January 2006

Response to Readership

You mentioned that you believe Athens fell to Sparta in part because of the leadership void after Pericles’ death. Do you see the same after Bush leaves office?

Hanson:  Only if someone like a Kerry or Gore, rather than a Lieberman, were elected, along with a sweep in the House and Senate. Then we could see a timetable withdrawal from Iraq, leading to jubilation by radicals in the Middle East and flight by liberal reformers in Lebanon and the region in general, coupled with an end to the Patriot Act, Guantanamo, and surveillance of radical terrorist groups here in the United States. One does not have to be a partisan to ask what would a President Howard Dean, Vice President Barbara Boxer, National Security Advisor Harry Reid, or Secretary of Defense Nancy Pelosi do either about a nuclear Iran or terrorist cadres here within the United States? On the other hand, I do not have the same fears about a President McCain or Romney or Lieberman.

Can you suggest some colleges and universities in the U.S. that have both a politically moderate history faculty (or a history faculty mature enough to take criticism from a student) and have an ROTC program?

Hanson: Tough question. I’m not up on which schools have banned ROTC. The great change in history faculties came in the mid-1980s when retirements of the 1960s bubble generation brought in for the next 20 years a very different sort of professor. Previously, many historians, perhaps the majority, were men and women of the Left, but they adhered to a generally held empiricism, and appreciated the pivotal role of war, politics, and the state, as well as economics. Theory was the capstone, not the rite of passage, of a scholarly career.

But the last generation of hires has too often pursued the trivial in an effort to highlight bumper-sticker issues of race/class/gender. And even the basis of inquiry — texts, material artifacts, archives, etc., — have been subverted under the blanket cop-out that all knowledge is socially constructed and thus biased, prompting the historian first to "unpack" the race/class/gender suppositions of an ancient author, or Renaissance artist, or contemporary government official who issued a decree. In theory, this could be salutary; but in fact it leads to endless theorizing and throat-clearing and, ultimately, nowhere.

Somewhere around 1970 or so, perhaps even earlier, the university was redefined not as a place to learn a method of inquiry, or facts and research protocols, but rather as podium to address perceived racial, class, and gender inequities in a hopelessly flawed larger American society. Thus biased research was not seen as prejudicial or slanted at all, but simply a needed antidote to the forces of corporate wealth, reactionary politics, and a sexist and racist populace. How odd that the tenured elite embraced the old idea that the "good" ends (creating a progressive college graduate) justified the bad means (giving only one side of an issue).

Your letter to Europe was a genuine pleasure to read. The points were compelling, and it was magnificently written. Every component of truly masterful editorial writing is in this piece, and in spades. Thank you for this piece. I shall never forget it.

Hanson: Thank you, and much appreciated. I got links about that piece sent to me by a few European blogs where the commentary and reaction were predictably furious. The same was true of some leftist commentators here in the United States.

One strange phenomenon I've noted is the over-protectiveness of American elites toward Europe: Europe's socialist and pacifist state is their model, and they have tried for 50 years to ape European positions on taxation, entitlements, foreign policy, and cultural attitudes. So to hear that the E.U. is in constitutional crisis, or an unarmed Europe is humiliated by the likes of the Iranians, or that French and German unemployment rates are nearly twice our own, or that their annual GDP growth is stagnant, or that there is ethnic rioting outside Paris — all that deeply disturbs American hyper-liberals and elites. I wish we could find a mechanism to fast-track European emigration, and allow sober-minded, educated and highly-trained Europeans to come to the U.S. easily and with incentives.

You write of "the promise of muscular democratic government that does not apologize for 2,500 years of civilization and is willing to defend it from the enemies of liberalism...." I do not see how this can come to be in Europe. In pursuit of socialist harmony, Europe has become infiltrated with Islamofascists. I do not see that Europeans (save a shrinking number of Brits) have the strength or the stomach for the defense of liberalism.

