How An Apocalypse Can Happen

3,074 words

Victor Davis Hanson
The End of Everything: How Wars Descend into Annihilation
New York: Basic Books, 2024

Professor Victor Davis Hanson is a classics professor and an author of many books on ancient history and war. He is on the political right, leaning towards the civic nationalist and conservative side of things. Like many figures on the right, his career started during the Farm Crisis of the early 1980s. That crisis was due to neo-liberal economic radicals in the Reagan administration allowing foreign agricultural products to be dumped on the American market. The surplus lowered the market price of agricultural products to below that of the input costs made by American farmers. As a result of this misguided agricultural policy, Hanson’s farm was losing money.

Hanson earned his Ph.D. during the Farm Crisis, and his doctoral thesis had been noticed by the giants in the history field. To help scrape up some cash, he attempted to get a job as a classics professor at Fresno State, which was nearby. At first, he was continually turned down but then landed a one-semester gig where he was noticed by Phebe McClatchy, a wealthy woman from a prominent local family. She donated the money to the Fresno State for his first year’s salary. From there, his classics program took off.

Throughout the End of History, Hanson published books about the Ancient Greeks. On 1 January 2001, he published Carnage and Culture. The book’s thrust was that Western Civilization had a cultural package that, among other things, encouraged free speech, rational scientific enquiry, and economic dynamism which made Western armies especially lethal when faced against a non-Western force. Hanson analyzed several battles in the book to provide evidence for his thesis.

Hard cover copies of Carnage and Culture were stacked in every bookstore before 9/11 and flew off the shelves thereafter. The themes in Carnage and Culture aligned to the way in which the then recent terror attack had played out. As a result, Victor Davis Hanson became a national figure. His talk promoting his book on CSPAN in the days following the attack remains a classic. His ideas in Carnage and Culture continued into 2003. The US Army, a Western force, cut through the non-Western Iraqi Army in 2003. Baathist Iraq, for good or ill, collapsed.

Carnage and Culture was an upbeat civic nationalist book, but in 2024 Hanson published The End of Everything, a much darker work in which he analyzes the wars that destroyed important cities and the people living in them. He examines four exterminations. The first is Alexander the Great’s destruction of Thebes, then the Roman conquest of Carthage, followed by the Turkish sack of Constantinople, and concluding with the Spanish triumph over the Aztecs in Tenochtitlan.

Melian Dialogue

Thucydides, in his history of the Peloponnesian War, wrote a passage called the Melian Dialogue in which the attacking Athenians, who were more militarily powerful, made an offer to the Melians to surrender sovereignty but continue to otherwise self-govern and live freely. The Melians decided that they had a slim chance for complete victory and decided to resist. They lost and were massacred.

The dialogue is like the black box pulled from the smoking wreckage of a crashed aircraft. It shows the chain of decisions that led to the Melians’ destruction. One could call the Melian’s logic faulty, but that is only clear in retrospect. Earlier, the Athenians decided to fight the seemingly more powerful Persians and won, thereby making themselves the most powerful self-ruled city-state in the eastern Mediterranean. The Melian Dialogue documents a dilemma that all people face prior to hostilities. Should a people seek honorable terms or fight in such a way that risks absolute destruction if they lose?

Fighting to the End – Thebes

King Philip II of Macedonia conquered all of Greece and put garrisons of Macedonian soldiers in the various cities. In Thebes, the Macedonian occupation troops took up quarters in the city’s internal citadel highpoint – called the acropolis – not to be confused with The Acropolis in Athens. Philip II was assassinated and his teenaged son Alexander replaced him. Later, Demosthenes, an Athenian, heard and spread a rumor that Alexander had been killed in battle. Alexander had only been wounded, however.

When the people of the City of Thebes, called Thebans, heard the rumor of Alexander’s death, they decided to revolt against the Macedonians. They killed what Macedonian soldiers billeted in the city they could find and besieged the remaining garrison in the city’s acropolis. They expected the other city-states in Greece to join them.

