New restrictions on the application of Western force augment these old familiar ones. As we have also seen, the affluence and security that accrued from capitalism and consensual government often proved a mixed blessing in nasty wars against those who were far poorer, far more used to violence, often far more numerous—and usually had far less to lose. During the Peloponnesian War, if a hoplite of imperial Athens fell in the wilds of Aetolia, his death hurt the Athenian cause far more than the loss of the ten tribesmen it took to kill him harmed the cause of Aetolia.
So too it is again with the present. Western medical science not only ensures longer life, but, through the use of sophisticated pharmaceutics and artificial body parts, also promises an enjoyable longer life. Those advances will make it ever harder to ask a small minority of our citizens to lose their lives to ensure longer and better ones for the rest of us. Most twenty-first-century Westerners do not see death on their streets. They do not butcher the animals they eat. And they do not lose a large minority of their children to disease and hunger before the age of twelve. But they will increasingly fight those who do.
Those in the First Marine Division who outfought the Japanese, often hand to hand, in horrific places like Peleliu or Okinawa, grew up in more comfortable surroundings than did their Asian enemies—but not that much more comfortable given the ravages of the Great Depression. Today we are even richer and our enemies in comparison are even poorer, whether in Mogadishu or Kandahar. And the gap may widen even further.
Because there was a greater tendency of Western militaries to hear criticism, or to depend on some sort of consensus to ratify their musters, the European public had wider opportunity to oppose and even limit operations deemed too costly or too immoral. That antiwar tradition that started with Homer, Euripides, and Aristophanes accelerates as well. Again, the problem in securing Iraq was not the poverty of American manpower, know-how, or wealth. Instead the challenge was winning over diverse groups of free citizens, who were often not convinced that, in their cost-to-benefit calculations, losing four thousand Americans was worth the price of removing Saddam Hussein and fostering constitutional government in his place in one of the world’s most important—but volatile—regions. These skeptics were not just fringe critics, but also local, state, and national voters, organizers, pundits, donors, and lobbyists.
Contradictions, Paradoxes, and Resolutions
THE PRESENT AGE experiences these age-old tensions—both globalized Western military practice and the traditional checks against it—but intensified as never before. Given human nature, there will be no perpetual peace or lasting international consensus. Instead, as in the past, we will witness cycles and trends that can favor either set battle or unconventional fighting, or something new altogether. The difference in the present age, however, is that far more diverse players are participating in Western warfare and at a far more rapid pace.
The onset of globalization, nuclear weapons, and enormous influxes of capital to the non-West has for a time tipped the scale in the favor of the those seeking to check the application of conventional Western power. True, the great slaughterhouse of civilization—Europe—is now united and quiet in loose alliance with America. Yet cross the Yalu River, bomb Hanoi, pursue over the Pakistani border—any such escalation in the last half century raised the specter that some nuclear power, deliberately posing as less predictable or concerned than an America, a Britain, or a France, might well draw nuclear red lines. The reaction to the implicit threat of a wildcard use of the bomb is to pull back rather than to roll the nuclear dice.
Given the increasing scarcity of oil, and the vast amounts of money its purchase transfers to numerous nations in the Middle East, Russia, Africa, and South America, terrorists and insurgents can easily purchase weapons comparable to those fabricated in America, France, or Sweden. To supply al-Qaeda terrorists does not require the supporting structure of industry, manufacturing, or sophisticated knowledge. Bin Laden only needs the income ultimately derived from a few dozen oil wells and a checking account. What does it matter that the petroleum was originally found and exploited by Westerners in hire to Middle East regimes—or sold and banked through Western finance?
The possession of nuclear weapons by the non-democracies—China, North Korea, Pakistan, Russia, and perhaps soon Iran–means that global flare-ups often will not necessarily be decided by the superiority of Western militaries per se. The stalemates, defeats, and hard going in Korea, Vietnam, and perhaps Afghanistan and Iraq prove that well enough. Soon war almost anywhere will invoke the specter of an aroused new nuclear power—one that claims it is more unpredictable, has less to lose, or harbors more grudges than a nuclear and democratic America, Britain, France, or Israel. The result is not just that Western war will therefore be limited, but rather it will more likely be fought in unconventional ways more favorable to non-Western societies.