HANSON: I hope you are wrong, since otherwise we have seen the end of Europe as we know it. (I once wrote another Commentary article, this one on Europe entitled, "Goodbye, Europe.") Surely the current Iran question will be a watershed event, since the vaunted "multilateral" approach of the Europeans, fortified with cash and appeasing rhetoric, seems to have failed and there is nothing standing in the way now of a nuclear Iran except either the Israeli or the American Air Force.

And we can almost read the script to come: after utter European failure, the Euros will stealthily complain to the Americans that the situation is "intolerable." We then take the nuclear infrastructure out in a costly, messy, and controversial air campaign — only to see the Europeans attack us, lamenting our "clumsy" and "cowboyish" methods that subverted their "careful deliberations" that were just about to bear fruit. That's about what we have to look forward to, unless there is a radical change in the souls of the Europeans.

It almost now seems Alice-in-Wonderlandish that a pan-European air armada might take off from Germany and bomb the Iranians' reactors, even though Berlin and Paris, not New York or Los Angeles, are in range of existing Iranian rockets. Do you think that at some point the Europeans will sense that the jihadists actually hate them more than they do us, since the Islamicists have absolute contempt for Europe's more hedonistic lifestyle coupled with military weakness? So far, many Islamicists fear the unpredictable nature of the red-state United States between the coasts, sensing that another 9/11 might ignite a Jacksonian response that would bode ill for radical Muslims the world over.

Why is nobody facing the ticking time bomb that is Saudi Arabia? The Saudis don’t appear to be planning for the future — too many sports cars and London shopping sprees, not enough basic infrastructure. Do you think the Saudi way of life will remain sustainable in coming decades? Somehow I don't think frankincense will make a strong enough comeback to underpin the Saudi economy.

Hanson: Four years ago, I wrote an article for Commentary called "The Saudis, Our Enemies" that voiced some of your themes. I would say that they have reserves for about 50 years, and, given the pricing index, would expect that each year each barrel in the ground goes up in price. So they have some leeway. Nevertheless, the present system of 7,000 cousins running a country of more than 25 million, with one of the highest birthrates in the world, and with several hundred billion privately invested overseas, is unsustainable. More worrisome still is the crackpot education system, and its state-subsidized graduates of religious schools and departments who have worthless degrees in Islamic studies and related studies, with enough education to spew conspiracy theories but not enough to craft a modern sophisticated and technological society.

Right now we are dealing with two unstable strains in Saudi power-brokerage — a vast Islamicist bureaucracy whose petro-fed Wahhabism hates Western liberalism and seeks to destroy it, and a corrupt Westernized royal elite, who unfortunately, given their own illegitimacy and lack of popular support, both pay bribe money to the clerics and often resent their own sense of inferiority after living in the West, as they become attracted to a lifestyle and freedom that they also feel is foreign and decadent.

A final factor is the thousands of Western traders, investors, and arms merchants — many of them former government officials — chasing recycled petrodollars, who become hysterical at any hint that we might carefully reexamine our current ties with the Kingdom, and so castigate any critic as naïve or worse.

I saw your statement about Patton's not having understood that one of the modern expectations of a leader is to confine his public rhetoric to affirmations of consensus opinion. I hadn't previously considered this an expectation of leadership, but it intrigues me. Do you think that a leader might be more effective by acknowledging the current consensus before making his bold statements and moving off in his particular direction? I suppose Patton himself just didn't see much use in being diplomatic ("covering his flanks" rhetorically).

Hanson: Yes, I do, and let me give an example: had the Bush Administration carefully explained the historical plight of the Kurds and Shiites in Iraq, and given the public some appreciation of the radical upheaval that America was engaged in, and its idealistic help for the previously helpless, I think we could have better withstood the setbacks and weathered the "no blood for oil" slurs. I would have said in March 2003 that it was no easy task to go 7,000 miles distant, without the element of surprise, and then invade from a single small launching point, in an effort to remove Saddam Hussein in a region bordered by Syria, Iran, and Saudi Arabia.

