January 3, 2006
EITHER WAY, WE WIN:
Victor Davis Hanson goes to the seashore (Spengler, 1/04/06, Asia Times)
John Maynard Keynes famously observed that the most practical man of business may be the slave of a defunct economist. One might add that the most pragmatic Texan, the former baseball-franchise owner George W Bush, might be the slave of a defunct political scientist. In the minds of democracy fanciers, Athens still represents the foundation stone of Western civilization, the model for the United States' founding and, by extension, the solution to the problems of today's Middle East.Hanson's history of the Peloponnesian War appeared last autumn. It contains exhaustive description of the mechanics of killing in ancient warfare. For those who fancy that sort of thing, like me, it is a good read. Ancient warfare is Hanson's discipline, and in this field he has no peers. Because I like this side of Hanson's work I had planned to let pass his outrages upon historical interpretation. Then I read yet another of his awful panegyrics to Middle East democracy, and rented Never on Sunday.
The trouble is that things did not turn out for Athens the way Hanson would have wanted them to. As he told an interviewer, "The war pitted two antithetical systems - cosmopolitan, democratic, Ionic and maritime Athens at its great age versus parochial, oligarchic, Dorian and landlocked Sparta - and thus became a sort of referendum on the contrasting two systems." The trouble is that Athenian democracy committed suicide during the 27-year-long war with Sparta.
Back in the 60s and 70s we were confidently taught that Nazism and Communism had tremendous advantages when they went to war with us because democracy is so inefficient as to hinder our war-making capacity, whereas totalitarianism was ruthlessly efficient. You still hear that kind of nonsense occassionally from folks who feel compelled to puff up Hitler and Stalin into credible foes, but events put paid to the argument long ago. There's just no chance that we could lose a war to anybody, our capitalist economy having created an incredible panoply of weapons, our volunteer armed services being the most professional and motivated in history, and our national self-righteousness giving our leadership carte blanche to wage war as murderously as necessary should we suffer any serious casualties or setbacks at any point.
Of course, even if the notion that democracies are less capable of waging war effectively were true, then democratizing the Middle East is just as insidious and slyly-destructive as democratizing Europe was.
Posted by Orrin Judd at January 3, 2006 12:04 AMThe book is terrific.
If Spengler had actually read the book more carefully, he would have noted that the Spartans had actually "lost" the war, at least in Athen's terms with the Nicaean Peace.
The disaster in Syracuse was a direct result of the ascent of mob rule and the discrediting of Alciabiades, who then treasonsly advised the Spartans on the strategy needed to win the Ionian phase of the war.
Even then Sparta would not have won without the help of the Persians. (And they almost lost even with their help.)
The actual lesson of the Peloponnesian War is that a virtuous democracy is almost unstoppable in warfare. Only internal corruption and self doubt can defeat it. Sound Familiar?
Posted by: Earl Sutherland at January 3, 2006 9:58 AMSpengler didn't say democracies were ineffective at waging war, he said they were too prone to do it. Thus, democratizing the Middle East isn't a sure road to peace. And it's a distraction from the more urgent task of overthrowing terror-sponsoring, nuclear-bomb-building dictatorships. So he objects to Bush policy on prudential grounds, the upside is limited and the downside too great he thinks.
I disagree and think Bush is doing well, as long as he continues to act. What Spengler misses is the political calculus. The U.S. needed democracy to get the Muslim masses on our side and to win domestic and international political support for future campaigns.
Posted by: pj at January 3, 2006 10:21 AMoj makes a very good point about the ability of capitalistic societies to wage war. A point that is proven in John Ellis' book, "Brute Force." Our industrial capacity makes us nearly unbeatable.
Posted by: Bartman at January 3, 2006 11:10 AMpj:
The trouble is that Athenian democracy committed suicide during the 27-year-long war with Sparta.
Is not actually much trouble.
Posted by: oj at January 3, 2006 11:35 AMDemocracies became unbeatable in conventional war with the invention of radio. Radio made it possible for information to be sent up the chain of command. But the troops in non-democratic societies never learned to tell the truth to their superiors, quite the opposite. So radio can only be effectively exploited by democracies.
For example, in one of the Arab-Israeli wars, the Israelis broke the Syrian tactical code. But this turned out to be useless. Syrian units would always report their position as being wherever the plan said they were supposed to be, and would get orders based on that information. None of this had anything to do with reality.