The American Spectator : Seeing the Future Through the Rear-View Mirror

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Seeing the Future Through the Rear-View Mirror

By Michael Johnson on 3.15.11 @ 6:06AM

The wars of the ancient world remain a guide to today's -- as does Victor Davis Hanson.

Makers of Ancient Strategy: From the Persian Wars to the Fall of Rome
Edited by Victor Davis Hanson
(Princeton University Press, 278 pages, $27.95)

Coming up for air after a couple of hours with this recent Victor Davis Hanson book, I switched on CNN and was briefly confused as to what century it was. Did his point on the overwhelming impact of organized military force refer to Moammar Gaddafi's generals chasing down Libyan rebels or to Roman soldiers crushing a slave revolt? The parallels are striking.

"Spartacus was overmatched by the logistics, discipline and generalship of the Roman legions," Hanson writes in his fine introduction to Makers of Ancient Strategy: From the Persian Wars to the Fall of Rome. The Libyan rebels face the same odds today, reduced by Western media to a "ragtag" band of fighters rapidly losing the initiative, pretty much like those of Spartacus when it all ended for him.

Hanson, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and a respected military historian, has assembled here ten succinct studies by academic colleagues that demonstrate, with variable persuasiveness, the "relevance of the past to military challenges of the present." The Libyan civil war came well after his deadline but illustrates how accurately his theme reflects reality.

Hanson's cohort of specialists maintain that human nature is such a strong constant that "there is a certain predictability to war" regardless of era or technology.

Matching past experience to present conditions has a long and illustrious history in U.S. academic history departments, latterly on the theme of the Fall of Rome and the perceived decline of the United States. Two specialists merit a mention for outstanding analysis from opposite perspectives: Are We Rome? The Fall of an Empire and the Fate of America by Cullen Murphy, and Empires of Trust: How Rome Built -- and America Is Building -- a New World, by Thomas Madden.

As Hanson's book shows, we remain obsessed by Rome. Three of the Hanson-edited studies deal with the experience of late republican and early imperial Rome, all cleverly linked to the present.

Five others focus on classical Greece and one on Persia. Hanson's contribution, one of the finest in the collection, deals with Theban general Epaminondas who in 371-369 B.C. humiliated the Spartan military state in a "brilliant" preemptory military campaign. Hanson praises him for freeing some hundred thousand oppressed Helots and fostering democracy for tens of thousands of Greeks -- "events eerily relevant nearly 2400 years later to what followed from the terrorist attack on the United States on September 11, 2001."

Hanson's lesson to us, however, is that "unleashing the democratic genie hardly ensures perpetual allegiance to its liberator, as the United States discovered through much of 2008 in acrimonious negotiations with the Iraqi government over everything from future security guarantees to relations with Iran."

Hanson encouraged his contributors to choose a subject of special interest to them. As a result, the studies make for a diverse and refreshing collection. One that seemed at first to be peripheral is a study of defensive walls. David Berkey of California State University, Fresno, examined the effectiveness of the walls built in classical Athens. The walls were a "critical public works project of great political and strategic significance," he notes.

What's the point for us today? Berkey delivers a laundry list of giant wall-building projects that have worked exactly as the Athenians' did, often against initial currents of popular protest. He cites Israel's controversial wall blocking Palestinian terrorists, Saudi Arabia's wall impeding foreign fighters' entry into Iraq, and of course the multibillion-dollar wall fortifying the U.S-Mexican border stretching in its first phase from San Diego to El Paso.

"All that is certain in our high-technology future," he writes, "is that the more that walls and fortifications are dismissed as ossified relics of our military past, the more they will reappear… and the more we will need to look to the past for time-honored explanations of why and how they endure."

Two studies I found of special interest -- urban warfare and spontaneous insurgencies.

John W.I. Lee of the University of California, Santa Barbara, tells an engrossing story of a limited force of 300 Theban fighters entering the small town of Platea in central Greece only to be routed by the locals who knew the winding streets by heart. Within a day, 120 Theban corpses were scattered in streets and 180 were captured. All of them were executed. Local knowledge prevailed.

Lee deplores our short memories. "Despite the carnage of modern city fights in places such as Stalingrad, Berlin, Hue, Mogadishu and Grozny, urban warfare has faded into the background of military consciousness."

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About the Author

Michael Johnson spent 17 years at McGraw-Hill, including six years as a news executive in New York. He now writes from Bordeaux in France.