Patton did not quite fathom the nature of Eisenhower's public relations problems, so had he prefaced his bold proposals with something like, "Well, Ike, I know this is radical and not easy for you to support given your responsibilities, but nevertheless" he might have had more success. (In fact, on the few occasions he did just that, he found results, since he was often a thoughtful and deeply sensitive student of history and character.) Read Pericles' "Funeral Oration" or the "Gettysburg Address" to learn how great rhetoricians begin by lowering public expectations, by either suggesting that Pericles does not really enjoy trying to praise the dead whose reputations are well beyond his mere ability to do so, or that the Civil War dead by their very sacrifice have transcended the need for mere words of consecration — and then, of course, words follow that are intended to do precisely what the speaker feared was impossible. Thus the listener, instead of deriding the audacity of the orator, instead sympathizes with his impossible task.

It has been suggested that the lack of troops was a politically motivated decision from the President’s office (despite Bush’s statement that “whatever the generals want they will get”) even accusing Generals Casey and Petratis of making decisions that included their future career advancement.  None of his logic makes sense to me. President Bush took a huge political gamble in even going to war in Iraq and the accused generals don’t strike me as career guided.  But I can’t seem to come up with a reason why we didn’t attack in the Euphrates valley and clear-and-hold sooner than August of this year!  Can you shed any strategic light on this?

Hanson: There were a number of constraints, some realistic, some political and self-imposed. The first was public opinion which, after the lootings, and especially post-Abu Ghraib, fell below 50% support for the war. Apparently the administration felt that expansion and escalation would be politically suicidal before the November 2004 election — note the second siege of Fallujah following the reelection of President Bush. Years ago, Donald Kagan and Fred Kagan made the convincing argument that another Gulf War I would be impossible to sustain, given American commitments elsewhere and the massive Clinton military cuts of the 1990s.  Thus the Department of Defense did not wish to tie down 300,000 troops with problems with Iran, North Korea, the Balkans, and who knows what else.

In addition, Vietnam taught us that 500,000 American troops made the country no more secure than 100,00 with air power, so we wished to fight the war more like Vietnam circa 1971-3 than 1965-8. All that being said, I think the war cannot be won entirely in Iraq, though it surely can be lost there. Ultimately, the governments in Syria and Iran will have to go or change, given their support for terrorists and promises to do far worse. And to be frank, if Iraq stabilizes, and I think it will, historians will look back and reevaluate our efforts and deem that the removal of Saddam in three weeks, and a democracy functioning in his place three years later were phenomenal achievements, despite the tragic loss of 2100+ American fatalities.

I'm glad you point to Pakistan , Saudi Arabia , Iran , and Syria as the four propagators of Islamic terrorism. It's disheartening to hear realists, and to a lesser degree, the Bush Administration, essentially give Pakistan and Saudi Arabia a pass on their acquiescence to terrorism. While there is a strategic necessity to maintain a relationship with these two nations, I believe that the message America should be sending to these nations is that we are only tolerating your policies because, for the time being, we have to. Do you agree?

Hanson: In theory, I agree entirely. Here's the problem: Pakistan is nuclear and central to shutting down the badland sanctuaries of al Qaeda; Saudi Arabia controls one-fourth of the world’s oil reserves and is de facto protected by Chinese, Indian, and European demands for its petroleum. So our present policy is starting to emerge as jawboning the Saudi royal family and Musharraf to embrace democratic reform, but not radically so to the point of actively pushing them into the camp of the jihadists. We also must remember that these landscapes are not Lebanon ; there are simply very few pro-Western interests in either country. I have been very critical of past realist policy that protects both governments, but should confess that such bleachers’ wisdom is predicated on not being responsible for hunting down terrorists along the Pakistani border, keeping India and Pakistan from blowing each other up, and not having the royal family be replaced by the Muslim Brotherhood.

