pundits and those untutored in the Western way of war looks almost inevitable to those who have read Hanson's work. A wounded republic, like Rome after its horrendous defeat at Cannae, is a determined and ruthless enemy. As the historian Ross Leckie wryly observed in "Hannibal": "The Romans were a thorough lot. Carthage is a memory."

Having said all this, Hanson's book leaves almost untouched some fairly important questions. If freedom and initiative are so critical to Western military success, how do we explain the performance of totalitarian Germany's military in the early years of World War II and its quick defeat of the French democracy in 1940? Why were the Soviets, who endured purges and arbitrary executions in the 1930s and throughout World War II, ultimately successful against the more "Westernized" Germans? I suspect that Hanson could offer cogent answers to these questions, but it puzzles me that he did not volunteer them in his book.

This is a remarkable book with profound implications. Hanson's argument about culture and warfare should be read with Hernando de Soto's The Mystery of Capitalism that argues that prosperity is also a function of culture and legality. The two books on very different topics actually make the same point and create a new analytical framework for understanding why some countries develop and become prosperous and powerful and others do not.

Hanson makes the case that western military capabilities (currently on display in Afghanistan) are a function of culture going back to the rise of the Greek city-states. He asserts that the combination of a polity in which the warriors vote on going to war in which they will serve (in effect the property owning voters were the heart of the Greek Phalanx so they were voting to put themselves at risk). They needed to have a short campaign between the planting and harvest seasons since the warrior-farmers had to both sustain the economy and the battle creating a style of war which involved short direct shock actions (the Greek phalanx so brilliantly portrayed in Pressfield's the Gates of Fire). This reliance on infantry combat by disciplined units in direct shock assault was compounded by the economics of Greek geography. Faced with the reality that in small valleys surrounded by mountains you could produce ten infantrymen for every cavalrymen because horses are far more expensive than humans, the Greeks really emphasized the development of high technology (long spear, short stabbing sword, big shield, very tough helmet) infantry combat with extremely disciplined teams.

Finally, Hanson asserts that the rule of law in the Greek city-state guaranteed every soldier a status and legal rights and protection which created a sense of stability and commitment unlike any non-western culture. It is the combination of voting and legality, which Hanson believes, combined to create such a powerful system of war.

Hanson argues that this style of war led to two major breakthroughs that have persisted in the west to this day.

First, the kind of courage required by a phalanx is a disciplined refusal to break. It is the opposite of the heroic courage of traditional warrior societies. In traditional warrior societies (including the Greeks of Homer's Iliad assaulting the Trojans with individual heroism in a pre-phalanx era) the warrior rushes forward individually to count coup (the native American model) or seize prisoners (the Aztec model) or simply kill enemies (the Gauls and Germans against the Romans). In the Greek phalanx and the Roman legion which grew from it the primary courage is the discipline of standing fast with your fellow soldiers and refusing to break even when overwhelmingly outnumbered (thus the British at Rorke's Drift when outnumber 35 to one never thought of breaking ranks and the American soldiers in Mogadishu never dreamed of an every man for themselves approach even when outnumbered by more than 100 to one).

Second, the direct action model of warfare creates a ruthlessness, a directness, and a constant search for the decisive battle, which Hanson argues, is peculiarly western. Thus in the second world war Marshall argued for the direct frontal assault on German occupied Europe as the correct search for the decisive battle.

Hanson asserts that other cultures emphasize deception, maneuver, indirect conflict, setting up symbolic fights but the western model is an overwhelming direct assault aimed at achieving decisive victory as quickly as possible and assuming that short term violence actually saves lives in the long run.

Hanson reasons that three other patterns have made the west increasingly dominant in warfare. First, the Greek rational approach to scientific reasoning that emphasized facts and a constant search for better answers. Second, the use of free markets and commercial activity to create production systems has simply out-produced and out-modernized competitors. Hanson notes that there are virtually no cases of westerners importing non-western military technology but endless examples of non-westerners importing western technology. Third, the pragmatic approach to problem solving from the Greek and Roman tradition means that when western militaries encounter new realities (the Aztecs, the military systems of the Japanese Navy, the Ottoman Navy) there was a speed of analysis and flexible experimentation that non-westerners could not match.

