A War Like No Other

Victor Davis Hanson's compact but comprehensive history of the Peloponnesian War, A War Like No Other, served as the perfect follow-up to my recent reading (via Vox Day's blog) of Thucydides' History of that same conflict. Unlike Thucydides, though, Hanson takes a full measure of the conflict from its beginning in 431 BC to its conclusion in 404BC, while Thucydides' account ends in 411. There is also a difference in overall presentation. That of Thucydides is chronological, going year-by-year with each year divided into summer and winter. Hanson takes a thematic approach, looking at the course of the war through such lenses as disease, armor, walls, and horses – analyzing how each affected the war's outcome.

Just as some historians have termed the decades of conflict from the start of World War I to the end of the Cold War (1914-1991) "the Great Civil War of the West," Hanson suggests that a more accurate name for the Peloponnesian War would be "the Great Ancient Greek Civil War." Hanson defends this characterization of the conflict by noting that while there never existed a united Pan-Hellenic nation in ancient times, the Greeks were, for the most part, a single people with a single language who adhered to similar religious values. It was also a war that effectively ended a long period of Athenian dominance in the eastern Mediterranean, but would ironically lay the groundwork for a period of Greek expansion that would begin several decades later and result in Hellenic culture spreading from the Peloponnese to the Indus River.

Within the context of this twenty-seven year Greek war, Hanson believes, as has many a reader of Thucydides before him, that the most pertinent lessons of the conflict relate to human nature, something which has proven immutable across nations, continents, and even time itself. And within the context of human nature, one can identify many decisions, mistakes, and trends within the drawn-out war that have been repeated time and again in the centuries since.

On that point, Hanson studies the disaster that was the Sicilian Expedition, Athens' failed attempt surround Sparta and its allies by seizing the city-state of Syracuse, which itself was a democratic power much like the one attacking it. Many modern historians have tended to view the Sicilian Expedition of Athens as a classic case of imperial overstretch, and some contemporary political pundits like Pat Buchanan have even used it to criticize our country's efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq. Two months ago, Hanson reacted to Buchanan's analogy thusly:

[The Sicilian Expedition] was a case of a democratic Athens attacking a larger and democratic Syracuse and its Sicilian allies at a time when its adversary Sparta was not beaten. When I last looked the United States had not expanded its war on radical Islam by invading democratic India.

When I brought up this point in my blog entry of August 9, however, Tom Kratman was quick to correct me:

I don't know that taking on India is the most apt comparison, Mike, Hanson notwithstanding. Unlike Syracuse, they're not really trading partners with the enemy (who doesn't trade anyway), nor a likely source of ready income to us, nor are they threatening any friendly states to speak of. I mean, we've got nothing going for an attack on India. Athens did have some reasons for going after Syracuse.

Good point. But here's another point upon which Hanson and Kratman diverge: why the Athenian effort in Sicily ultimately failed. From the comment referenced above, Kratman adds:

…the failure of the Sicilian Expedition can really be traced down to one freakish event, the docking of the Hermes that put Alcibiades to flight and left, gag, Nicias in charge. Absent that, I've little doubt the Sicilian Campaign would have come off splendidly. It failed, more than for any other reason, to lack of aggressiveness, indiscipline, and laziness.

I don't think Hanson would necessarily disagree with that (Hanson too notes the problem of poor generalship that the Athenians had in Nicias), but in A War Like No Other he devotes an entire chapter toward explaining why the Athenian lack of mounted cavalry was the decisive factor in the expedition's failure. Writes Hanson:

At almost every key juncture the absence of sufficient cavalry ruined the Athenians…In the first months of the campaign, the Athenians were stymied by Syracusan horsemen from doing any damage from their base at Catana.

The inability of the Athenian forces to repel the harassing attacks by Syracusan horsemen resulted in the Athenians ultimately not having sufficient time to complete their siege wall around Syracuse, which despite Nicias' timidity could have brought about Syracuse's surrender. The delay allowed enough time to pass for Peloponnesian reinforcements to arrive, ultimately turning the tide against the Athenians.

The theme of logistical innovation is a recurring theme within Hanson's book, from the Syracusans' masterful use of horsemen to the growing use – by both sides – of light, mobile peltasts rather than heavily armored hoplites. Even just from the abandonment of "rules of warfare" to the indiscriminate use of force to achieve victory at any cost, the Peloponnesian War was indeed a war like no other previously seen in the ancient Greek world.

Though one might think that Athens' democratic culture might have allowed for more innovation among its admirals and generals, thus giving them the edge in adopting necessary changes, Athenian military leaders were often forced to be much more cautious. This was so because even in victory (as was the case after Arginusae), the Athenian assembly had an unhealthy predilection for doling out punishment to those leaders who were alleged to have committed unforgivable sins in the heat of battle. Such a system, according to Hanson, was not conducive to either preserving the wisdom of experience or encouraging innovation amongst Athens' military elite:

That the Athenian assembly exiled, executed, or fined almost every notable general it ordered on campaign did not make commanders more accountable as much as timid and prone to second-guessing. Thus, after any setback, whether in the Delium campaign or at Arginusae, they would most likely not come back to Athens, in fear of a trial. So the city did not often learn from its mistakes but almost always scared generals into being too cautious or reckless, their decisions based on anticipating what the voters back home might approve on any particular day.

It is this fatal flaw of wrong-headed self-criticism that continues to plague democracies to this very day. Since 2001, many on the radical left have demanded that our leaders be held legally accountable for any alleged "atrocity" or even for the deaths of American soldiers in Iraq. Just recently, famed prosecutor (and newly-minted moonbat) Vincent Bugliosi published a book calling for President George W. Bush to be put on trial for murder.

Just try it, Vince. You will find that what may now be a Cold Civil War in this country could quickly turn red-hot.

On the matter of Hanson's book, though, the reader is provided with an uncomfortable reminder that more often than not, democratic societies crumble from within. Will that be the fate of our own democracy? Should Bugliosi and company have their way, the answer will be a resounding "yes."