An Interview With Victor Davis Hanson

By Daniel Linsalata | Friday, February 11, 2005

The Dartmouth Review: How do you feel that your background in classicism and military history influences your work as a political commentator? And conversely, what impact has your work in current politics had on how you look at history?

— Victor Davis Hanson. —

Victor Davis Hanson: I think anybody who studies classics develops a tragic view that seems to be thematic in Homer and other classical authors, in that the nature of mankind remains constant; it's not malleable. And therefore certain things tend to happen, such as wars, peace, and these primordial emotions such as pride, fear, anger. And when you have that constantly embedded in the literature that you study most of your life and you look at the present, you are not shocked at somebody like Saddam Hussein. You are not shocked at military action; you are not shocked at pre-emption. These all have historical precedents.

You get a sense of humility that we all age, we all die. There's not going to be a new man created. Technology is not going to change the nature of our brain. So, in that sense, when I look at the present world, I take a deep breath before I write something and I try to ask myself, "Has this happened before in some other form?"

As far as the ancient world... I think it has been very good, I just finished a book, it's coming out in August, about the Peloponnesian war. And it has made me think that the ancients were not just rural...I had written a lot that they were primarily rural people—local, parochial. But I think that their leaders had a lot more appreciation for the issues that we deal with, between the city-states. For instance: alliances, multilateralism, unilateralism, confederations. It's made me think of the ancient world in a primarily political sense, and I have usually been an economic, agrarian, and military historian. I had never looked at the ancient world, in the nineteenth-century sense, as being political.

TDR: For the people who may not have read your book, Carnage and Culture, can you, in the context of the ideas you put forth in the book, give your view of why American and European forces have been able to twice defeat the Iraqi army, in less than one month combined?

VDH: The West has a flexibility because it's a free society. It has constants: a free press, critique, civilian input. And it reacts very rapidly to changes on the battlefield, whereas the Iraqi army, or non-Western armies, solidify; they're ranked and hierarchical. People are afraid to talk to their officers. There's no public discussion or dissent.

The West brings to the battlefield all the fruits of Western rationalism: that beauty of explaining the world according to reason. That also results in a very sophisticated technology, the world's best military technology. And, its open markets create goods and services, supplies. It's very funny to watch the war; Americans have more bottled water than the Iraqi Army, and they have to bring it from seven thousand miles away. But that's what you'd expect from a fully capitalist system.

And things like organization and discipline. The West has a greater tendency to decentralize and allow people work within groups. Civic militarism: they define courage not by martial prowess or individual kills or tribal notions of manhood, but a state of mind of following orders—advancing and retreating on command. When you focus on the battlefield, all that plays a role that can trump weather, or a Hannibal, a Hitler, any of these things. Even though Hitler in some ways is a bastardized form of the West.

TDR: What's been the most common criticism of your book?

VDH: I think three.

One is what I would call the "geographical determinists." Those are people like Jared Diamond who believe that Western supremacy is explicable in terms of an accident—favorable iron ore deposits, or Europe's central location, rather than a culture.

There's another group who I would call the "politically correct" who believe that, even though I wasn't trying to triumph Western military prowess, just explain and account for it, they felt that the book should have had a moral element to it, saying, "Isn't this terrible that the US or Europe or Spain can kill people?"

And a third is what I would call "third-worldism." It tries to magnify the people who say, "Well didn't Xerxes get to Greece, or didn't the Moors get up to Spain, or didn't the Mongols come into Europe in the sixteenth century?" So I think there's a tendency to look at exceptions—people will look at exceptions to try to invalidate a generalized truth: that there's no explanation for the small population of Europe exercising global military influence like they in China, in India, in Mexico. So those are the three camps.

TDR: You also comment on a historical patter of "Other" cultures and societies adopting military technology of the West, primarily because it's proven to be superior. Oftentimes these Others will make improvements upon Western technology or even utilize barbaric weapons that Western Civilization would never consider using. I'm thinking of Saddam gassing the Kurds, and other modern-day terrorists and tyrants. Even with these apparent technological advantages, why do these Others still lose repeatedly to the West?

VDH: There's been this attraction that people like Hannibal, all the way to Saddam or the Japanese militarists, can cherry-pick Western military paradigm; take their technology through the Ottomans and try to replicate the arsenal at Venice, at Istanbul. Westerners stole gunpowder from the Chinese, improved it, and the Chinese wanted to import back Western weapons that they would never think of. So there was this idea that you can take Western technology and weaponry and improve on the Western military paradigm without the more burdensome cargo of elections, freedom, self-review, rationalism.

I think it only gave people like the Japanese militarists or the Ottomans a veneer of parity, and they were never quite able to beat the Europeans or Western democracies or, in the ancient world, Greece and Rome, even though they think they could combine the best of both conditions: authoritarianism, tribalism, martial virtue, reactionary racialism, versus the decadent and soft West.