Alexander had not been killed, and when he heard about the revolt, he sent his diplomats to keep the other Greek cities on his side and marched his army to Thebes – arriving quicker than the Thebans expected. Alexander offered the city generous surrender terms but insisted they turn over the leaders of the insurgency. The Thebans refused.

The Thebans took great comfort in their history of successful military operations, but they had not recognized the revolution in military affairs that Alexander the Great’s father had started. The Macedonians were armed with pikes, which were longer than the Theban hoplites’ spears. The Macedonian soldiers were also full-time professional soldiers; the Thebans were part-time militia. Then, incredibly, the Thebans left a gate open. The Macedonians beat the Theban army outside the walls, went through the open gate, took the city, and razed it to the foundation. Its surviving women and children were sold into slavery. Only a few Thebans were deliberately spared death or bondage.

The Thebans made several mistakes, the most critical was that they thought that the other Greek city-states would join them in their revolt. They also didn’t realize how inferior their army was compared to Alexander’s. They also failed to recognize the seriousness of the stakes. The moral threshold of Greek-speaking people destroying a Greek city and enslaving its population had been crossed during the Peloponnesian War. Their ethnic status wasn’t a fallback upon which they could rely.

They also failed to perceive Alexander’s reasoning. Destroying Thebes allowed him to secure his base for his pending attack on Persia. It also showed his resolution to friends and foes alike, and the coinage from the city’s treasury and the profits from the sale of its surviving inhabitants could be used to fund Alexander’s army.

Fighting to the End – Carthage

The Third Punic War that ended with the genocide of the Carthaginians could have been avoided had Roman soldiers deployed to Carthage on a permanent basis to keep Carthage “down” while keeping the Numidians, Greeks, and others “out” after the Second Punic War. It was also not foreordained that the Roman public would hate and fear Carthage forever. While Cato the Elder famously ended every speech with the phrase Carthago delenda est (Carthage must be destroyed), another man of equal stature, Publius Cornelius Scipio Nasica Corculum, ended every speech with the phrase Carthago servanda est (Carthage must be saved).

The crisis started when the …delenda est portion of the Roman political elite became alarmed by the speed in which Carthage recovered from the Second Punic War. The comparison of post-imperial Carthage’s economic success with Japan’s economic rise after being stripped of its empire apply here. Meanwhile, the terms of the peace treaty ending that war held that Carthage needed to obtain permission from Rome before going to war. After Numidian attacks against Carthage became intolerable, the Carthaginians fielded an army in defiance of Rome’s wishes. Carthage’s army was defeated. The Romans decided that Carthage’s battle against the Numidians had broken the treaty, and a diplomatic crisis developed.

Before the outbreak of hostilities, the Carthaginians made another mistake. In the final diplomatic wrangling, they agreed to Roman demands to turn over all armaments including their war elephants. The Carthaginians reasoned that Rome would be satisfied with this show of good faith, but turning over their weapons ended what remaining chance there was to deter Roman aggression. The Romans declared war after the Carthaginians refused to leave their city as demanded. …Delenda est had out manoeuvred …servanda est.

This was partially due to the chief of the Roman peace faction, the aforementioned Scipio, deploying to Greece due to a war there and the Roman public’s frustration with the three years of resistance from the Carthaginians. From the book:

In general, it is mostly foolhardy for a belligerent to believe at the outset of hostilities that his opponent may call off a war because of a “peace” party, either sympathetic to the enemy or not convinced an ongoing war is in its country’s national interest. Once a war starts and intensifies, the pulse of the battlefield usually adjudicates whether a peace party exists and grows, rather than any innate sympathy for the enemy or prior antiwar ideology. Carthage’s gallant first eighteen months of resistance clearly rattled the Roman Senate. Yet its reaction was not to offer concessions, but…rid Rome of Carthage for good. (p. 114)

