Abraham Lincoln warned of America’s greatest danger in his renowned 1838 Lyceum Address, which was Lincoln’s first major risk. The then-Illinois express agent declared:
Shall we anticipate a transatlantic military big to cross the ocean and brutally enslave us? Not! All the armies of Europe, Asia, and Africa combined, with all the treasure of the earth ( our own excepted ) in their military chest, with a Bonaparte for a commander, could not by force take a drink from the Ohio or make a track on the Blue Ridge in a trial of a thousand years.
The regional size of the United States, its proximity to the European and Asian continents, and its ability to repel American forces during the War of 1812, served as evidence of the unbreakable character of the British republic. At the time, the country was a young, desolate nation in comparison to such royal powers as Great Britain, France, and Spain.
About two-hundred years removed from that talk, is it still true? Are we still a state of “freemen” who “must sit through all day or die by suicide”? Or are we now more vulnerable to the loss of some outside force? A new historical study by esteemed historian Victor Davis Hanson, The End of Everything: How Wars Descend Into Annihilation, warns that what can seem unimaginable can, given the ( wrong ) circumstances, become inevitable.
Event Studies in Great Civilizations Collapsing
Hanson, a senior colleague in military record and classics at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University and author of several praised books, offers four examples of sudden postcolonial collapse over about two millennia of history: traditional Thebes, Punic Carthage, Byzantine Constantinople, and the Aztecs of Tenochtitlan. In each case, the civilization was destroyed by an abrupt war focused on a cultural, political, religious, or social center that resulted in the disappearance of that state’s government, leveling of its infrastructure, and killing, enslaving, and scattering of most of its people.
Why? Writes Hanson:” Naivete, hubris, flawed assessments of relative strengths and weaknesses, the loss of deterrence, new military technologies and tactics, totalitarian ideologies, and a retreat to fantasy can all explain why these usually rare catastrophic events nevertheless keep occurring”.
Per usual, Hanson exhibits his extraordinary gift for storytelling. His chapter on classical Thebes, destroyed by Alexander the Great’s Macedonian army in 335 B. C., begins with the arresting line:” Collective naivete can get a vulnerable people killed”.
Thebans ‘ demise, which was widely regarded as the epicenter of the Greek cultural world, which was home to legendary mythological figures like Hercules and well-known dramatic figures like Antigone, then moves at a terrifying pace. Thebes, one of the most feared city-states in Greece, was abandoned by its neighbors and former allies when it faced an invader who would eventually bring the enormous Persian Empire to its knees.
That same narrative force defines future chapters on Carthage, Constantinople, and the Aztecs. Even those who are familiar with these historical tales will find the details fascinating throughout. The Carthaginians, for example, originally sought to parlay with the Romans, surrendering their weapons only to then realize that the Romans were bent not only on their surrender, but their destruction. The resilient Carthaginians remained in their roughly 500, 000 resident redoubt for almost three years. Moreover, despite the constant Roman calls of Carthago delenda est ( “Carthage must be destroyed” ), almost no ancient observer, including the Romans themselves, justified Carthage’s obliteration, given the city’s humiliation in the Second Punic War had pacified it into a militarily harmless entrepot.
Given its closeness to America in terms of both space and time, the chapter on the Aztecs is perhaps most intriguing. Hanson demonstrates that the Aztecs were themselves an imperial power who not only subjugated other peoples of Mesoamerica but also sacrificed thousands of them to their gods, despite Hernán Cortés’s conquest of the great Aztec Empire being today depicted as an avaricious colonialist enterprise. At least that portion of the narrative should be familiar to those who are at least partially familiar with the Spanish’s destruction of the Aztec civilization.
Even the other Mesoamerican tribes who fought alongside the Spanish were themselves cannibals who sacrificed captives to their gods, something less well known. What cannot be denied is that the Spaniards were frequently unwilling to observe the bloody sacrifice of their own captured compatriots from atop Tenochtitlan’s towering temples. Whether Cortés was motivated by a desire to end such horrific practices or his also obvious commensurate desire for conquest is still up for debate. In fact, the Aztecs ‘ preference for capturing rather than killing their foes on the battlefield, a tactic motivated by their sacrificial system, contributed to the Spanish conquistadors ‘ victory.
A Warning to Arrogant Americans
The book The End of Everything is spellbinding to read. Yet, one may ask, what is the lesson for America? ” The more things change technologically, the more human nature stays the same — a law that applies even to the United States, which often believes it is exempt from the misfortunes of other nations, past and present”, Hanson ominously warns early in the book.
His epilogue fleshes out that admonition, though unfortunately unevenly. He notes various commonalities among these ravaged civilizations, such as a vain hope in help that never appeared, an unrealistic assessment of the danger faced, internal factionalism and disunity, and a fanatical resistance that unintentionally accelerated the civilization’s destruction. Though it goes unspoken, some of these qualities certainly define contemporary America.
Hanson ends the book by noting several threats to global security, including the ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine, North Korea’s perennial threats to its southern neighbor and the United States, and tensions between China and Taiwan, Iran and Israel, India and Pakistan, Turkey and Greece, and Azerbaijan and Armenia. All of these, undoubtedly, present risks to America and her allies that could provoke tremendous bloodshed. ” Modern civilization faces a toxic paradox”, he writes. The more technologically advanced human race develops the notion that total war is an outdated exercise, the more it conceives that it is impossible to call it a “postmodern exercise.” That kind of thinking is, to put it simply, hubris.
Yet, one wonders, what is the lesson for America? Hanson makes no reference to unprecedentedly low US military enlistment rates, China’s concerning outpacing of American shipbuilding capacity, or the dramatic over-extension ( and failure ) of our military in the Middle East and Afghanistan.
These and other trends, along with many others, suggest that American power and influence are waning globally, and Hanson argues that these issues must be addressed to keep our strategic advantages in an increasingly unstable world.
Additionally, as many analysts and pundits are aware, America seems almost as divided politically and culturally as it did before our Civil War. Although it’s possible that an external foe will bring America to its knees, my money is still on Lincoln’s prediction that our greatest existential threat will still be ourselves.
Casey Chalk is a senior contributor to The Federalist and a columnist and editor for The New Oxford Review. He has a bachelor’s in history and master’s in teaching from the University of Virginia and a master’s in theology from Christendom College. The Persecuted: True Stories of Courageous Christians Living Their Faith in Muslim Countries is his book.