The onset of the Internet and the instant dissemination of knowledge have also leveled the playing field. Again, who cares that Dr. Zawahiri’s suicide bombers draw on no innate tradition of either European physics or munitions? With money from a rogue Saudi prince, a terrorist soon may Google “dirty bomb” and download the necessary expertise to easily assemble a brew of Czech explosives and radioactive medical waste. If one such suicide bomber blew himself to smithereens inside the lobby of the U.S. Congress, he could do far more comparative damage to the confidence of the United States than a fleet of sophisticated B-2 bombers might do to the terrorists hiding among civilians in mud-brick villages in Pakistan.
Does all this depressing news mean the end to dominance of Western warfare, and with it the very security of the West?
Not quite. There always looms the next cycle, the classic response to the last round of such contemporary challenges. At this moment, missile defense is being deployed, with promises that such countermeasures will venture beyond the stratosphere and knock down missiles and planes in their initial takeoff.
Should a series of 9/11-type terrorist attacks hit the West, gone will be the present intramural bickering. Amid the civilian carnage few will warn that we cannot wage war as effective warriors because we are not proper moralists. Fewer will protest that we are too precious and prosperous to fight those who are not. The Somme, Dresden, and Tokyo remind us how quickly Western pieties about the moral limitations of Western arms dissipate when wars are no longer seen as optional, but are deemed existential.
At present—nearly a decade after the fall of the World Trade Center and the attack on the Pentagon—the United States may no longer wish to send affluent twentysomething college graduates into the Waziristan to fight the Taliban. In such climates, a suburbanite private at breakfast can text-message his girlfriend in Houston, and yet be blown up by noon by an illiterate Afghan with a Soviet-era rocket-propelled grenade. But should we lose a series of iconic buildings, see the government derailed by a dirty bomb in the capital, or experience serial explosions on our transatlantic fights, then hundreds of thousands not only will be willing to go after terrorists, but will also fight with a supportive public without much worry about constraining the frightening arsenal of sophisticated Western warfare.
Where does this all leave us as we begin the millennium? Not in as gloomy a state of mind as we might think—given that we can still relearn a once-common knowledge that has ameliorated danger over the centuries. The peril is not in accepting that the innate nature of war lies in the dark hearts of us all, but rather in denying it. History is our great ally. It offers as much hope as does high-tech shields, innovative new methods of diplomacy, or ecumenical world governance.
Some believe that an unchanging human nature is cause for depression, given history’s woes. I do not. Instead, I find solace in the fact that we remain the same as the Greeks, but have 2,500 years of experience, trial by error, and tragedy to draw on, and thus predict the general outlines of what men and women are likely to think and do in times of crisis.
Study of the past provides both instructio
n and comfort about preventing lethal wars. If we know the nature of our society and the fashion of our war making—its deadly advantages and the complex ways in which it has been sometimes checked—then we can always understand ourselves on familiar ground, no different from those who fought at Marathon or Iwo Jima.
Our great hope is not just that we will fight as well as did the Athenians who saved their civilization at Salamis, or the Marines who stormed Okinawa’s Shuri Line, but also that we will have learned what prevents such bloodletting in the first place. That knowledge, it is true, accepts the ubiquity of war. But our own past experience with war also reminds us that through preparedness, deterrence, and tough diplomacy, those who seek to profit by aggression can be restrained, but only while they are still relatively unsure of their power—before they gain greater strength, and thus prove both uninhibited and far more costly to subdue.