Hanson uses the battles of Salamis 480 B.C. (the Greeks defeat the Persians in a naval battle), Gaugemala 331 B.C. (Alexander's Greeks destroy the Persian Empire), Cannae 216 B.C. (the Romans are annihilated and respond by raising new armies to destroy Carthage), Poitiers 732 A.D. (French landed infantry defeats Muslim cavalry), Tenochtitlan 1520-1521 (a remarkably small number of Spanish conquer Mexico and destroy the Aztec empire), Lepanto 1571 (the Christian fleets destroy the Ottoman Navy and establish western naval supremacy in the Mediterranean), Rorke's Drift 1879 (a remarkably outnumbered British force defeats a Zulu Army), Midway 1942 ( in one improbable day the Americans destroy Japanese Carrier aviation and seize the initiative in the Pacific War), and Tet 1968 (despite stunningly false press coverage the American military decisively defeats the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese by developing better tactics and superior technology) in a magisterial sweep of military history to make his case.

This is a book any sophisticated student of war or any citizen concerned about the role of warfare in national survival would want to read.

Victor David Hanson superbly argues that "Western civilization has given mankind the only economic system that works, a rationalist
tradition that alone allows us material and technological progress, the sole political structure that ensures the freedom of the individual, a system of ethics and a religion that brings out the best in humankind---and the most lethal practice of arms conceivable." The author offers abundant evidence found in the historical documents of battles fought in ancient times until the present. Soldiers of Athens, Rome, and the United States, unlike their foes, enjoyed a great degree of freedom and true citizenship. Warriors were not always soldiers, but civilians called upon temporally to fight for their nation. "To live as you please" is a value taken very seriously. A sense of fairness and justice pervades the ranks of the Western soldier. Virginia Military Institute officer candidates, for instance, "are largely protected through a system of military justice from capricious punishment--and (also) accept that gratuitous violence on their part will be severely punished."

Embracing traditional methods solely to honor the ancients is alien to the Western mindset. Killing the messenger who brings forth bad news is the normal practice of the less free non-Western powers. Not so for those in authority within Western regimes. Individualism is highly cherished. Dissent and the questioning of past practices underpin the western military model. "A military command may steal secrets daily over the Internet, but if it cannot discuss those ideas openly with its civilian and military leadership, then there is no guarantee that such information will find its optimum application to ensure parity with the West," warns Hanson. This military historian's insights on how America defeated Japan during World War II is reason enough to justify the price of this magnificent volume.

Trained to remain in formation during battle, the Western soldier often defeated enemies physically and numerically stronger. Hanson points out that courage alone isn't sufficient. The ability and willingness to fight in an unrelenting disciplined and intelligent manner turned ordinary men into ferocious killing machines. The
barbarism and fearlessness of the Aztec warriors, American Indians, and the Zulus were ultimately no match for their Western opponents. "Carnage and Culture" is an indispensable book to read during our country's current trials and tribulations. It demands a prominent place on your personal bookshelf.

Classicist and Military Historian Victor Davis Hanson's most recent work *Carnage and Culture: Landmark Battles in the Rise of Western Power* (August 2001) is a must for all those interested in the ideological and military divide between East and West.

Opening with the earliest accounts of conflicts between Eastern and Western military powers, Hanson describes the canyon dividing western thought from eastern ideas beginning in ancient times. Through the lens of major definitive battles, from Salamis to Tet, we view in vivid detail how the West's propensity for freedom, technology, reason, capitalism, individualism, and open decisive combat has been both contrary to the non-egalitarian values of the Eastern world, and the bane of their armies on the battlefield. Explaining that the Eastern way of war is a far cry from the "indirect warfare" of the West Hanson underscored its roots in cowardice, secrecy and deceitful diplomacy--as evident in ancient military treatises such as Sun Tzu's *The Art of War* as it is in Arrian's *Anabasis*. Yet, taking into account the individual courage of many non-Western warriors, Hanson shows that finally western discipline and cohesion conquer even the most valorous individual effort.