Letter to the Editor View all comments (24) | Leave a comment

Bob K.| 3.15.11 @ 6:44AM

Interesting! Does he mention the 100 Years War in Medieval Europe or the 30 Years War in the 1600's in Europe? Or the Battles of Lepanto and Vienna in 1571 and 1683? There have been an awful lot of wars and battles for an awful lot of reasons and I suppose they all have meaning to us today in some way or other. Most recently was WW II. Germany was a Democracy.

Bob K.| 3.15.11 @ 6:54AM

It just occurred to me that much has happened since Rome ruled the know world and they ruled it for several hundred years.

It seems rather optimistic to compare the United States ascendancy of the last 60 years or so to Rome, doesn't it? The British Empire had a longer ascendancy.

Bob K.| 3.15.11 @ 6:55AM

That should read "since Rome ruled the "known" world.

JP| 3.15.11 @ 7:28AM

The 100 Years War was a battle for succession. And even though some battles, like Agincourt, will go down in history, there is no general lessons one can derive from that spat.

The 30 Years War began as a religious war but became a political one once Cardinal Riechlieu recognized an opening. The Battle of Vienna was actually fought in 1529. The 30 Years War did change the course of European History; but it didn't mark the rise or fall of any of the major powers in Europe.

Hansen picks ancient Greece and Rome for obvious reasons. Greece was the cradle of Western Civilization. And many of the epic campaigns in Greece are still considered classics 2500 years later. And Rome devised a military-political system that lasted nearly 1600 years. From Carthage to Gaul to the Toteberger Wald, Roman military pursuits are still studied today. Count Alfred von Schlieffen made his reputation studying Hanibal. And his classic studies became the tactical building blocks of the German Army circa 1921-1945.

Dan Hirsch| 3.15.11 @ 9:46AM

Democracy don't mean nuthin'

Yes Nazi Germany was a democracy; so was the Soviet Union, so was Hussein's Iraq, Ahmedinijad's Iran, Mubarak's Egypt, Chavez's Venezuela, Castros' Cuba, ad nauseam.

It ain't the voting, it's the freedom to speak, congregate, defend oneself, own and control property, and all the rest of the stuff in the Bill of Rights that determines men's freedom.

Sheesh. Pay attention!

Bob K.| 3.15.11 @ 10:44AM

If "Democracy don't mean nuthin'," why did Hanson praise Epaminondas? (See the 7th paragraph in the review.)

Dee See| 3.15.11 @ 7:20AM

WISH the learned Hanson would weigh in
with a richly informed take on the now OBVIOUS
Globalist stealth op. to enable, 'bring up' and 'bring in' the awesomely genocidal, predictably compliant RED Chinese regime --AND the tandem de-industrialization and franchise slum amalgamation of the West
before their on the books 'eugenics realism'
is 'incrementally administered'...

PJ| 3.15.11 @ 8:32AM

Hanson writes regularly on the National Review Online. I think he has written about China & the West.

Habu| 3.15.11 @ 8:40AM

The current world realignment with China flexing, the US drowning in debt beyond the ability to recover,the EU, a circus of disparate economies pretending to be as one, and a resurgent Soviet Union which really never left but simply relabelled the bottles and the prize, the ME oil are leading the world to it's traditional short term remedy....global war.

Dee See| 3.15.11 @ 9:03AM

OF COURSE with the stated, open, core agenda of 'population easing' (90% extermination by 2100)
---war as its been understood has to be put aside.

This strange, over designed operation by the
Globalist shadow elite calls for weaponised
meds, food, water and air ---along with cultural
demolition (all that Christian man nonsense)
---extermination of the unborn as 'lifestyle choice'
rampant, unquestioned 're-engineering' of our children to 'fit in' via brain destroying vaccines
and scientific indoctrination,
lobotomizing of any gathered wisdom that might
still survive by sequestration and euthanizing of
the 'inconvenient' elderly -----AND last but not
least, weather and seismic 'events'.

Hanson's really yet to deal with any of this.

And for that matter neither have we.

HUAC meets NUREMBERG with all possible
speed.

REALLY

Dan Hirsch| 3.15.11 @ 9:52AM

Dee See;

We shouldn't worry about temperatures in 100 years, and we shouldn't worry about dreamlike future conspiracies and genocides.

There are real, serious problems happening RIGHT NOW that need our attention. Let our great-great-grand children fight those battles in 2100, okay? If we don't address the problems in our laps, there may not be any great-great-grand children to solve the 2100 problems, get it?