B Y T H E S A M E A U T H O R
Warfare and Agriculture in Classical Greece
The Western Way of War
Hoplites (editor)
The Other Greeks
Fields Without Dreams
Who Killed Homer? (with John Heath)
The Wars of the Ancient Greeks
The Soul of Battle
The Land Was Everything
Bonfire of the Humanities (with John Heath and Bruce Thornton)
An Autumn of War
Carnage and Culture
Between War and Peace
Mexifornia
Ripples of Battle
A War Like No Other
The Immigration Solution (with Heather MacDonald and Steven Malanga)
Makers of Ancient Strategy (editor)
INDEX
Abu Ghraib, 185, 214, 223, 232
Actium, battle at, 95, 96, 110
Aeschylus, 5, 34, 53
Afghanistan: and alternative to punitive war, 213; as asymmetrical war, 227, 228; and classical lessons about modern wars, 85, 93; and contradictions and paradoxes about war, 244; and decisive battles, 108, 109; and future of battles, 114, 115; and military errors, 167, 175, 178, 185; and military liberalism, 192, 193; and nation-building, 200, 201, 209; and neglect of military history, 9, 12; and paradoxes of the present, 237, 238; and present wars as reflective of origins of war, 240; and reasons for war, 19, 36, 42, 43; and redefinition of war, 235; and security versus freedom, 218; Soviets in, 108, 167, 224; and spread of democracy, 193, 197, 199, 210; and technology, 128–29, 133; and varieties of war, 25; and way of war in America, 149; and Western advantages, 234
“Age of Battles,” 110–11
Ahmadinejad, Mahmoud, 38, 200, 209, 222
air power, 16–17
aircraft carriers, 146–47
al-Qaeda, 15, 40, 47–48, 178, 180, 181, 208, 242, 244
Alcibiades, 28, 35, 86, 88, 89, 92
Alexander the Great: Anabasis as primer for, 65; brutality of, 70; at Chaironeia, 54; decisive battles of, 106; film about, 53; at Gaugamela, 67; in Mesopotamia, 34; Peloponnesian War compared with wars of, 90; and Persian Wars, 34; Plutarch’s description of, 28; and reasons for neglect of military history, 7; and technology, 133, 134; Ten Thousand as precursor to, 68; and utility of military history, 16; where to start studying about, 28, 29
Ambrose, Stephen, 11, 31
American exceptionalism, 78–79, 140
American Historical Association, 9
American Protective League, 217
American Revolution, 29, 167
Anabasis (Xenophon), 27, 65–70
Andrewes, Tony, 68
Angell, Norman, 120
Annan, Kofi, 230–31
anti-Americanism, 209, 231
anti-Semitism, 231
Antietam, battle at, 166, 241
antiwar sentiment, 204, 231, 243
appeasement, 16, 209, 217
Ardennes, battle of, 113, 166, 167
Aristophanes, 34, 41, 55, 86, 231, 243
Aristotle, 45, 194, 216
Arnett, Peter, 176
Artaxerxes II, 64–65, 68, 69
Assad, Bashar al-, 17, 209, 222
Ataturk, Kemal, 195
Athenians: and anti-classical views of war, 45; as democratic, 46, 113, 193, 195–96, 206, 216, 217; lack of modern understanding about wars of, 6; and lessons learned from the past, 246; and military liberalism, 192; and roots of war, 35–36, 40–41; and security versus freedom, 216, 217; Sicily invasion by, 15, 45, 57–58, 84, 85, 86, 92, 196; and technology, 136; and utility of military history, 15, 16; and Western exceptionalism, 47. See also Peloponnesian War; specific person
Atkinson, Rick, 11
atomic bombs, 77–78, 124, 144
Atta, Mohammed, 48
Atwood, Margaret, 10, 18, 19
Baker, James, 197–98
Baker, Nicholson, 219
Balkans: Alexander the Great in, 106; Baker’s comment about, 198; and decisive battles, 114–15; and democracy, 189, 198, 200, 205; and future of battles, 114–15; and military error, 164, 178, 185; and morality of military history, 25; and multilateralism, 205; and nation-building, 200; and paradoxes of the present, 238; Powell’s comment about, 189; and present wars as reflective of origins of war, 241; and redefinition of war, 185; and utility of military history, 15, 17
Barbarigo, Antonio, 98
Battle of the Bulge, 8, 12, 76, 108, 166
battles: end of decisive, 105–22; future of, 113–20; return of, 121–22; and technology, 115–20, 121; wars without, 108–11. See also specific battle
Bazán, Don Alvaro de, 98
Beauchamp, Scott, 185
Bell, David, 111
Beloch, K. J., 91