The Romans also had a cultural x-factor that the Carthaginians did not. During the Second Punic War, the Carthaginian strategy was to isolate Rome from its allies. This plan failed. Rome’s defeats did not sway Rome’s friends. On the other hand, when the Romans landed in North Africa, Carthage’s allies joined the Romans. The x-factor could be related to the cultural underpinnings that led to Carthage’s war leader Hasdrubal the Boetharch abandoning his family and switching sides as the Romans stormed the city. Carthaginian religion also may have resorted to human sacrifice, a malignant social contagion if there ever was one. Hanson doesn’t say much about this, but it could have been a factor in Carthage’s ultimate defeat. Human nature being what it is, it is possible that wealthy and pious Carthaginians purchased or paid kidnappers to acquire the children of others to be passed through fire. If this was the case, it might explain why Carthage had so few friends in its hour of need.

The Punic language survived in North Africa for centuries after the end of Carthage and it could be that this non-Western tongue shaped the respective minds of the people year after year, so that the region remained permanently alienated from Europe even though it is geographically close and its people racially similar.

Fighting to the End – Constantinople

Constantinople almost didn’t fall to the Turks in 1453. The Ottoman Sultan ordered one more push before he ended his siege, and during that push the captain of a contingent of Italian mercenaries was wounded. The captain’s evacuation accidently triggered a panic, and the Turkish Janissaries breached the defensive walls. Constantinople could trace its government back to the Roman Emperor Augustus and the last of the Roman Emperors died facing the enemy with a sword in his hand.

Constantinople was in trouble before the siege. The Turks gained a toehold in Byzantine territory after the Battle of Manzikert in 1071. Over the next four centuries they’d captured formerly Byzantine territory in Anatolia and the Balkans. All accounts of the rise of the Ottoman Turkish Empire say the same thing. The Ottoman Turks were better rulers than the Byzantines. Those under Turkish rule had religious freedom, although they had to pay a special tax. Additionally, Ottoman taxes were less than the Byzantine taxes. Then there is the question of Byzantine shiftiness. Hanson writes,

[T]he empire’s stereotypical “Byzantine” behavior more likely reflects the need for intrigue, espionage, stealth, and conspiracies as adjuncts to force, given that eventually Constantinople simply did not have the manpower or wealth to defeat decisively and permanently a host of hostile and powerful enemies. It is best then to envision Byzantine civilization as a brilliantly adoptive system of religious governance whose dynamic culture and civilization so often nullified the vast numbers of a series of existential challengers. More specifically, Constantinople faced three constant vulnerabilities that it struggled to overcome: religious disunity with the Catholic West; serial conflict with Islamic powers; and the logistic and public health difficulties of managing an enormous city. (p. 141)

Constantinople also routinely experienced plagues due to the city’s connections with the outside world. The Turks in the surrounding countryside avoided epidemics. The Turks also assimilated many local Greeks to their language and way of life. The Ottoman Empire was genetically mostly Greek, many of its rulers were mostly of European ancestry, but the society was not really European.

Meanwhile, Constantinople’s population had shrunk well before the siege started. Grass grew in the streets of the suburbs. The defending army was smaller than it could have been. The city’s government also believed that their fellow Christians would come to their aid, but the break between Orthodox and Latin Christianity was too big a rift to bridge by this point. The rest of Western Europe was locked in its own problems. England and France were winding down the Hundred Year’s War. Spain was still fighting the Reconquista. Hanson points out that,

Later, after the fall, surviving Christians blamed the various outposts of the empire for not sending succor to the mother city. But the real cause of the reluctance of the Black Sea mini-kingdoms was the fear of dispatching their ships past the twin Ottoman bases on the Bosporus and the superior size of the Ottoman fleet in the Sea of Marmara. Despite some occasional Venetian success in skillfully evading the forts, few ship captains possessed the skill to reach Constantinople from the Black Sea. (p. 160–161)

Fighting to the End – The Aztecs

The people of Constantinople fully understood character of their Turkish rivals prior to the start of hostilities. The Aztecs died without ever understanding who they were facing. Hernán Cortés, the leader of the Spanish, was a minor official who organized an army of approximately 1,500 men. Cortés and his band became the greatest military and cultural power on the mainland of the Americas the moment they arrived. They landed at what is now Vera Cruz, and marched to Tenochtitlan, the Aztec capital and the wealthiest and most populous city in the Americas.