Also examined is the way in which "the others" have often viewed the West as: too free, too obsessed with technology, too greedy. We are shown that though we may often agree with the West's critics nevertheless these very weaknesses have finally translated into the greater numbers, better weapons, tactics, training and spirit of western armies on the battlefield. And Hanson takes it a step further. He shows exactly from where, for instance, US Navy code-breakers and USN squadron dive-bombers drew their inspirationa and courage in close-run situations--perfect examples all of the triumphs of western innovation, capitalism, individualism, freedom and resolve. American dive-bombers, like US Navy code-breakers, lived to fight for their units and a country that promised freedom and prosperity once the war was won; Japanese Kamikazes lived to die in a state of near slavery on behalf of a regime that beat and psychologically abused them in a ... effort to instill in them a pseudo-western discipline. Yet, western discipline and cohesion could not be so easily imitated. It has its roots in the individual pride of free and egalitarian Greek hoplite units, was reinvented in Western Europe among Swiss pikemen and German Landsknechts, and echoed in the war cries of French revolutionary troops. Indeed,Hanson suggests, freedom is comparable to the sweets of Narnia's ice queen; once a boy has a taste of it he will give up his soul to get more--not so, Confucius teaches us, with repressive regimes.

Hanson also shows how often the West's individualism has been interpreted as weakness--a path to the breakdown of social cohesion, while reason has been deemed frail in the face of religious zeal. He shows why such assumptions--advanced by pashas, priests, and wise men--have been mistakes. In reality Western values have always held the moral high ground. Thus, non-Western governments have continued to underestimate Western societies at their own expense from 480 BC to 1571 AD to 1942. Egalitarianism; freedom of speech, press and religion; a civilian controlled military, and the embracing of cultural difference have translated into military success.

This work is also a timely eulogy to the Western value system--until recently often forgotten--abandoned by a society wealthy, ungrateful, and self-loathing. Correspondingly all whose intellectual nerves are now, more than ever before, shot from the the relentless attacks on American values that have oozed from academia's ivied walls since the Vietnam War will find that this current work from one the world's most respected military historians slashes through the cobwebs of our dusty minds, giving us clarity. Hanson's timely work shows that long and bitter attacks rooted in Eastern intolerance of the West's successful ideologices--from the battle cries and insults of Persian priest-kings in ancient Greece, to the trumpets calling Muslims to jihad in the Middle Ages, to the *bonsais* of Japan's suicide bombers at Midway--have a history of failure. And that our current situation is only the lastest chapter in a two thousand-year saga.

I enjoyed this book. The depiction of each set piece battle is masterfully researched and written, and I agree with the author's central argument, that Western cultural adaptability and political freedom culminate in war machines capable of projecting Western military power globally. The "West" is an elastic concept, however, and I would have liked him to pin it down more specifically. For example, the German tribes who resisted assimilation by the might of Rome and ultimately carved up her empire between them - were they "Western?" More "Western" than Rome? Had exposure to Roman cultural influence
"Westernized" them? Or was the degeneration of the imperial court into "Oriental despotism" the source of its downfall?

In his afterward, Hanson complains about being deluged with a flood of "minutiae, with references to obscure battles and weapons that would substantiate, modify or reject my thesis - as if nine representative battles from some 2,500 years of military history could in any way be exhaustive in matters of detail." (p 462). Well, you were the one making the sweeping assumptions, Vic. Anyway, here is some minutiae of mine to add to the pile.

"Past, present, and future, the story of military dynamism in the world is ultimately an investigation into the prowess of Western arms," Hanson assures us. How about Western luck?

In 1241 an army whose discipline, mobility, and amorality had never before been seen (or emulated) in the West was at the gates of Europe. The Mongols, having already subdued the Asian steppe, overrun Russia, defeated the Poles and their German allies at Leignitz and Hungary at the Sajo River, were only stopped by the death of their khan in December of that year.

Hanson does not refer to this - in fact, the word "Mongol" doesn't appear in his book. The most he will allow is to refer to "Tribal musters fueled by promises of booty," leading to "enormous and spirited armies... the nomadic invasions of Genghis Khan (1206-27) and Tamerlane (1381-1405), who overran much of Asia, are the most notable examples... But even the most murderous hordes could not really sustain - feed, clothe, and pay - a military force with sophisticated weaponry for a lengthy period of time." (p 275). This is an unfair characterization of the Mongols, who produced what remains, pound for pound, the most perfect war machine in history, and were the terror of the Old World for generations.

