Rating: 
Summary: Where culture and military efficacy meet
Review: Victor Davis Hanson's illuminating work is sure to be provocative and controversial. The book's thesis is the West's unique and lethal form of warfare has propelled it to dominance in world affairs. This military tradition has common threads dating back to Ancient Greece and is reflective of a Western culture that emphasizes political and intellectual freedom. Hanson illustrates this unique Western way of warfare by studying 9 battles from the Greek-Persian encounter at Salamis in 480 BC to the Tet Offensive in Vietnam. Unlike recent books, such as Jared Diamond's "Guns Germs and Steel" (a book I greatly admire), that explain the world's unequal power distribution through geographical and topographical determinism, Hanson's book emphasizes military prowess determined by culture. Hanson, like Diamond, rightly disregards racist theories on Western power because they are totally without foundation. The work is fascinating because it does an outstanding job of exploring the sensitive subject of culture and its influence on military affairs. However, a few weaknesses detract from the overall message. First, China is hardly explored. Given its preeminence through much of ancient and medieval times, this is a serious omission. Secondly, Hanson's belief in "shock battle" as the superior form of warfare has undergone serious revision in the 20th century. Even with these weaknesses, the book is still an excellent read. Throughout the work, Hanson constantly emphasizes several key attributes of Western warfare.
They are:
1) Desire for decisive battle or "shock battle" as he calls it. Unlike other military traditions that stress deception, raiding and skirmishing, Westerners prefer head-to-head collisions of massive armies on the battlefield.
2) Civic militarism or a "nation in arms". Western armies and navies are staffed with free citizens who are fighting for country NOT slaves and mercenaries.
3) Free inquiry and rationalism. Western militaries are self-critiquing and encourage individual initiative. Like all armies, Western armies have hierarchies, but they are flatter, more flexible and give their soldiers a rough sense of equality with their fellow comrades. Adherence to rationalism allows Western armies to place ultimate emphasis on military efficacy regardless of its impact on social and political structures. Constant innovation in tactics and technology is considered independent from political arrangements. Hanson then goes on to explain that these attributes did not appear out of a vacuum but are reflective of Western culture. With its origins in Ancient Greece and Rome, this culture nurtured the concepts of citizenship and elaborate property rights. Although these states were hardly democracies by today's standards, they did create an environment where free individuals actively participated in decision-making and had rights and obligations within the state. Most soldiers in Ancient Greece and Rome were drafted from the small farmer class. These people owned their own plots and could not afford long and endless military campaigns. Armies in other ancient kingdoms were manned by slaves and mercenaries and therefore were not troubled by such campaigning. To minimize time away from the farm, Western armies sought short and decisive battles that would determine the outcome quickly and with finality. It also imbued Western soldiers with motivation seldomly found in Non-Western armies staffed with mercenaries and slaves - the desire to protect one's livelihood and freedom. Even when the Romans suffered a crushing defeat at Cannae, Rome was able to raise new armies of free soldiers by calling the nation to arms. Since these soldiers were free men who entered into a consensual contract with the Republic, they willingly succumbed to military discipline and temporarily shed their individualism to become part of a mass, uniform formation - the ultimate expression of egalitarianism. Western guarantees of property rights, limits on arbitrary government power and judicial review, allowed the productive energies of capitalism to flourish, therefore providing Western armies and navies with copious quantities of advanced weaponry. Hanson makes no claim on the moral superiority of Western warfare. In fact, he illustrates that this form of warfare is particularly bloody and gruesome. The weaknesses of the book are twofold. First, he ignores China. Given China's significant contributions to warfare and technology throughout ancient and medieval times (i.e. gunpowder, compass, printing press, paper money, stirrup etc.), this is a major omission. Of course, this book is about the West, not China, therefore it might be beyond the scope of this work to examine China's military history in depth. Even if this is so, some form of a short comparative analysis with China's traditions could have lent more credence to his view of the uniquely lethal form of Western warfare. Secondly, one has to wonder about the future efficacy of "shock battle". Although this work is a retrospective look, a concluding chapter with a prospective view would have been interesting. The frontal assault's declining effectiveness was already evident early in the 20th century. Verdun, Somme and Paschendale (all WWI battles) were classic examples of direct encounters gone wrong. They all typified massive bloodletting with no decisive victory. Maybe in this age of advanced munitions, "shock battles" are just too costly to fight. After the catastrophic encounters of WWI, military planners had to devise more effective ways of combating the enemy without "running into the breach of a cannon". The most successful strategies of WWII and the last 50 years have emphasized maneuver and the "indirect" approach to warfare. The German Blitzkrieg, the American Pacific island-hopping campaign, Israeli victories in 1956, 1967 and 1973 and Desert Storm were all tremendously successful because they avoided enemy strong points and deceived the enemy as to the true direction of attack. The objective in all of these campaigns was decisive victory BUT through an indirect approach. Of course, all of these strategies were developed by Westerners, so Hanson should be proud.
