This
post is part of a series highlighting books on the Commandant’s Professional
Reading List in an effort to promote the study of military history and other
professional subjects. This month’s selection is “Carnage and Culture: Landmark
Battles in the Rise of Western Power.” Next month’s feature is “The Age of the
Unthinkable: Why the New World Disorder Constantly Surprises Us and What We Can
Do About It.”
For the last 2,500 years Western military forces have held
the advantage when confronting non-Westerners in battle. From the Greco-Persian
Wars of the 5
th Century B.C. to the modern era in which the industrialized
nations of the West project military power into any corner of the world,
Western military forces win far more than they lose. Some scholars, such as
Jared Diamond in his landmark
Guns,
Germs, and Steel attribute Eurasian dominance to accidents of geography, others
to technology or even morality, but in
Carnage and Culture: Landmark
Battles in the Rise of Western Power, Victor Davis Hanson puts forth the
premise that Western military dominance springs from the cultural traditions of
the Greek city-states dating back to the 7
th Century B.C.
Hanson, a noted historian, begins his work by exploring the
creation of the Western cultural tradition in the rugged hills and sparse
valleys of ancient Greece. He examines the Greek concept of infantry-centric
shock battle in which disciplined rows of hoplites fought shoulder-to-shoulder
in the great battles of Xenophon’s 10,000 and Alexander’s conquest of the
Persian Empire. How was it that men, often outnumbered and far from home, could
keep in disciplined ranks and advance in unison when confronting fierce
warriors charging from every angle? Hanson believes the answer lies in the
concept of individual and political freedom coupled with rationalism; that free
citizens in a constitutional government give the West its advantage on the
battlefield. From this basis comes other qualities addressed throughout the
book: democracy, property rights, free speech & markets, the rule of law, individualism,
dissent; all of which provide the people of a political entity, be it a
city-state or a modern nation, with the belief that they make the decision to
go to war and willingly send their citizens to fight in it with inherent rights
and norms agreed on and adhered to throughout the conflict.
It’s an abstract idea, but Hanson strives to show a
correlation between an army of free citizens and success in war. He goes on
throughout the book to link the Hellenic cultural tradition to other societies
and battles throughout the ages. From the Battle of Tenochtitlan through
Lepanto and Rorke’s Drift to the modern clashes at Midway and the Tet
Offensive, Hanson attaches offshoots of the Greek tradition to each engagement:
the discipline of professional soldiers, the effect of capitalism on fielding
the great weapons of war, and the role of dissent on pressuring governments to
change failing strategies. These concepts are contrasted well against losing
armies who fought as slaves to an emperor or with weapons based on ritualistic form
instead of rational science. It would seem easy to dismiss Hanson’s work as
deterministic or even racist, but he strives to avoid leveling judgment,
although he certainly leaves room for one to draw the misguided conclusion that
all nations should embrace the Western cultural tradition and perhaps by
extension that the U.S. should crusade for that end as a matter of policy.
While Western nations have a strong record of military
dominance, it is not immune from disaster (the Anglo-Afghan War, the Russo
Japanese War and of course Dien Bien Phu just to name a few). Nation-states and
non-state actors across the world study and adapt not just the Western way of
war, but many are moving towards the Western cultural tradition, or like
China’s blend of socialism and capitalism, are displaying a hybrid of both
Western and Eastern traditions. Hanson believes that these traits are both
enduring and universal; therefore they can be used or
discarded by any military force or society. Therein lies the reason
that military professionals need to read and study this book. Marines should
ask themselves if they are emulating the qualities that Hanson notes as decisive
in enabling victory in battle. Is constructive dissent within your unit encouraged
or viewed as a threat? Is discipline applied with room for individual
initiative to be applied in the fog of war? These and other points raised in
the book are worth considering for leaders of Marines. A study guide is posted
at the
MCU
website and a debate between Victor Davis Hanson and Jared Diamond is on
YouTube and will add to
your understanding of the central ideas in their works. Please leave a comment
if you do or do not recommend this book for others to read.
In his 2011 work The Lean Startup, serial entrepreneur Eric Ries describes a method for successful entrepreneurship that stresses the importance of rapid iteration over extensive planning, adaptive learning over causal logic, and getting an idea into the hands of end users well before it is completely validated. While this technique was considered innovative and ground breaking in the business world, Ries’s approach to problem solving should seem very familiar to Marine leaders. 