In reading Livy's history of early Rome I find that the republican revolution — the expulsion of the Tarquins and establishment of republican government — occurred at almost exactly the same time as the institution of radical democracy at Athens under Cleisthenes. Was this mere coincidence? Or was there a political crosscurrent between the two regions?

Hanson: There seems to have been no real cross-fertilization, at least to the degree that might explain both phenomena as contemporary. And they were different in nature: the Athenians were crafting the foundations of direct democracy, the Romans slowly gravitating toward what would become republicanism. A better example might be the latter 4^th century B.C., when the Western city-states and those in Sicily came into more direct contact with Rome, and many of the institutions of the polis were adopted by the Romans. And, of course, there is the irony as well: the older consensual governments of Greece lost their autonomy and soon their freedom during the Hellenistic Age ushered in by Philip and Alexander at precisely the same time Rome was expanding the nature of governments and creating broader institutions to widen participation in government.

With the decline of traditional education, do you foresee a debellicization of the West? Aside from David Horowitz's efforts to enact an academic “bill of rights,” what do you suggest to reform the teaching of the liberal arts? 

Plato and Aristotle must be rolling in their graves when bright intellectuals who seek truth from the preponderance of historical evidence and the use of reason are slighted by universities in favor of simpletons with ideological blinders and psychological disorders. The unholy trinity of Marx, Freud, and Darwin with their single-bullet theories have ruined a generation of thinkers and students.

Hanson: War is like rust — it never sleeps — until the nature of man himself is altered, or the globe is democratized to the extent that all natural disagreements are adjudicated openly and transparently between consensual societies. But I see little of that happening in the immediate future, so the lesson from the past is that military preparedness and deterrence alone keeps the peace from being ruined by autocrats and totalitarians. Of course, all that is blasphemy for the new creed of Conflict Resolution Theory that assumes both parties to a dispute are always products of the Enlightenment.

I have harped on the elimination of tenure. For all the dangers inherent in such a step, replacing tenure with 5- or 10- year contracts that outlined expectations and obligations would do wonders for the university. Tenure did not bring us eccentricity or moral integrity, but a weird groupspeak where academics try to outdo each other in expressions of disdain, open and insidious, for mainstream American values, a sort of Medieval Church cult of head-nodders who believe in little other than maintaining the status quo. Most academic senate votes that venture into state or national policy are so lopsided that they resemble the old plebiscites of the Communist world where 95% majorities were common. So there is enormous pressure today on young academics: tenure requires either silence or public displays of political correctness; publication in peer-reviewed journals must be free of any taint of conservatism; promotion requires avoidance of controversy and can be expedited by occasional proof of sensitivity to the race/class/gender holy trinity.

If academics knew that their productivity and teaching were tied to performance, and that no one earned a lifetime billet, then we would see a more fluid, active, and less calcified academic community. Too much emphasis is placed on narrow publication, especially in the humanities that often comes at the expense of undergraduate teaching. The university is too isolated from the community and its accompanying economic and political realities. So now we have the present Orwellian situation: the children of the middle and upper classes often go through a rite of passage at private liberal arts colleges and public state universities, where their accustomed beliefs about religion, sex, parentage, politics, and culture are under constant assault by a permanent class of highly educated and partisan censors enjoying good pay and tenure (6-12 hours a week in class; summers off from teaching; 30-some weeks a year subject to instruction; no worry about firing; no accountability after the 6th year) who trash the very system that has enriched them — all this imbues the students, who then return to the real world where they must make money to survive and gradually unlearn all the unreality they were indoctrinated with. This is a blanket condemnation, and, of course, does not apply to the thousands of scholars who daily teach well, do not proselytize, and produce great works of scholarship, but it is nonetheless a true enough generalization of the tragedy of the last 40 years.

Your disdain for Spartan culture is evident in your literature. Are there any aspects of Spartan culture that you find either redeeming or superior to other cultures?