Hanson says, "Adrianople (378) and Manzikert (1071) were horrendous Western defeats; but the Romans and Byzantines who were slaughtered there were for the most part vastly outnumbered, far from home, poorly led, and reluctant emissaries of crumbling empires." (p 12-13). "Poorly led," yes, but the Romans were not outnumbered at Adrianople and vastly outnumbered the Turks at Manzikert; far from being "far from home," Adrianople was less than a hundred miles from the imperial capital at Constantinople, and Manzikert, while remote, was still within imperial territory; and far from being "reluctant emissaries of crumbling empires," the Roman and Byzantine armies were comprised of professional soldiers led in person by their emperors and defending a state that had centuries of life left to it.

In Chapter 5 - "Landed Infantry" - Hanson argues in rather romantic terms that the free, property-owning warriors of the Merovingian Empire saved Western civilization from the first great Islamic Jihad at Poitiers in 732. In fact, Europe had already passed its greatest test in a confrontation he only touches on - the Byzantine repulse of the Arab siege of Constantinople from 673-78, and their second successful defense against an even larger Arab Armada in 717-18 (which he curiously neglects to mention).

Hanson admits, even in the event of defeat at Poitiers, "Permanent Islamic possession of the entirety of France... was unlikely." (p 143). If Byzantium had fallen, the Caliphs would have transferred their flag to Constantinople, and everything from the Bosphorus to the Baltic would have been Islamized within a generation. Christianity would have been isolated and hemmed in against the Atlantic. It may have collapsed altogether.

This didn't happen because the Byzantines prevailed. Why? Because they were "Western?" Modern historians don't consider them so, and neither did contemporary Westerners. Arab penetration of Europe was halted not by free property owning citizen farmers defending a nascent democratic republic, but by a civilization no less theocratic, and much more rigidly autocratic, than its "alien" rival.

The thesis of Chapter 9 - "Individualism" - which uses the example of the Japanese defeat at Midway do demonstrate superior Western initiative being harnessed as a component of a superior war machine, is also problematic. How much of "the West" are we talking about here?

Japan was more than a match for any other Western power it challenged in the Pacific. First Russia (a "Western" power?) was humiliated at the turn of last century, then, in the space of little more than two months, Japan stripped The Netherlands of her entire empire in the East Indies, a region she had dominated for centuries, and inflicted some of the worst defeats in British history.

On every front in 1941 Japanese tactics, initiative and equipment were superior to that of the Western powers they faced. The United States was capable of making a comeback. The others were not. Britain was no match for Japan. Even if she had been free to send her entire fleet to the Pacific to confront the Rising Sun, I strongly suspect the result would have been another Tsushima.

Was the United States successful because it was more "Western" than the rest of the West? If so, how?

The same question applies to Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union - both vastly more powerful than any Western power other than the United States, and capable of tremendous scientific achievements that gave them a cutting edge in warfare. How do they fit into Hanson's "Western" paradigm?

Love him (and I do) or hate him, Victor Davis Hanson's work is dependably bold and provocative. One of his latest books, "Carnage and Culture: Landmark Battles in the Rise of Western Power," is certainly no exception.

The book was written, at least in part, as a response to the critically acclaimed and wildly popular "Guns, Germs and Steel" by Jared Diamond. Hanson derides the geographic deterministic conclusions presented by Diamond - the idea that Western power is more or less a fluke of geography - and lays out an alternative explanation for the dominance of the Western world over other cultures. But rather than offering an alternative anthropological perspective, Hanson uses military history to explain the West's dominance since the Hellenistic age. From a strictly objective and amoral perspective, Hanson says, Western liberal democracies have proven incredibly efficient at killing enemies in war and thus conquering much of the globe.

