| May 2012 | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| S | M | T | W | T | F | S |
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | ||
| 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 |
| 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 |
| 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 |
| 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | ||
Victor Davis Hanson addresses the Wednesday Morning Club.
Last Wednesday Victor Davis Hanson spoke at the Wednesday Morning Club at the Four Seasons Hotel in Los Angeles. He discussed his new book, A War Like No Other : How the Athenians and Spartans Fought the Peloponnesian War. I will summarize some of his remarks.
In 431 B.C., Sparta declared war on Athens. This should have been considered an unwageable war, because Sparta was a land power and Athens was a sea power -- there was no way for them to fight. The war was chronicled at the time by Thucydides, who believed that the stated reasons nations go to war are often not the true ones. Nations often go to war due to feelings of jealousy. In this case, Athens was the jewel of the time. People went to Athens for everything; no one went to Sparta.
Parallel to our time: Islamofascist talk about Iraq and Israel is irrelevant to their true reasons for killing Westerners.
Athens responded by choosing to withdraw all of its people within its walled city, and waiting for the Spartans to go away. But this didn't happen. The Spartans found that they could deny Athens the use of its own farmlands without repercussions. When Athens' allies saw this, they ceased to provide Athens with the supplies it needed.
Parallel to our time: when Al Qaeda saw that there were few or no repercussions to its attacks on the U.S. via the USS Cole, the first World Trade Center bombing, the killing of U.S. marines, etc., it saw the way clear to 9-11.
Not only that, but, as Hanson observes, in war the unexpected always happens. The city of Athens was built to hold 100,000 people; now it was holding 300,000. A sickness broke out, killing 80,000 people. At this point it became very difficult for Athens to fight off the Spartans.
After additional fighting with losses on both sides, Athens and Sparta declared the Peace of Nicias. The thinking was that both sides would retire to their pre-war positions, and everything would go back to the way it had been before the war.
But this lasted only 6 years. It was only a "bellum interruptum" -- a brief interruption to the war. As Hanson says in this radio interview on the same subject:
The great lesson is the war ended when one side lost, not when one side negotiated. Athens lost its fleet, it lost its empire, it lost its long walls, it lost its democracy. These are pretty bitter lessons but they should remind us that as Thucydides said, that's the tragic nature of mankind, and it's predictable, as long as human nature remains fixed.
Parallel to our time: the Islamofascists will continue attacking us until one side loses decisively.