Rating: 
Summary: You gotta love Western Culture
Review: Unless you are a self-hating EuroAmerican or a member of a failed culture ( and there are lots of candidates) you'll love this book. It explains why the West is so great, at least in war. Hanson wrote his book before the Afghan war, but his observations are so accurate that it appears like the Bush administration used Carnage and Culture as a textbook to run the military campaign.
Rating:
Summary: very good
Review: In depth description of the western art of war;
impressive for its coverage of the very hellenic roots
of western warfare. He is the only one that can do it!
Rating:
Summary: For the sophisticated student of warfare
Review: This is a remarkable book with profound implications. Hanson's argument about culture and warfare should be read with Hernando de Soto's The Mystery of Capitalism that argues that prosperity is also a function of culture and legality. The two books on very different topics actually make the same point and create a new analytical framework for understanding why some countries develop and become prosperous and powerful and others do not. Hanson makes the case that western military capabilities (currently on display in Afghanistan) are a function of culture going back to the rise of the Greek city-states. He asserts that the combination of a polity in which the warriors vote on going to war in which they will serve (in effect the property owning voters were the heart of the Greek Phalanx so they were voting to put themselves at risk). They needed to have a short campaign between the planting and harvest seasons since the warrior-farmers had to both sustain the economy and the battle creating a style of war which involved short direct shock actions (the Greek phalanx so brilliantly portrayed in Pressfield's the Gates of Fire). This reliance on infantry combat by disciplined units in direct shock assault was compounded by the economics of Greek geography. Faced with the reality that in small valleys surrounded by mountains you could produce ten infantrymen for every cavalrymen because horses are far more expensive than humans, the Greeks really emphasized the development of high technology (long spear, short stabbing sword, big shield, very tough helmet) infantry combat with extremely disciplined teams. Finally, Hanson asserts that the rule of law in the Greek city-state guaranteed every soldier a status and legal rights and protection which created a sense of stability and commitment unlike any non-western culture. It is the combination of voting and legality, which Hanson believes, combined to create such a powerful system of war. Hanson argues that this style of war led to two major breakthroughs that have persisted in the west to this day. First, the kind of courage required by a phalanx is a disciplined refusal to break. It is the opposite of the heroic courage of traditional warrior societies. In traditional warrior societies (including the Greeks of Homer's Iliad assaulting the Trojans with individual heroism in a pre-phalanx era) the warrior rushes forward individually to count coup (the native American model) or seize prisoners (the Aztec model) or simply kill enemies (the Gauls and Germans against the Romans). In the Greek phalanx and the Roman legion which grew from it the primary courage is the discipline of standing fast with your fellow soldiers and refusing to break even when overwhelmingly outnumbered (thus the British at Rorke's Drift when outnumber 35 to one never thought of breaking ranks and the American soldiers in Mogadishu never dreamed of an every man for themselves approach even when outnumbered by more than 100 to one). Second, the direct action model of warfare creates a ruthlessness, a directness, and a constant search for the decisive battle, which Hanson argues, is peculiarly western. Thus in the second world war Marshall argued for the direct frontal assault on German occupied Europe as the correct search for the decisive battle. Hanson asserts that other cultures emphasize deception, maneuver, indirect conflict, setting up symbolic fights but the western model is an overwhelming direct assault aimed at achieving decisive victory as quickly as possible and assuming that short term violence actually saves lives in the long run. Hanson reasons that three other patterns have made the west increasingly dominant in warfare. First, the Greek rational approach to scientific reasoning that emphasized facts and a constant search for better answers. Second, the use of free markets and commercial activity to create production systems has simply out-produced and out-modernized competitors. Hanson notes that there are virtually no cases of westerners importing non-western military technology but endless