Hanson central thesis is that there are nine "paradigms" that, when combined, account for the superiority of Western warfare and the extreme bloodshed when Western nations fight one another: 1) political freedom as the cornerstone of Western culture from which all else flows; 2) the quest for decisive battles of annihilation rather than ritualistic battle often found in non-Western cultures; 3) the concept of military service as a civic duty, which provides the West with large numbers of highly motivated troops; 4) a focus on heavy infantry shock engagements; 5) a spirit of rationalism and the scientific method, which has paid huge dividends in the form of advanced military technology; 6) the economic model of capitalism, which has exploited technological advances to their fullest and rapidly put weapons in the hands of large Western armies; 7) the discipline to fight as a unit and thus get the most out of Western technology and mass production capability; 8) individualism and initiative in battle; and 9) dissent, self-critique and civic audit of military operations. He uses individual East-West battles - including Western "defeats" such as Cannae, Isandhlwana (along with his discussion of Rorke's Drift) and Tet (from a strategic perspective) - throughout history to illustrate each of the paradigms. The author is quick to note that his selection of battles has little to do with his overall conclusions and that a completely different collections of battles could be used to demonstrate the same points.

Each chapter is well written and vivid in its description of the various battles (early on Hanson notes that war is all about killing men, not the more antiseptic issue of strategy). For those whose reading has tended to focus on contemporary military history, the early chapters on Salamis, Guagamela, Cannae (Hanson is a professor of classics, so these first three are his speciality), Poitiers and Tenochtitlan will be particularly enlightening and rewarding.

In the end, Hanson's arguments are compelling, but far from convincing. The notion that Western scientific inquiry and commercial enterprise have greatly facilitated military power is undeniable. So too is his argument that military professionalism and its focus on discipline have proven decisive in lopsided engagements. However, the idea that only citizens of a Western democracy can field large armies of motivated men capable of initiative or that seeking decisive shock battle is key to victory are much more debatable. Nevertheless, "Carnage and Culture" is worth your time and highly recommended - even if you challenge most of Hanson's conclusions.

Carnage and Culture is an interesting book with an interesting thesis: That Democratic countries are the best war machines since Democracy imbibes its fighters with a spirit and a sense of gain and loss impossible for other societies. Mr. Hanson, despite some flaws does a good job of making the arguments.The book is also an interesting response to Jared Diamond's more deterministic thesis presented in Guns, Germs and Steel.

However, I think the battles chosen were chosen to specifically match the thesis and that a more thorough view of other battles may prove part of the thesis wrong. In other words I sometimes wonder if Mr. Hanson is stretching to prove a point.

I also have some problems with Mr. Hanson's organization. While he makes his points he also seems to bounce around within each section so that the section does not necessarily seem unified by chronology or theme. This also makes parts of the book seem repetitive. This problem is exacerbated by Mr. Hanson's proclivity toward stating a fact multiple times.

Still it is a good book and I found certain sections, like the one on Roarke's Drift especially fascinating.

I have a love/hate relationship with Victor Davis Hanson. Oft times I read his work and cannot help but exclaim the brilliance of his ideas. Other times I read his work and cannot help throwing his junk across the room.

Carnage and Culture belongs in the second category.

Before I attack Carnage and Culture straight-out, I should probably mention the good aspects of this work. Hanson, like always, has written an engaging book. It is highly readable, and though Hanson turns a tad repetitive before his work is done, he moves at a pace fast enough to work around his own cyclical thought process. Carnage and Culture's bibliography is suitably large for the subject matter. Indeed, Hanson's greatest triumph lies in his ability to translate his survey of the extensive historical literature surrounding his subject into terms readily understood by a high school graduate. That the reader does not need any previous knowledge concerning Archimedean Persia, Aztec "Flower Wars", or the naval tactics of the Second World War to understand the arguments presented in Carnage and Culture is a testament to Hanson's place as a master historical writing.

Yet it is the sheer readability and inclusiveness of the book that troubles me. Carnage and Culture does not encourage further investigation of the events, ideas, or peoples discussed. Only rarely does Hanson admit that there are gaps or biases in the historical literature, and never does he stop to acknowledge that many of the arguments that he is making are controversial and contested. For Hanson, events are not subject to uncertainty; each historical occurrence is another piece of evidence perfectly placed to support his irrefutable thesis: the West has bested the rest because Western culture makes them the best soldiers on the field of battle.

