Victor Davis Hanson // American Greatness
Wars often arise from uncertainty. When strong powers appear weak, truly weaker ones take risks they otherwise would not.
Sloppy braggadocio and serial promises of restraint alternatively trigger wars, too. Empty tough talk can needlessly egg on aggressors. But mouthing utopian bromides convinces bullies that their targets are too sophisticated to counter aggression.
Discussion (4)
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By changing the rules of the game, some states might start to rethink their union membership.
Dear VDH, If Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn came to you today with a Gulag samizdat, what would be the best way to distribute the story? Paper mss?
The IraqWar still bothers me in that it was a noble effort but didn’t achieve adequate results and a large price in casualties and treasure. Should we have launched the war and what were more feasible alternatives? Thanks
Doctor Hanson, I was listening to your Classicist podcast today — they are getting longer, aren’t they? — and I heard you wax nostalgically about your mother’s idealism in racial matters. Also how noble it was that folks in Minnesota would feel strongly that Alabamians should change their treatment of blacks (probably never realizing the consequences would be a massive influx of primitive Somalis, as well as nightly race riots over an incident that the Justice Department in Washington, DC just gave America a textbook lesson in how to handle in the Babbitt case). But I have a question: Aren’t you the scholar who castigates the appeasers of Munich, 1938? And aren’t you the analyst who mocks the neoliberals who believed that openness and magnanimity to China would be reciprocated, instead of being viewed as what it was — feckless weakness? It seems to me that you have a double standard in statecraft, one for domestic consumption and another, far more prudent one, for foreign relations. It reminds me of American Jews’ opinions on immigration, which turn 180 degrees depending on whether they are speaking about America or Israel. America made a terrible mistake in 1964-5. As Caldwell wrote we overturned our Constitution and enacted a new one, without a ratification vote by the people. We left that up to our elites, who foolishly did not take precautions against foreseeable problems. We are living with those terrible decisions. The solidarity you are beginning to feel with the occasional white who crosses your path is the only way forward following those catastrophes, just as America First is in foreign affairs. Your loyal listener and reader, Bill Hickey