examples of non-westerners importing western technology. Third, the pragmatic approach to problem solving from the Greek and Roman tradition means that when western militaries encounter new realities (the Aztecs, the military systems of the Japanese Navy, the Ottoman Navy) there was a speed of analysis and flexible experimentation that non-westerners could not match. Hanson uses the battles of Salamis 480 B.C. (the Greeks defeat the Persians in a naval battle), Gaugemala 331 B.C. (Alexander's Greeks destroy the Persian Empire), Cannae 216 B.C. (the Romans are annihilated and respond by raising new armies to destroy Carthage), Poitiers 732 A.D. (French landed infantry defeats Muslim cavalry), Tenochtitlan 1520-1521 (a remarkably small number of Spanish conquer Mexico and destroy the Aztec empire), Lepanto 1571 (the Christian fleets destroy the Ottoman Navy and establish western naval supremacy in the Mediterranean), Rorke's Drift 1879 (a remarkably outnumbered British force defeats a Zulu Army), Midway 1942 ( in one improbable day the Americans destroy Japanese Carrier aviation and seize the initiative in the Pacific War), and Tet 1968 (despite stunningly false press coverage the American military decisively defeats the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese by developing better tactics and superior technology) in a magisterial sweep of military history to make his case. This is a book any sophisticated student of war or any citizen concerned about the role of warfare in national survival would want to read.
Rating:
Summary: CREATIVE KILLING
Review: Mr. Hanson has come up with a very unusual and interesting book. His main thesis is that nations that have developed along "western", (i.e.-ultimately going back to the Greeks) democratic lines have the advantage, militarily, over nations that have not. He picks out 9 examples from the historical record to prove his point and, overall, he is pretty convincing. Why should western cultures have the upper-hand in confrontations with non-western cultures? According to Mr. Hanson some of the reasons are: the western warrior is highly motivated- he or she feels that one's freedom is being defended, as well as one's property, whereas the non-western warrior may only be fighting to protect a dictator or a small-group of people that are in charge; western military structure tends to be more decentralized than non-western military structure, with room for dissent and improvisation; capitalism encourages innovation and rapid change- so that western weapons are superior to the weapons produced by other cultures. The best parts of the book deal with the actual nuts-and-bolts of the battles. Mr. Hanson writes well and many sections are exciting to read, if a bit on the gory side. It is very interesting to read, especially for a novice such as myself, the strategy and tactics Hannibal used to defeat the Romans at Cannae- he had the center of his line fall back so that the Romans could advance; the Romans did not realize until too late that this was a trap and Hannibal had other infantry and cavalry waiting to attack the Roman flanks. Likewise, it was fascinating to read how Cortes was able to use sulphur from a local volcano in Mexico to make the gunpowder that he needed in his struggle against the Aztecs. There are many other equally memorable sections concerning the various battles. Where the book falls short is that when Mr. Hanson strays too far from the actual battles his writing tends to become redundant. He hammers home the same points over and over, as though he felt he was teaching a none-too-bright undergraduate class with limited attention spans- and the inability to remember something that was already mentioned five pages ago. Fortunately, before this becomes a major drawback, Mr. Hanson always gets back on track concerning one battle or another. I also wish that the last chapter, on the Tet offensive, had not been included. In all the other chapters Mr. Hanson is careful to stick to his thesis and differentiate how both sides fought. In the chapter on Tet he is clearly uninterested in how the North Vietnamese fought and with contrasting it to how the U.S. and the South Vietnamese fought. He appears to have some sort of axe to grind concerning Vietnam and he really only seems concerned with showing how the U.S. was not defeated militarily- that our troops fought bravely and just as well as in WWII, for example. I have no problem with the author's argument, it's just that this chapter clearly didn't fit in with the other chapters. Perhaps the author should write another book just dealilng with the Vietnam conflict.... These relatively small complaints aside, this is a well-written, informative, logically argued, thoughtful and thought-provoking book.