The problem with this thesis is that much of the evidence used by Hanson is not very good evidence at all. Consider this statement found midway through the first chapter, "the Ottomans transferred their capital to the European Constantinople.... [but] the opposite was not true: the Crusaders did not transfer the capital of France or England to a conquered Tyre or Jerusalem" (11).

This sentence is wrongheaded on two counts:

1. The magnetism of Constantinople and Jerusalem is irrelevant in a discussion of Western and "Islamic" lethality. While throwing this statement out does support the notion that Western culture is more sophisticated or impressive than Islamic culture, it does nothing to support Hanson's thesis that Westerners are more deadly than their neighbors.

2. This is a blatant distortion of history. While the facts presented in this sentence are true, the implied lesson of Hanson's words, "Westerners do not transfer their capitals into cities of non-Western cultures" is not true. When the Normans conquered Muslim Sicily, they moved their capital to Palermo. In time Tulaytulah, pride of Al-Andalus, was to become Toledo, capital of the Spanish Empire.



Perhaps I am being unfair to Hanson by picking out one bad sentence and dissecting it at length. After all, this deconstruction does not disprove Hanson's thesis, nor cast any of his central points into doubt. By itself, it is nothing -- but the dozen such disingenuous statements found in each chapter make me question the validity of Hanson's argument all together. Carnage and Culture reads as a thesis-first book; instead of assessing the full scope of historical evidence and then developing a contention, Hanson devised a thesis and then looked for sources and incidents that supported his case.

A fair example of Hanson's selective use of history can be found in the people whose words he chooses to include in his work. Hanson quotes Herodotus' and Aeschylus' accounts of the battle of Salamis at length, but he refuses to take contemporary Spanish explanations of their victory against the Mexica seriously. Hanson offers no reason for why we should trust the Greeks' word but not the conquistadors', but the rationale behind his decision is clear enough. The Greeks state that freedom is the reason they beat back the Persians, while the Spaniards claim that their Christian faith and superior intelligence was the reason they rode to victory. The first explanation supports Hanson's thesis; the second explanation is antithetical to it. Thus, in Hanson's words, the Greeks "draw clear moral lessons" (47) about their wars, while the Spaniards "incorrectly attributed" (208) the reasons for triumph.

This double standard is most apparent during the chapters on Pointers and Lepanto, both taken from periods where the West was lagging behind the rest. When the victors of Lepanto wrote tracts thanking God for bringing them victory, they were following the path of their Western forbearers, possessors of a free and open intellectual tradition. But when those who lost at Lepanto (or Pointers) write that the battle's verdict was Allah's will, and Hanson condemns them for failing to produce "analysis... concerning shortcomings in the sultan's equipment, command, and naval organization" (251). Fallacious accounts of Western battles that blamed uncontrollable factors for defeat (such as the "sandstorm" invented by Greek historians to justify the Byzantine defeat at Yarmuk) are never mentioned.

Like the sandstorm-inventing Greeks, Hanson goes to great lengths to explain away Western defeats during the Middle Ages. The Arabs were only successful because they were fighting an "overextended" Byzantium and "barbarian" Visigoths. Hanson goes so far as to call the 20 or so Arab victories between Yarmuk and Pointers a "reconquista" (146) - an absurd idea when one pauses to reflect that cities like Alexandria, Carthage, Syracuse, and Nicosia had been part of the Western world longer than Paris or London have existed. Likewise, Hanson offers the Crusades as an example of Western military might, noting that Europe was "strong enough" (168) to send thousands of soldiers to the Holy Land, but the Arabs were never able to field armies in France or England. Statements like these take confrontations between Europeans and Arabs out of their proper historical context - with the exception of the First, the crusades were a dismal strategic failure for the Europeans, not a triumph of arms to be championed as evidence of Western lethality. Furthermore, Hanson never stops to justify why comparisons such as this are fair game at all; lacking the religious impetus of the Crusaders, for what reason should the Mamluks have sent an Arab army to invade Languedoc or Lombardy when the hoards of the Mongol Empire lie at their door?