Don't tread on me, today!

Focus, people, FOCUS!

Nick| 3.15.11 @ 11:54AM

Dee See,

Let me guess, you're a fan of Alex 'the kook' Jones, huh?

There was no such entity as HUAC, by the way. It was the House Committee on Un-American Activities.

Anthony| 3.15.11 @ 9:22AM

Dr. Hanson is one of the most brilliant men around. Anything this man writes is worth reading.
He is a true Renaissance man.

Petronius| 3.15.11 @ 10:37AM

Dr. Roger Price envisioned a reprise of the English Civil Warre in this country. Charles I, having been profligate to the point of bankrupting His Kingdom, and despotic in His attempt to recruit mercenaries to maintain His throne, and unrepentant at His trial, went to the block and was beheaded for it. This scenario is no longer a possibility. The very idea of behaving like responsible adults is anathema to a majority of the populace. And the restoration of the traditional cultural imperatives that made us great would require the elimination or banishment of upwards of 2/3 of the people living here and living off of our private sector. That's way too many heads. And we lack the will to do either, and so will remain in thrall to the empty headed electorate which fill their hands with what remains in our pockets until reckoning. This will not end well.

Yosemeti Sam| 3.15.11 @ 11:31AM

" Seeing the Future Through the Rear-View Mirror ...."

Is it possible that History then just may inherently be a continuum of fractal-like parallels.

How then to escape those boundaries?

Dai Alanye| 3.15.11 @ 1:56PM

It's a great pleasure to read the comments on this article, especially those by folks who know much more than Victor Hanson.

Or think they do.

Bob K.| 3.15.11 @ 5:14PM

He knows alot for sure! And he is Conservative with a big C even if he is a Democrat. But the title of this review is "Seeing the Future Through the Rear-View Mirror."

Do you think he can see the future better than anybody else?

Mr. Johnson has put him in a tough position.

GENE HAUBER| 3.15.11 @ 5:47PM

IF YOU DON'T KNOW HISTORY, YOU'RE BOUND TO REPEAT IT.........LIKE RE-INVENTING THE WHEEL.
SUCH A WASTE OF PRECIOUS TIME AND ADVANTAGE.

Quartermaster| 3.15.11 @ 7:01PM

The wars themselves are of interest to Military historians but little else. The political situation that surrounded those wars are a much different kettle of fish. That is well worth studying, even for military historians, but especially for those who have no desire to make the same mistakes.

Alas, as one wag put it, "we learn one thing from history. That we learn nothing from history. One reason history is cyclic is the fact that the people that made the mistakes that brought on the last big problem aren't around when the mistakes are repeated. The people that made a hash of the economy in the 20s weren't around to warn the current cop of idiots that what they were doing was going to make a mess. The last hash ended in the most destructive war the world has ever seen.

Add the serious possibility of a real civil war (the war of northern aggression was not a civil war) to what is looking like the initial events of the type of instability that led to WW2, and we have the makings of a real historical mess at hand.

We can hope it doesn't end the same way, but given human nature, that isn't the way to bet.

Dee See| 3.15.11 @ 10:27PM

"You must understand, what we're seeing
unfold, brought out, brought on is nothing
more than the business and EUGENICS plans
of the Globalists, some portions of which were
drafted as long ago as 1890."
-ALAN WATT
(essential online listening)

"When we get through with you,
you'll wish you were a tree."
-MAURICE STRONG
UNESCO director
Socialist/Maoist/Globalist/EUGENIST

We've IN FACT checked it out --and IT CHECKS OUT.

IN FACT---not only does it check out
---BUT WE OURSELVES
ARE BEING CHECKED OUT.

SO check it out for yourself ---and GET WITH THE DE-PROGRAM!

Fred Z| 3.16.11 @ 1:26AM

Hauber, DeeSee, please stop shouting at us with the ALL CAPS. Rude fools.

gary siebel| 3.16.11 @ 3:01AM

The single biggest change in tactics in modern warfare, and which separates it from previous eras, is the control of the skies for everything from resupply, extreme forward ops, and direct attack, to recon. Tunneling will be the response -- we can see that happening already from the Mexican-American border, to Gaza, to Lebanon, to Afghanistan. Drones will be everywhere. Satellites already are covering the earth. I predict a future trend toward umbrellas, even on sunny days.

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