The Spanish were amazed by the Indian city. The Aztecs were likewise amazed by the Spanish and their horses and war dogs. The Aztecs also thought that Cortes was one of their gods, Quetzalcoatl. Eventually, the Aztecs saw that the Spanish were ordinary men and organized an ambush. The Spanish retreated and for the next two years plotted their return.

Theology matters. The Aztecs practiced human sacrifice and the flesh of those sacrificed was eaten by the population of Tenochtitlan. The military doctrine of the Aztecs was shaped by their religion. The Aztec army focused on the goal of gathering captives for sacrificial events. The Aztec army was made up of warriors who sought to gain honor by snaring a living person to be given over to the Aztec priests.

The Spanish way of war went back to the Greeks, whose military doctrine was to seek and win a decisive battle by killing the enemy in the most efficient way possible. The Spanish weapons were edged steel and firearms. The Spanish also wore life-saving armor. Their religion was vastly different from that of the Aztecs. Spanish Christianity, with its refusal to condone human sacrifice, won the Spaniards allies. The Aztec’s sacrificial ceremonies made bitter enemies of their neighbors. The Spaniard’s Indian allies stayed with them even through the various setbacks.

During the Summer of 1521, the Spanish took the city by means of their superior weapons and superior military doctrine that sought to win by killing the enemy at the decisive point on the battlefield. A cathedral now stands upon the spot where the Aztecs once cut out the hearts of their captives. The Spanish took the decisive point, indeed. The Aztec priests who made the sacrifices aren’t missed, although there are people in Mexico who still speak the Aztec language.

It Can Go Badly

Hanson points out that the threat of genocide is very real. We live in a dangerous world. He points out the following similarities in each extermination writing:

• As a general rule, the besieged vainly counted on help that rarely appeared, especially if they were seen as likely to lose.
• Those surrounded looked to their own bastions and their past impregnability, rather than assessing realistically the unique and existential danger below the walls.
• Prior discord often explained the vulnerability of the besieged, and contributed to their defeat.
• The defenders rarely equate their present existential peril with the enemy military genius who reduced them to such straits. Nor can they accurately assess in comparison the mediocrity of their own leadership.
• The targeted never fully grasped that the antebellum negotiations and diplomacy that had allowed a final and brief respite no longer applied, either because politics had changed in the powerful party, or the technological and organizational capabilities of the enemy had evolved.
• The effort to destroy rather than merely defeat a trapped enemy ensures unprecedented savagery. And the zeal necessary to resist overwhelming odds eventually ensures a level of counter-violence that seals the fate of the defeated.
  

Take Threats Seriously

Hanson concludes his book with several examples of potential genocides. Modern Greece is a nation of approximately 12 million facing a much larger Turkish rival. The Turks have also abandoned their Western-leaning worldview for that of a revived Ottoman Imperial and Islamic philosophy. The Turkish president has made threats towards the Greeks and there is some concern that American atomic weapons stored in Turkey could be captured by the Turkish army during a crisis.

Then there are the threats to the United States. America is deeply polarized. In 2024, its armed forces were unable to meet minimum recruiting goals. Until recently, America was also unable to defend its borders. The Democratic Party, which has traditionally represented half of the American political spectrum, has fielded a series of mediocre leaders, including an obviously senile president. Meanwhile, the Russians have colluded with others in Asia to form a Eurasianist Bloc. All threats coming from Russia’s government should be taken very seriously.

One can also look at The End of Everything from the perspective of the vanquishers. No matter the longstanding problems that obstruct the path, the right army under the right leadership can eliminate them. So far, the “civil rights” order has reigned supreme, and it is absolutely oppressive. Murderers go free, crime is rampant, public transport is dangerous, and every system is inefficient due to diversity. Is it possible that the “civil rights” institution itself is a reckless Thebes, a poorly led Carthage, an offensive Tenochtitlan, and a declining Constantinople awaiting a gentle push.