by Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n
Los Angeles Times<\/i><\/p>\n
M<\/span>odernists like to believe that we have entered an entirely new era of armed conflict. To some military thinkers, it’s the primordial nature of the terrorists’ beheadings, suicide bombings and improvised explosive devices that has marked a completely new form of “asymmetrical warfare” in which the two sides are terribly mismatched.<\/p>\n Others have a different argument. They say it is our own high-tech, computer-enhanced munitions that have reinvented the very nature of conflict into something called “4th-generational war.”<\/p>\n But neither argument could be further from the truth. War is like water \u2014 its fundamental character remains unchanging precisely because the nature of the humans who fight it is constant over the centuries. True, the pump \u2014 the delivery system of flint, arrows, firearms, nuclear bombs, guided missiles and satellite weapons \u2014 radically changes the face of battle with each generation. But the essence of war nevertheless stays the same, as we are reminded when we study the distant past.<\/p>\n More than 2,400 years ago, the Spartans fought the Athenians in a bloody 27-year war that nearly wrecked the Greek city-state in its greatest age. Almost every horror we have experienced since 9\/11 had a counterpart centuries earlier in that awful Peloponnesian War.<\/p>\n Limb-lopping? The Athenians ordered the right hands of captured Spartan seamen cut off.<\/p>\n Terrorism? On the island of Corcyra, factions burned innocents alive and executed civilians by running them through a gantlet.<\/p>\n Disease and fear of biological attack? The Athenians lost a quarter to a third of their population to a mysterious plague, and they blamed the outbreak on the Spartans.<\/p>\n Roadside executions? The Spartans rounded up 2,000 of their Helot serfs and butchered them all.<\/p>\n Kidnapped diplomats? The Athenians captured Spartan envoys on the way to Persia, ignored their diplomatic immunity, killed them and cast their corpses in a pit.<\/p>\n We recoiled in horror last September when Chechen terrorists stormed a school in Beslan and more than 150 children were killed in a bloody shootout. But in 413 B.C., the Athenians unleashed their Thracian mercenaries on the tiny Boeotian town of Mycalessus. The killers slaughtered men, women and children, burst into a schoolhouse and butchered all the students. They even attacked livestock and, according to the historian Thucydides, “whatever living thing they saw.”<\/p>\n B<\/span>ut the Peloponnesian War not only reminds us of how thin the veneer of civilization is when war, plague or natural disaster rips it off, it also shows that the reasons states fight each other have remained mostly the same over the years.<\/p>\n Thucydides says the Spartans attacked Athens “in fear” of its growing power \u2014 the “real” reason despite the numerous pretexts alleged. And the Athenians defended their earlier acquisition of territory on grounds that they took and kept it out of “fear, honor and self-interest.”<\/p>\n In our age of sophisticated economics, we tend to look for material causes for wars \u2014 land, resources, populations \u2014 rather than remembering these age-old emotional urges. But perhaps we could learn from Thucydides the next time Osama bin Laden alleges in his\u00a0fatwas<\/i>\u00a0that we provoked him by stationing troops in Saudi Arabia or by enforcing the U.N. oil-for-food embargo.<\/p>\n The fact is, the deep-seated anger and humiliation of Al Qaeda were more likely incited by a globalized and Western culture that really did threaten all the old hierarchies of an increasingly dysfunctional Arab and Islamic world (and the worried mullahs, patriarchs and theocrats, whose sense of privilege and honor derived from that world).<\/p>\n In other words, Bin Laden probably went to war over a sense of lost honor, in Thucydidean fear of Western globalization and due to his perceived self-interest \u2014 given perceptions of Western appeasement of radical Islamist terrorism since 1979 \u2014 that he had more to win than lose by hitting New York and Washington.<\/p>\n Of course, we must be careful when evoking the past to make sense of the present. Many, for example, recently cited the Iraq war as the modern equivalent of the disastrous Sicilian expedition of 415-413 BC, when Athens lost most of its fleet by assaulting distant Syracuse. But Syracuse was democratic, larger than Athens and, until the invasion, mostly neutral during the Peloponnesian War. A more historically apt analogy to that expedition would be if the United States had attacked democratic India during the midst of the U.S. war against Al Qaeda.<\/p>\n Study of the Peloponnesian War should also remind us that it is not assured that the wealthiest, most sophisticated and democratic state always triumphs over less impressive enemies. After all, Athens, for all its advantages, finally lost its war. And as Thucydides reminds us about the democratic empire’s lapses, arrogance and major blunders, more often the chief culprit was its own infighting and internal discord than the prowess of its many enemies.