Once they get the weapons from them, it doesn't seem to work to well. In the short run, somebody like Admiral Yamamoto of the Japanese fleet, or what the Japanese did to the Russians in 1905 was pretty impressive, but I don't think they could sustain that. We'll see: China thinks they can, Saddam thought he could. But usually it turns out there's more to war than weapons.

TDR: While some of the Other cultures appear to be more outwardly violent, or primitive in a tribal sense, Western Civilization has turned violence and war into a science. Do you think this extensive history of military success is indicative in some ways that Western Civilization is less civilized and more barbaric?

VDH: It's hard to know because the West has two things, two elements, that make it very destructive. One is the rationalist tradition leads to a technological superiority whose ultimate logic is the atomic bomb. Second, it tends to be more consensual.

So when America goes to war and people believe that Franklin Roosevelt represents a majority of the people, and he has authorized Curtis LeMay to burn down Japan, there's nobody to object to it. The final arbiters are always the people. When Athens decides to destroy Mylos, the people, meaning the Assembly, authorized that to happen. Whereas if you're a dictator, like Galtieri, and you take the Falklands and then you lose, then people can say, "He did it, not us." What this means is that there's an ultimate blank-check in democratic war-making, because it represents the consensuality of the people. What Grant did in Virginia and what Sherman did in Georgia were pretty tough, but they had the full backing of the people, who wanted that to happen. So they're legitimate. Western war-making has a greater degree of legitimacy.

TDR: Quoting from Carnage and Culture, you assert, "Western capitalists and scientists alike... have little to fear from religious fundamentalists, state censors, or stern cultural conservatives." Lack of fear of these factors has lead to both military and social innovation. Looking ahead towards the progress in Iraq and its redevelopment, people in Islamic countries all have much to fear from these factors. Why do you believe the installation of democracy and other Western institutions is feasible in Iraq and other countries with a long history of socially-oppressive rulers and cultures?

— Dr. Hanson and Professor Allan Stam. —

VDH: We're going to find out in our lifetime if it is. In the specific case in Iraq, I think there are two or three things to consider. First, there doesn't seem to be anything antithetical between Islam and democracy. Look at Malaysia or Indonesia or Turkey, a fourth of India. The key is, Is the Arab Islamic world compatible with democracy? We do not what the answer is. Empirically, it may be "yes," because there has not been a democracy...Look at all of the things that have transpired, that the Arab world has gone through after the colonial period: Pan-Arabism, Nassirism, Ba'athism, socialism, fascism. They have tried it all; none of it has worked.

So what I am saying is, nobody in Washington said, "Let's go democratize the Middle East." It was more like, after 9/11, there is something pathologically wrong with this. They have tried everything else, from realpolitik, to pump oil to keep out communists, to the Shahs. It may be democracy has some advantages. Because even though it does not have a history there, they are able bring it in to mend the pathology. The so-called "Arab Street" blames everybody for their own self-inflicted problems and are encouraged by the state-run media, sort of a Satanic bargain with the Islamists. That adds up to everything from paying suicide bounties for bombers going to Israel, to gassing the Kurds—so this idea was holistic. And we said, "We are going to end this. We are not going to have twenty-five more years of killing by Arabs, blaming us, blaming Israel. Let's just stop it, and start something."

Maybe, just maybe, what we have seen from Pakistan, with the revelations about the bomb, Libya's coming clean, the Saudis claiming they're going to have some liberalization, the elections in Afghanistan... maybe we are starting to see the beginning of a reverse domino effect. The Cold War saw fears that evil would spread; maybe this is a hope that good will turn into more good. With a reverse domino effect, it is not based on such pessimism, but optimism.

TDR: What do you see the role of Western education in the development of superior militaries as being? What specific advantages does it create, or what type of positive characteristics does it nurture?

VDH: There is a concept that we in the West keep enshrining, called "civic militarism." It is very different than other cultures. We do not believe in the cult of the male, or the cult of the warrior. Aristotle observed the Greeks of the city-state did not put heads on their belt, or they did not have kills marked, or they did not military castes like the Carthaginians and the Spaniards.

So military operations have always been within the fabric of civilian society. An elected government or a central parliament has a political aim and may grant citizens the vote to achieve an end. To further that political aim, they also use audit and censure and observations, so it is very different. It means in military training and practice, we enforce our civic education. We do not have, for example, generals with sunglasses on in our government. Citizens do not like to walk around and see people with machine guns. When we did have a draft, people were paid pretty well. We do not have executives who conscript millions of people and pay them two dollars a month. So I guess the answer is, civilian education is wrapped up in military training and they reinforce one another. It is a wonderful thing to see how the military takes people of different classes and races, and tries to inculcate them with American civic virtue.

TDR: Do you believe that the West will be able to continue its military dominance if it continues down this road that it has of late; that is, often dismissing the teaching of classics and Western thought and traditions in favor of multicultural studies?

VDH: No. There is this tendency in the West not to fear failure, but success... especially in the leisure classes. There tends to be this cynicism, nihilism, skepticism; we have seen it in the upper moneyed class for centuries. We see it in the French court, we see it after World War One in England, we see it now. It is almost as if we have failed to teach our young people why the lights go on, why have a banking system, why the water is not polluted, why we have a modicum of free time and free expression; to not understand it, that is not a natural position to man. It is only because of our hard work and Western values.

