History and the Future of War

32 Historically Speaking January/February 2006 rorism. In other words, Osama bin Laden probably went to war over a sense of lost honor, in fear of Western globalization, and due to his perceived interest in thinking— given perceptions ofrelative Western appeasement of radical Islamicist terrorism since 1979—that he could win more than he might lose. And neither his brand of terrorism nor the many antidotes to it were especially novel in the tactical or strategic sense, despite the new technology ofminiaturization that allows deadly weapons to be carried on a single person and the computerized-guided weapons that we often use to strike back at terrorist hideouts half a world away. My only slight modification ofGray's sensible comments is in regard to his apparent impression that most in the armed forces do not believe as he. Yet I do not think that the defense establishment in toto is quite yet in thrall to presentism and enslaved by its technological pizzazz. Thucydides and Clausewitz are required reading in many courses at the war colleges and academies, and scores of Defense Department strategic analyses start with the Greeks and Romans. Those with whom I have talked at the Pentagon and in the military are very aware that they are hardly exempt from war's timeless nature simply by reason of their newfangled weaponry, but instead still players in a deadly game whose age-old truths they must master. But in general, to believe that Gray is incorrect would be to assume that human nature itself is malleable and that people now act differently than they did in the past—either due to some accelerated evolutionary process that has changed our very brain chemistry since the advent of recorded history or because the use of computers and advanced electronic circuitry alters in some organic fashion the very function of the human brain and its attendant emotions. Thus we would need a new history of a new species to find general truths from the past to guide the future or assume history is bunk because humans alter their genetic makeup and accustomed behavior almost yearly. In contrast, the extent to which there is real ethical or material progress in human history hinges not merely on technology or new methods of thinking as much as on understanding timeless human nature and the plethora of examples from history that can guide us, mutatis mutandis, from making the same general mistakes in the present. My worry, in fact, is not so much with our armed forces and military theorists—who often seem to recognize that the face of war may change, but not its essence—as with many of our institutions that ultimately guide and shape civic society. The general credo, for example, of current Peace and Conflict Resolution Theory programs in American universities is that classical notions of deterrence no longer apply, since either education or evolution can change the nature of man and substitute Enlightenment principles of education and dialogue for the use of credible defenses against primordial enemies. In a recent debate with the Peace Studies director at Dartmouth College, I was struck by a comment by Professor Ronald Edsforth, who insisted: "Evolution [of human behavior] is a fact. It didn't stop back in ancient times .... We are capable of learning as humans and changing our environment in such a way that that which we abhor is less and less likely." (The Dartmouth Review, February 11, 2005). The problem Gray so ably recognizes may not be that mere defense theorists, generals, and national security advisors are convinced that their new weaponry has invented the world anew. Instead the real worry is that a much larger cast oftherapists believes that our dazzling modernity—either by reason of its technology or the evolved humans who created it—is no longer guided by the lessons of the past. And that is a frightening thought indeed. Victor Davis Hanson is a military historian and the Martin and UUe Anderson Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. He is the author of numerous works, including A War Like No Other: How the Athenians and Spartans Fought the Peloponnesian War (Random House, 2005). History and the...