Hanson continues this selective view of history in the run up and aftermath of Lepanto. Like the Arab victories in the 600s and 700s, the ascendancy of the Ottoman Empire is explained away as the result of an ailing Byzantine state. This may be true, but it does not explain how the Ottomans were able to defeat Crusader coalitions containing Europe's finest knights not once, but three times during the same period.* Likewise, Lepanto was not the first naval confrontation between the Ottoman Empire and the Holy League - the Ottoman's victory at Djerba (1560) and Preveza (1538) are not accounted for. Only the Ottoman defeat fits within the confines of Hanson's thesis, and only an Ottoman defeat is included.

With that said, the choice of Lepanto as one of Carnage and Culture's key battles was an extremely poor one. Hanson neglects to mention that Lepanto was a strategic failure; the goals of the Holy League's fleet were the protection and recapture of Cyprus. Yet a year after Lepanto the Ottoman fleet would be larger and more advanced than it had been a year before, Cyprus would still lay in Ottoman hands, Venice, fearing for survival, would withdraw from the Holy League, and subsequent engagements of the Ottoman and Holy League's fleet in the Peloponnese would lead to nothing more than a protracted stalemate. When Western armies are decimated in defeats that have little strategic bearing for the loser (Cannae, Isandlwanda, Pearl Harbor), Hanson heralds them as clear examples of the superiority of Western citizen-soldiers and economic practice. Yet when the Ottomans make just as miraculous of a recovery - effectively nullifying the strategic consequences of the greatest defeat ever forced upon the Empire since the time of Tamerlane - Hanson fails to make sweeping claims about the power of the Ottoman command economy.

I have no doubt that Hanson would discard this list of inconsistencies in his work as readily as he has cast aside the "flood of minutia" (463) sent to him by other academics following the publication of this book. After all, myy criticism has focused on the area of history I am most familiar with, and my concerns only knock down two chapters out of eleven. This is not enough to invalidate the book altogether. Yet if Hanson's treatment of the other 1,500 years discussed in Carnage and Culture is as disingenuous as his coverage of the of the Arab and Ottoman worlds, then this book has no valid argument contained in its covers. If the Devil lies in the details, Hanson is haunted by too many devils to make an honest case.

*Nikopol 1396, Varna 1444, and Mohacs 1526.

The nine battles described in this book are "landmarks" not in the sense of being pivotal in the military ascension of the West (some of the battles described were losses and others were sideshows, wholly irrelevant) but in that they reveal the characteristics of the West that make its warmaking unprecedentedly lethal.

Hanson argues convincingly that the rise of the West as a military power is best understood not as a result of race or (pace Jared Diamond) natural resources, but as a result of cultural traits. Individual liberty, a landed middle class, political democracy, free markets and a tradition of rational free inquiry combine to make the West (the cultural heirs of the ancient Greeks) overpowering.

Each chapter of the book discusses a single battle and uses it to highlight a single Western trait. Hanson first narrates the conflict, giving a battle map and sufficient background detail to make the story comprehensible, then analyzes the battle in terms of his thesis.

In addition to being a well written defense of a provocative thesis, _Carnage and Culture_ is a very pious book, respectful of the dead and their suffering. Reading of the mangled dead choking the water at Salamis, for instance, isn't exactly pleasant, but it reminds you what war is about and reinforces Hanson's repeated admonition that he claims no moral superiority for Western warfare, only greater efficacy.

Victor Davis Hanson's illuminating work is sure to be provocative and controversial. The book's thesis is the West's unique and lethal form of warfare has propelled it to dominance in world affairs. This military tradition has common threads dating back to Ancient Greece and is reflective of a Western culture that emphasizes political and intellectual freedom. Hanson illustrates this unique Western way of warfare by studying 9 battles from the Greek-Persian encounter at Salamis in 480 BC to the Tet Offensive in Vietnam. Unlike recent books, such as Jared Diamond's "Guns Germs and Steel" (a book I greatly admire), that explain the world's unequal power distribution through geographical and topographical determinism, Hanson's book emphasizes military prowess determined by culture. Hanson, like Diamond, rightly disregards racist theories on Western power because they are totally without foundation. The work is fascinating because it does an outstanding job of exploring the sensitive subject of culture and its influence on military affairs. However, a few weaknesses detract from the overall message. First, China is hardly explored. Given its preeminence through much of ancient and medieval times, this is a serious omission. Secondly, Hanson's belief in "shock battle" as the superior form of warfare has undergone serious revision in the 20th century. Even with these weaknesses, the book is still an excellent read.