<\/p>\n \u00a92005 Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" From ancient Greece to modern Iraq, history shows us that fear, honor and self-interest drive hostilities between the states. by Victor Davis Hanson Los Angeles Times Modernists like to believe that we have entered an entirely new era of armed conflict. To some military thinkers, it’s the primordial nature of the terrorists’ beheadings, suicide bombings […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[784],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-16h","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1563,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/beyond-the-scopes-trial\/","url_meta":{"origin":4233,"position":0},"title":"Beyond the Scopes Trial?","author":"victorhanson","date":"June 12, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"Singham's new book misses the Christian foundation of law and much more. by Terry Scambray New Oxford Review God vs. Darwin: The War between Evolution and Creationism in the Classroom\u00a0by Mano Singham (Rowman & Littlefield, 2009). You can judge this book by its cover. Or at least by its title.\u00a0\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Terry Scambray"","block_context":{"text":"Terry Scambray","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/our-contributors\/terry-scambray\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":10758,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/uncommon-knowledge-part-i-the-second-world-wars-with-victor-davis-hanson\/","url_meta":{"origin":4233,"position":1},"title":"Uncommon Knowledge Part I: The Second World Wars with Victor Davis Hanson","author":"victorhanson","date":"November 28, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"\u00a0 https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=EUELed7UuDQ How were the Axis powers able to instigate the most lethal conflict in human history? Find out in part one of this episode as Victor Davis Hanson, joins Peter Robinson on\u00a0Uncommon Knowledge to discuss his latest book,\u00a0The Second World Wars. Victor Davis Hanson explains how World War II\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/img.youtube.com\/vi\/EUELed7UuDQ\/0.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":4211,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/old-is-new-warfare\/","url_meta":{"origin":4233,"position":2},"title":"Old is “New” Warfare","author":"victorhanson","date":"November 5, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"Iraq conflict shares uncanny likenesses with the Peloponnesian War by Victor Davis Hanson National Post Listen to what the talking heads are saying, and it's easy to believe that we have entered an entirely new era of armed conflict. Since Sept. 11, 2001, military commentators have emphasized the bizarre nature\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "November 2005"","block_context":{"text":"November 2005","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2005\/november-2005\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":932,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/nature-fakery\/","url_meta":{"origin":4233,"position":3},"title":"“Nature Fakery”","author":"victorhanson","date":"March 3, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce S. Thornton Defining Ideas At the turn of the twentieth century, President Theodore Roosevelt became embroiled in a public controversy over how some writers and naturalists described the natural world in overly anthropomorphic and sentimental terms. In a 1907 article attacking Jack London, among other writers, Roosevelt popularized\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Energy"","block_context":{"text":"Energy","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/energy\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":11550,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/angry-reader-12-03-2018\/","url_meta":{"origin":4233,"position":4},"title":"Angry Reader 12-03-2018","author":"victorhanson","date":"December 3, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"From An Angry Reader: This was the worst piece of historical analysis I\u2019ve ever read in any halfway respectable publication. Please ask your alma mater for a refund on all degrees earned. There isnt (sic) enough time in the day to go through all the stupidity you posted, but I\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2174,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/afghanistan-and-the-trojan-war\/","url_meta":{"origin":4233,"position":5},"title":"Afghanistan and the Trojan War","author":"victorhanson","date":"November 4, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"by Herbert Jordan Private Papers For perspective on the war in Afghanistan, President Obama ought to take a look through the lens of the oldest geopolitical conflict in the history of Western civilization, in which Greek warriors crossed the Aegean Sea to Asia Minor, besieged the citadel of Troy, and\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "November 2009"","block_context":{"text":"November 2009","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2009\/november-2009\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4233"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4233"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4233\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4234,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4233\/revisions\/4234"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4233"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4233"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4233"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}