Hanson: The problem with Spartan culture, in contemporary rather than modern eyes, was that its system of absolute equality (cf., "The Similars [homoioi]") was predicated on a complex and ultimately unworkable system of hierarchy—nothoi, helots, half-helots, perioikoi, etc. — that made modern apartheid look simple. And while the constitution was admirable and the system checked the abuse of power — a judicial-like ephorate, a legislative Gerousia and Assembly, and executive dual monarchy — so many were left outside the system that it inevitably ossified and collapsed by the mid-fourth century. Depopulation and property accumulation were constant problems, as was the failure to monetize the economy or deal with the long tenure abroad of its elites once Spartan assumed a trans-Aegean presence. The entire notion of the Spartan mystique was based on the subjugation of 200,000-plus helot Messenians, a system even more disturbing than the Greeks' own chattel slavery. The army was superb, but grew out of a sort of SWAT team designed to maintain internal order in Messenia with very few troops.

I think Paul Cartledge pointed out the inconsistencies well in his book on Agesilaos. Yet, after saying all this, the image that we all retain is that of Thermopylae where the 300 die for freedom of the Greeks (what we would call autonomy) and the rule of law (the nomoi that all Spartans adhere to). To Aeschylus, Spartan glory was epitomized as "the Dorian Spear" that broke the Mede at Plataia in the glory days of pan-Hellenic resistance to Xerxes. So I think we all have mixed views of Sparta, and are often somewhat taken back by our own irrepressible and intrinsic admiration of Spartan courage and loyalty to the state.

If the direst population projections for France (and Western Europe in general) hold true, and France becomes an "Islamic” nation, shouldn't we be concerned about the French nuclear plants (fissionable materials) and Polaris subs ending up in the hands of extremists? 

Hanson: Another excellent question, since a de facto neutral like France insidiously could become even more anti-American as it caves to demographic realities. But for your nightmarish scenario to evolve, we would have to assume that millions (and there are millions) of brave and patriotic Frenchmen would simply walk away from the legacy of Verdun and the 1944 insurgent efforts against the Nazis. I have to believe that there are many French who simply won’t do this, no matter how politically stupid and corrupt their leadership becomes. I cannot believe that there will be an Arabic script on the Ossuary at Verdun or that Versailles will fly the Crescent Moon.

I wonder if you believe President Bush can resurrect his approval ratings, and how he might do so? In my mind, the deposing of Saddam Hussein and the restoration of "constitutional law" in the Supreme Court are major accomplishments. But I worry about the prospects for conservative candidates in coming elections without a Bush rebound.

Hanson: Yes, he is recovering, and because of his steadfastness on Iraq and the nobility of our cause, he will do even better in the future. We cannot yet appreciate the immensity of the achievement in Afghanistan, Iraq, and the neighboring countries, but we soon will, especially if we avoid another 9/11. I wrote about why the president needed to go on the offensive in a November column called “Crossing the Rubicon” — hit back at critics, go for broke in pressing his agenda, outline the vast gulf on national security between the administration and its Democratic critics.

I think the Democrats won’t do well at the national level as long as the public mostly sees John Kerry, Barbara Boxer, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and Howard Dean pooh-pooh our steps to gain an edge over the terrorists. Somewhere a Republican strategist infiltrated the Democratic Party and chose Howard Dean as its chairman and Reid/Boxer/Pelosi/Kerry as its televised megaphones.

Do you hold much hope for our future?

Do you think there is worth in historical novels, i.e., fictional accounts or dramatizations of historical events? I have in mind a book such as Michael Shaara's The Killer Angels. Obviously, there is no way for any historian to know the intimate thoughts of any particular historical individual, but still, I wonder what you think of the use of fiction in writing about historical events?

Hanson: If done well, it can be captivating, as you note about The Killer Angels. The genre requires both scholarship and literary ability and the two are not synonymous. I hope to finish a novel about the freedom of the helots, No Man A Slave, sometime this summer. Dialogue, accent, diction, ancient custom and practice all pose obstacles; many such works read like Walter Scott’s and those that don’t often appear instead in Simpsons-like vernacular. So I have developed great respect for authors like Shaara who pulled it off.