Throughout the work, Hanson constantly emphasizes several key attributes of Western warfare.
They are:
1) Desire for decisive battle or "shock battle" as he calls it. Unlike other military traditions that stress deception, raiding and skirmishing, Westerners prefer head-to-head collisions of massive armies on the battlefield.
2) Civic militarism or a "nation in arms". Western armies and navies are staffed with free citizens who are fighting for country NOT slaves and mercenaries.
3) Free inquiry and rationalism. Western militaries are self-critiquing and encourage individual initiative. Like all armies, Western armies have hierarchies, but they are flatter, more flexible and give their soldiers a rough sense of equality with their fellow comrades. Adherence to rationalism allows Western armies to place ultimate emphasis on military efficacy regardless of its impact on social and political structures. Constant innovation in tactics and technology is considered independent from political arrangements.

Hanson then goes on to explain that these attributes did not appear out of a vacuum but are reflective of Western culture. With its origins in Ancient Greece and Rome, this culture nurtured the concepts of citizenship and elaborate property rights. Although these states were hardly democracies by today's standards, they did create an environment where free individuals actively participated in decision-making and had rights and obligations within the state. Most soldiers in Ancient Greece and Rome were drafted from the small farmer class. These people owned their own plots and could not afford long and endless military campaigns. Armies in other ancient kingdoms were manned by slaves and mercenaries and therefore were not troubled by such campaigning. To minimize time away from the farm, Western armies sought short and decisive battles that would determine the outcome quickly and with finality. It also imbued Western soldiers with motivation seldomly found in Non-Western armies staffed with mercenaries and slaves - the desire to protect one's livelihood and freedom. Even when the Romans suffered a crushing defeat at Cannae, Rome was able to raise new armies of free soldiers by calling the nation to arms. Since these soldiers were free men who entered into a consensual contract with the Republic, they willingly succumbed to military discipline and temporarily shed their individualism to become part of a mass, uniform formation - the ultimate expression of egalitarianism. Western guarantees of property rights, limits on arbitrary government power and judicial review, allowed the productive energies of capitalism to flourish, therefore providing Western armies and navies with copious quantities of advanced weaponry. Hanson makes no claim on the moral superiority of Western warfare. In fact, he illustrates that this form of warfare is particularly bloody and gruesome.

The weaknesses of the book are twofold. First, he ignores China. Given China's significant contributions to warfare and technology throughout ancient and medieval times (i.e. gunpowder, compass, printing press, paper money, stirrup etc.), this is a major omission. Of course, this book is about the West, not China, therefore it might be beyond the scope of this work to examine China's military history in depth. Even if this is so, some form of a short comparative analysis with China's traditions could have lent more credence to his view of the uniquely lethal form of Western warfare. Secondly, one has to wonder about the future efficacy of "shock battle". Although this work is a retrospective look, a concluding chapter with a prospective view would have been interesting. The frontal assault's declining effectiveness was already evident early in the 20th century. Verdun, Somme and Paschendale (all WWI battles) were classic examples of direct encounters gone wrong. They all typified massive bloodletting with no decisive victory. Maybe in this age of advanced munitions, "shock battles" are just too costly to fight. After the catastrophic encounters of WWI, military planners had to devise more effective ways of combating the enemy without "running into the breach of a cannon". The most successful strategies of WWII and the last 50 years have emphasized maneuver and the "indirect" approach to warfare. The German Blitzkrieg, the American Pacific island-hopping campaign, Israeli victories in 1956, 1967 and 1973 and Desert Storm were all tremendously successful because they avoided enemy strong points and deceived the enemy as to the true direction of attack. The objective in all of these campaigns was decisive victory BUT through an indirect approach. Of course, all of these strategies were developed by Westerners, so Hanson should be proud.