Rating: 
Summary: Name that Jingoism
Review: Victor Davis Hanson has always been a good read, and this book is no exception. However, the further he strays from his comfort zone -- classical Greek hoplite battle -- the poorer the result. Stirring accounts of a set of history's most important battles are used to illustrate the argument that the military culture of the (poorly defined) West has dominated the inferior military cultures of the rest of the world (ROW). Here the overall high quality of the writing, apart from the occasional burst of purple prose and hyperbole, cannot make up for the weaknesses of the analysis. Often Hanson resorts to chanting his theme over and over, passage by paratactic passage, battle account by battle account. The great detail lavished on the reasons for victory in a particular battle is not matched by a similar effort to provide strategic or historical context. But the battle passages are very exciting, and many an interesting point is made, regardless whether the argument holds together or not. I remain an avid reader of V.D.Hanson, but one who senses the well is going dry.
Rating:
Summary: Military culture leads to Western Dominance
Review: This book is well worth the money. The author goes into the essence of the theory (really scientific fact) of Western attitudes to fighting and the dominance of European and extra-European nations in the art of warfare. Davis goes on to describe the battle of Salamis to the Tet offensive and holds not bar. Davis isn't concerned about PC and argues that Western Culture especially the ability to criticize, responsibility, and citizensoldiers are superior to other cultures with an individual warrior culture. For example, Davis talks about the role of disciplined fighting versus the use of slave soldiers (i.e. janissaries) and individual prowess that the Ottomans used in Lepanto. Davis further argues and provides evidence that even though the Ottomans are famous for hiring renegade experts and western technology, it didn't do them any good and lead them to become the Sick Man of Europe. Davis argues and proves a scientific and freedom loving culture can overcome any religious and individualistic war culture in his book.
Rating:
Summary: The East/West Divide
Review: Classicist and Military Historian Victor Davis Hanson's most recent work *Carnage and Culture: Landmark Battles in the Rise of Western Power* (August 2001) is a must for all those interested in the ideological and military divide between East and West. Opening with the earliest accounts of conflicts between Eastern and Western military powers, Hanson describes the canyon dividing western thought from eastern ideas beginning in ancient times. Through the lens of major definitive battles, from Salamis to Tet, we view in vivid detail how the West's propensity for freedom, technology, reason, capitalism, individualism, and open decisive combat has been both contrary to the non-egalitarian values of the Eastern world, and the bane of their armies on the battlefield. Explaining that the Eastern way of war is a far cry from the "indirect warfare" of the West Hanson underscored its roots in cowardice, secrecy and deceitful diplomacy--as evident in ancient military treatises such as Sun Tzu's *The Art of War* as it is in Arrian's *Anabasis*. Yet, taking into account the individual courage of many non-Western warriors, Hanson shows that finally western discipline and cohesion conquer even the most valorous individual effort. Also examined is the way in which "the others" have often viewed the West as: too free, too obsessed with technology, too greedy. We are shown that though we may often agree with the West's critics nevertheless these very weaknesses have finally translated into the greater numbers, better weapons, tactics, training and spirit of western armies on the battlefield. And Hanson takes it a step further. He shows exactly from where, for instance, US Navy code-breakers and USN squadron dive-bombers drew their inspirationa and courage in close-run situations--perfect examples all of the triumphs of western innovation, capitalism, individualism, freedom and resolve. American dive-bombers, like US Navy code-breakers, lived to fight for their units and a country that promised