I was watching Fox News a few months back and heard a military analyst opine about a work called "Unrestricted Warfare," apparently written by two Chinese military officers. It is a rather scary work—inasmuch as it outlines their plans for world domination. I assume that you have read it. What are your thoughts?

Hanson: I have read excerpts from Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui, and find their views very sheltered and mostly naïve about the U.S. military, which they vastly underrate — in itself a scary proposition since deterrence is largely what keeps the Chinese away from Taiwan and Japan. The value, of course, of their work is their candor about Chinese ruthlessness, and how little they care about what the U.N. or the Europeans might think. That confrontation is about 20 years away, but at some point the United States will find itself locked in conflict with China, and we can only hope that the rivalry works out peacefully — possible if China democratizes, impossible if it does not.

What is your favorite historical movie and why?

Hanson: I have several about war. Patton, of course. The movie is actually fairly accurate and follows the Ladislas Farago biography in most details. I loved Breaker Morant, about the scapegoating of Aussie troops in the Boer War, as well as Gallipoli and Twelve O’clock High. In some ways, the most successful military history movie was Das Boot, poignant and real, with great acting.

I am familiar with your works The Western Way of War, Wars of the Greeks, Ripples of Battle, and Carnage and Culture and recommend them to my students. But I have a vague memory of an article of yours defining Western culture and explaining why it differs from Oriental, Muslim, or tribal culture and suggesting why multiculturalism is not a very wise postulation. Have you written on the uniqueness of Western culture?

Hanson: Yes, I wrote a book with John Heath called Who Killer Homer? about the death of classics, and why we must study Western Culture. In it we discussed the uniqueness of the West, and lamented the inability or unwillingness of academics to appreciate what had enriched us all — never more evident after September 11. In addition, a collection of essays in Bonfire of the Humanities, with Bruce Thornton and John Heath, dealt with multiculturalism, postmodernism, moral equivalence, and the general recent plague of theory and its deleterious effects upon traditional education.

Do you think that the romanticized vision of WWII, with its clear enemies, along with the divisive and hated war in Vietnam, have created a culture that compares every war to these two conflicts?

Hanson: You make an excellent point. In some ways, American mistakes were just as great in World War II as in Vietnam. The latter’s challenges of a limited war, nuclear Chinese and Russians in the neighborhood, and the need to foster and protect a government before hostilities were over were more complex than those in World War II. The comparison looms because we won decisively in World War II against all odds and lost the Vietnam War at the zenith of our strength, largely due to a divided public at home.

All that being said, most have no clue about the sort of rioting and suspension of habeas corpus in the Civil War, the lapses and naiveté of American involvement in World War I, or the unpopularity of Truman who by 1952 left office with a 25% approval rating. Given past wars, I think we are doing pretty well in Iraq, and that the acrimony at home, while depressing, is not nearly as great as 1864 or 1968.

Though I support the war, I felt disheartened by James Fallows’ recent article in the Atlantic about how the Bush Administration isn't taking the war seriously. What’s your opinion on that?

But the fact remains that Saddam and Mullah Omar are gone; democracies press ahead in their place; Lebanon, Libya, Egypt, and the Gulf are facing a new world where reform, not cynical realism, is in the air. The president committed billions in aid to Iraq and a substantial chunk of our military. He is demonized daily for that, and magazines like the Atlantic, Harpers, the New Yorker, and others routinely publish “You should have done this” exposés by supposedly brilliant reporters.

Meanwhile, we are left with the truth: no attacks at home since 9/11, a Middle East in democratic fervor, tyrants gone, and al Qaeda less popular than in 2001. So I’ll take the long view and await the Atlantic essay in 2008 about how the present efforts were mostly wise all along.