Ben-Gurion, David, 28
Bendiner, Elmere, 26
bin Laden, Osama, 18–19, 40, 42, 67, 91, 95, 152, 180, 210, 232, 244
“Black Hawk Down,” 39
Blackwater, 68
blame, 23, 39, 54, 166, 184, 207, 214, 224, 228, 229, 238
Bonaparte, Napoleon, 6, 16, 43, 110, 111, 181, 191, 241
Boot, Max, 127, 129–32, 135
Bosnia, 112, 193, 198
Bowden, Mark, 28
Bradley, Omar, 12, 141, 166
Bragadin, Marcantonio, 95
Braun, Thomas, 67–68
Buckner, Simon Bolivar Jr., 77, 175
Burns, Ken, 11
Bush, George H.W., 148, 197, 209
Bush, George W.: and civilian-military relationship, 189; favorite reading of, 28; film/novel about assassination of, 218–19; foreign attitudes about the America of, 42; hatred of, 219; and Iraq War, 162, 198, 204; and military errors, 162; and nation-building, 208, 209; and security versus freedom, 218–19; and spread of democracy, 198, 204, 208, 209; and technology, 128; 300 as allegory for Iraq War and, 51; unpopularity of, 22; and war on terror, 17; and way of war in America, 149
Busolt, Georg, 91
Butler, Gerald, 51, 54
Caeser, Julius, 16, 28, 112, 191
California State University, Fresno, 11, 55, 56, 57–59
Cambodia, 37, 193, 238
Capponi, Niccolò, 96, 98–99, 100–101
Carter, Jimmy, 6, 57, 162, 168, 204, 209, 232
Casey, George, 174
casualties: and alternatives to punitive war, 215; and asymmetrical wars, 228, 230; and full force of military, 204; and future battles, 119; and nation-building, 210; natural disasters compared with war, 15–16, 224; and new-isms, 224; and paradoxes of the present, 238; and present wars as reflective of origins, 243; and spread of democracy, 204, 205; and war as “human thing,” 154, 157; and war in classical ages, 32; and way of war in America, 146, 147, 151–52, 157; West’s views about, 230. See also specific war
Chaeronea (338 B.C.), 112
Chait, Jonathan, 219
Chávez, Hugo, 38, 200, 208
Chechnya, 108, 109, 238
China: and antithetical cultures, 192; and contradictions and paradoxes about war, 244; and decisive battles, 111; and future of battles, 113, 120; and Korean War, 13–14, 165, 170, 180; and mi
litary errors, 165, 170, 180; natural disasters in, 224; and return of battles, 121; and roots of war, 37; Sledge in, 73; and Taiwan, 37, 110, 120, 131; and technology, 131; and way of war in America, 147
Chomsky, Noam, 232
Christians, sixteenth-century, 94–101
Churchill, Winston, 16, 22, 23, 28, 29, 107, 187
Civil War, U.S.: casualties in, 23, 166; decisive battles in, 87, 107, 108, 111; and future of battles, 115; and military errors, 166, 171, 174–75, 178, 183; and neglect of study of military history, 9, 12; and popular culture, 11; and present wars as reflective of origins, 241; public sentiment about, 22–23; Sherman’s views about winning of, 21; and technology, 124; and way of war in America, 140–41, 142, 146; where to start studying about the, 27, 28, 29. See also specific person or battle
civilian leadership. See leadership; presidents, U.S specific person
Clark, Mark, 175
classical studies: and anti-classical view, 43–45; benefits of, 32; difficulty of understanding, 50–51; as foundation for studying past wars, 31–32; and popularity of Thucydides, 55–59; and war as tragedy, 32, 33, 43. See also specific nation or war
Clausewitz, Carl von, 28, 30
Clearchus, 64, 67, 68
Cleon, 56, 88, 92, 93
Clinton, Bill, 15, 128, 189, 204, 205, 209, 213, 232
Codevilla, Angelo, 30
Coffman, Edward M., 8–9
Cohen, Eliot A., 28, 189
Cold War: and classical lessons about modern wars, 85; and decisive battles, 112; and democracy, 188–89, 196, 197–99; and distrust of military, 188–89; and military culture, 191; and military errors, 168; nuclear pessimism of, 6; and reasons for neglect of military history, 6, 7–8; and security versus freedom, 216; Soviet defeat in, 196; and technology, 128; and way of war in America, 140, 143
communications. See satellites; technology
Communism, 41, 111, 168, 192, 226. See also Cold War; specific nation or war
Congo, 237, 238
consensual government, 45–46, 47
Constitution, U.S., 217, 218
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