freedom and prosperity once the war was won; Japanese Kamikazes lived to die in a state of near slavery on behalf of a regime that beat and psychologically abused them in a ... effort to instill in them a pseudo-western discipline. Yet, western discipline and cohesion could not be so easily imitated. It has its roots in the individual pride of free and egalitarian Greek hoplite units, was reinvented in Western Europe among Swiss pikemen and German Landsknechts, and echoed in the war cries of French revolutionary troops. Indeed,Hanson suggests, freedom is comparable to the sweets of Narnia's ice queen; once a boy has a taste of it he will give up his soul to get more--not so, Confucius teaches us, with repressive regimes. Hanson also shows how often the West's individualism has been interpreted as weakness--a path to the breakdown of social cohesion, while reason has been deemed frail in the face of religious zeal. He shows why such assumptions--advanced by pashas, priests, and wise men--have been mistakes. In reality Western values have always held the moral high ground. Thus, non-Western governments have continued to underestimate Western societies at their own expense from 480 BC to 1571 AD to 1942. Egalitarianism; freedom of speech, press and religion; a civilian controlled military, and the embracing of cultural difference have translated into military success. This work is also a timely eulogy to the Western value system--until recently often forgotten--abandoned by a society wealthy, ungrateful, and self-loathing. Correspondingly all whose intellectual nerves are now, more than ever before, shot from the the relentless attacks on American values that have oozed from academia's ivied walls since the Vietnam War will find that this current work from one the world's most respected military historians slashes through the cobwebs of our dusty minds, giving us clarity. Hanson's timely work shows that long and bitter attacks rooted in Eastern intolerance of the West's successful ideologices--from the battle cries and insults of Persian priest-kings in ancient Greece, to the trumpets calling Muslims to jihad in the Middle Ages, to the *bonsais* of Japan's suicide bombers at Midway--have a history of failure. And that our current situation is only the lastest chapter in a two thousand-year saga.
Rating:
Summary: WHY THE WEST WINS
Review: Hanson does an excellent job of explaining why the West has always managed to be victorious over Eastern cultures. His primary thesis is that our democracy, free-markets and Western rationalism have been the main-spring of our ability to defeat other civilizations throughout history.
Hanson states that the political and economic institutions of the West produce better weaponry and give our soldiers a stake in the outcome of a particular armed conflict. Other political and economic institutions, such as the theocracies in the case of the Islamic fundamentalist regimes of the Middle East, fail in comparison to the West because they do not permit the freedom required to give rise to open scientific inquiry and the dynamic economy required to produce cutting edge weaponry.
Rating:
Summary: Talk about timing!
Review: For people who are not fans of military history, like myself, you have to slog through some dull battle descriptions, but overall this book is worth the read. It is brimming with interesting ideas and on war and killing, so peaceniks will hate this book. Let's face it, if it were not for 9/11 this book would not have reached #2 on the Amazon list; talking heads would have discussed it for a few weeks and then it would have been quickly forgotten. But nonetheless the events of 9/11 make the true stories of how Europeans slaughtered armies from the east highly timely and often satisfying reading. Although Hanson goes overboard with archaic military jargon in the early chapters, the book really picks up with the horrifying acount of how Cortes conquered central Mexico with only 1600 men. Absolutely fascinating. After reading it, I thought long and hard about the characteristic Western virtues of democracy, individualism, private property and rights, and now I think we should count another "virtue" among these - brutal, violent and efficient methods of killing!
|