TDR: Shortly after September 11th, you noted that Republican patriotic zeal and Democratic dissent often leads to a beneficial middle ground. However, do you envision the type of virulent opposition, which is often more emotional than rational, such as that we have seen to the Iraq war, becoming a hindrance to American military success?

VDH: Yes, it does at a point. Where I part company with the opposition to the war—if it is the policy of the United States government, and it has been ratified through democratic auspices to go to war, then you support it. You keep tactics or conduct in war within parameters. But in wartime those parameters become narrower... you do not want to do certain things.

I'll give you an example. When you have Americans getting blown up in the Sunni Triangle when they are trying to promote elections, then it does not do any good for the country to have someone like Michael Moore romanticize the insurgents as minutemen. Minutemen. He said they are patriots. That has a corrosive effect on world opinion and opinion back home, where people who are half-educated will hear that or watch the movie, and will say to themselves, "Why are we trying to kill minutemen?" So it emboldens people to go a little bit further in their dissidence and expression of opinion. Everybody has a personal responsibility, in a time of war—and we are at war—to curb what they say and define their disagreements within the parameters of good manners and taste.

TDR: On the other side of that same coin, can the tendency for some right-wingers to want to jump the gun into war hinder success?

VDH: Well, there are two types of right-wingers.

There are some that we would call "paleo-conservative isolationists." They were not for Iraq, they were not for Afghanistan. They were virulent in their criticism of Bill Clinton's decision to bomb Belgrade. It is the old, pre- World War Two, isolationist, Charles Lindbergh right. Their point simply is that we do not want to spend American blood and treasure on people who are not worth it.

And then we have the "jingoistic right"—the militaristic right who want to flex our muscles. I am worried about them. I am not sure they can be criticized for it. I do not think there is an immediate military solution in Iran. I would like to wait another year or two and see if we can empower, subsidize, or galvanize dissidents. We cannot just go in and bomb.

TDR: As someone who has made a career studying military conflicts between conflicts between cultures, what are some of the aspects of the war on terror that have been most frustrating to you? That is, what has caused you to sit back, shake your head and say, "These guys just don't get it. Have they not learned anything from the past?"

VDH: I cannot think of any war that was self-described as a war against a method. Pompei fought pirates, but they were Phoenician pirates. We are not fighting Columbian narcos, we are not fighting the I.R.A., we are not fighting Basques. We do not like them, and that is fine, but we are not at war with them. We are at war with Islamic fascists who have taken religion to the nth degree and who are trying to whip up popular support from cheap, easy attacks on the West.

TDR: Last month, you wrote in the National Review that Americans on both ends of the political spectrum seem to be growing "world-weary," and perhaps would just as soon disengage themselves from the affairs of the rest of the world. Undeniably, the world at large, either informally or embodied in the U.N., N.A.T.O., and the like, would be essentially powerless without the United States. To what extent does America, from our perspective, really need to be involved with the rest of the world? Do you see any danger in this disenchantedness with playing sheriff for the world?

VDH: I do. I call that the "disenchanted American." I talked to so many people from so many different walks of life, whom I have debated and argued with, and they all wanted to disengage. Americans are human. When they turn on the television, they see the billions of dollars.

TDR: Looking beyond Iraq, which, by most indications, will be another Western victory, can you construe any significant conflicts in which the West would be at a disadvantage? Or simply, what hypothetical war would scare you the most?

VDH: The hypothetical war that scares me the most is a war with China. Logistically, it would be in the Chinese favor. It would be in Asia, not here. They have three times the population that we do. Most importantly, they are becoming extremely parasitical from the West in terms of military technology. And not just buying it and altering it, but having a whole cadre of engineers, physicists, mechanical and electrical designers who have come back from America, and they are operating as if they are in a Western country, but under government control. What that means is, you combine that with a capitalist economy, for a brief period, you are going to see Chinese soldiers using weaponry that is not that much different than ours. It will not be as good, but it will not be that much different.

And in this new instant nuclear age, you do not have a lot of time to recover and bring your full array of advantages into the war. For example, if tomorrow they decided to send six ballistic missiles over the top of Taiwan and said, "You have twenty-four hours to dismantle your parliament, and we are absorbing you into the mainland," I do not know how the United States would react to that. It is very scary.

If John Kerry were elected President, I would imagine that the Chinese, in this unstable world, might use it as an opportunity to see where and when he would cave. If he is going to cave on Iraq, he might cave on Taiwan. If he caves on Taiwan, he might cave on Israel. If he caves on Israel, he might cave on Afghanistan. All of these things are based on perceptions, so it is very important for the United States to be perceived as having not power, but overwhelming power, and not predictable in the way it would use it. That is why George Bush does a good job; nobody in the world knows quite what he will do, and they are not eager to test that.

An Interview With Victor Davis Hanson

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