Hanson's Unique War

By Michael C. Russell | Monday, January 9, 2006

BOOK REVIEW

A War Like No Other
Victor Davis Hanson
Random House, 2005

Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War is in many ways the first modern historical account of war. Devoid of the mythology of Herodotus' The Histories or Homer's The Iliad, Thucydides details the battles, the intrigue and the political repercussions of a war that spanned over twenty-seven years and brought an end to Athenian Greece. Thanks to ithe historical importance of not just Greece and the war themselves, but the objectivity with which the Peloponnesian War was written, Thucydides has been critiqued and discussed by historians for millennia.

The popularity of the Peloponnesian War derives from what can be seen as one of the first wars of ideology. Athens served as the Greek capital and was marked by its ideals of democracy, culture and expansionism in ways that Hanson shows to be eerily similar to the United States. Diametrically opposed to this democracy and progressivism was oligarchic Sparta, a city-state with a population of over one hundred thousand, but a citizenry of less than eight thousand, whose primary duty was to be a police force which maintained rigid order. Following the Greek victory against Persia, these two former allies found themselves drifting apart as Athens created her overseas empire and Sparta found herself increasingly marginalized in commercial Greek society.

Hanson's A War Like No Other serves not as a translation of Thucydides or as a history of the Peloponnesian War, rather it is a companion piece to Thucydides' work that explores the methods in which the war was fought. Through careful analysis of the battles and the methods of combat, Hanson provides insight into why actions were taken and what implications they had for the warring city-states. General patterns begin to emerge as different, and seemingly disparate, battles are juxtaposed in the topical chapters, revealing a war that became one of the first modern conflicts.

Its modernity resulted not from smart-bombs, depleted uranium shells or tanks, but from the tactics used by the protagonists. Traditional Greek war consisted of pitched Hoplite battles, which consisted of citizen-soldiers fighting pitched battles against one-another that ended in a routing and eventually peace terms decided by the warring city-states. Hanson reveals that in the Peloponnesian War, the fundamentals of combat changed and that only fifty-five battles were fought in the Greek tradition, with a beginning and an end that constituted a strategic victory. Rather, the marked the start of battle that was waged politically, economically and psychologically against opposing states in an effort to exhaust them. Modern tactics of sanctions, terror campaigns and total war were all used by the participants in attempt to break the will of their enemy.

The shift to this more modern form of warfare has been attributed to Pericles, the leader of Athens during its golden age and the first years of the war before he succumbed to the disease that ravaged Athens. By building the "long walls" around Athens, the Athenians could retreat into their city when threatened by a Peloponnesian army, costing the Spartans a great cost for little reward while effectively costing the Athenians little as their fleet provided for the citizenry. As the Spartans had no navy worth mentioning, they had no way of forcing the Athenians to fight a land battle, which the latter had little hope of winning. A stalemate ensued, as Sparta could not battle Athens on the seas and Athens could not battle Sparta on land. From this stalemate came one of the world's first proxy wars.

Little of the combat of the Peloponnesian War occurred between the powers of Athens and Sparta, and even less occured in the lands of Attica and Laconia. Instead, both city-states attempted to destabilize their antagonist's allied states. This strategem is reminiscent of the Cold War, where the world did not see battle on the Russian steppes or American plains, but in the jungles of South America and deserts of Afghanistan. Through aid to rebel groups within city-states, the major combatants waged constant war as they attempted to destroy empires. Hanson draws these comparisons effortlessly to elucidate the ancient conflicts and show how the weapons that wars of are fought with have changed, but not the manner in which they are fought.

The ability to draw comparisons between contemporary and ancient Greek battles is Hanson's greatest strength, as the comparisons do not seem forced or like strained attempts to make political points, but are relevant and effective in explicating the nuances of war. It is in this way that Hanson makes the Peloponnesian War feel relevant and worth reflecting upon, even twenty-five hundred years after it was fought. Clear analogies are made between generals, battles and even such seemingly unrelated weapons as Greek Hoplites and turn-of-the century Dreadnoughts, in that neither was used frequently, but both provided for a "freedom of action" and represented national pride. Most importantly for Hanson, by presenting examples that do not serve some political agenda but to actually attempt teach the reader, he has created a work that can serve as a classic reference piece for later military historians to explain the minutiae of a war whose lessons echo even today.

Interestingly, the United States, more than likely because of its democratic tradition, is almost always compared to Athens and rarely to Sparta. As many Americans would proudly trumpet the idea that they are modern-day successors to Athens and are currently involved in their own efforts to spread democracy, many lessons can still be learned from Athens. The Athenians, too, endeavored to create a common market within their empire and to support democratic revolt throughout the Hellenistic world. Yet this endeavor was rooted more in their arrogance and self-interest than in genuine concern for their fellow Greeks, for it was easy to enter the Athenian Empire but nearly impossible to leave. While the world today is far more intricate than the Ancient Greece, it is important to see what lessons this country can glean from ancient Athens as it attempts to spread its own institutions globally.

Thankfully, Hanson does not attempt to tell his reader what these lessons are and leaves a great deal of the moral interpretation of Greek politics to his reader. For any classicist or reader of Thucydides, A War Like No Other serves as a revealing document of how and why many battles were fought, as many decisions that at first appear merely political are seen as more practical upon thorough examination. As with any account of the Peloponnesian War, the book is sobering, for the reader is faced with the unlikely fact that democracy, culture, and primitive capitalism failed to defend Athens against a martial Sparta. Perhaps the most important lessons we learn are that Athens never succeeded when supporting an undemocratic ally and that no victory can be achieved by hiding behind walls.

A War Like No Other benefits from the lack of intruding contemporary politics and transparent attempts to attack political opponents. While these absences secure Hanson's place on any classicist's bookshelf regardless of political ideology, the book is at heart a study published as a popular history and for "military buffs". What will prevent A War Like No Other from gaining a larger appeal is that it does not provide a comprehensive political background for the war and contains only a brief chronological listing of the major events. Despite the fundamental flaw of a topical discussion of the war for the layman, Hanson approaches the war from a unique perspective and provides an insight for historian into the Peloponnesian War not seen yet.

Hanson's Unique War

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