The American historian Victor Davis Hanson has had quite a few best-selling books over the years, but one of his most notable was Carnage and Culture, published in 2001, where he argued that the military dominance of the West did not arise from merely the accident of European geography, or racial superiority or even technological superiority but instead came from aspects of Western culture: consensual government, self-criticism, secular rationalism, religious tolerance, individual freedom, free expression and free economies.

Hanson selected famous battles across 2,500 years to make his argument (including one the West lost), but he summarised most of the factors at the start of the book in a chapter sub-section called Enlightened Thugs, which was about a campaign rather than a battle: The Ten Thousand, Greek mercenaries who fought for Cyrus The Younger in his quest for the Persian throne, and then had to fight their way back home when Cyrus was killed at the battle of Cunaxa, as described by Xenophon, an aristocrat and one of their leaders, in his work Anabasis:

Once the Ten Thousand, as much a “marching democracy” as a hired army, left the battlefield of Cunaxa, the soldiers routinely held assemblies in which they voted on the proposals of their elected leaders. In times of crisis they formed ad hoc boards to ensure that there were sufficient archers, cavalry, and medical corpsmen… councils were held to debate and discuss new tactics, craft new weapons, and adopt modifications in organisation. The elected generals marched and fought alongside their men – and were careful to provide a fiscal account of their expenditures…Upon reaching the coast of the Black Sea, the Ten Thousand conducted judicial inquiries and audits of its leadership’s performance during the past year, while disgruntled individuals freely voted to split apart and make their own way back home. A lowly Arcadian sheperd had the same vote as the aristocratic Xenophon.

Even though he acknowledged that those factors might wax and wane, depending on the specific Western society and era, he pointed out that most of them could be found in every Western conflict and that they in turn supported and were integrated into specific military aspects of Western armies that could be traced back to the days of the Ancient Greeks – and arose nowhere else unless copied from the West:

The soldiers in the ranks sought face-to-face shock battle with their enemies. All accepted the need for strict discipline and fought shoulder-to-shoulder whenever practicable.

The deliberate seeking of decisive battles of annihilation, waged by groups of soldiers who had the individual freedom to choose to be there, but who also understood the collective, cooperative need to stand together and fight as a compact, organised group no matter the circumstances of combat. Enforcing this was a code where soldiers gained respect from their brothers, and sometimes honours, not for the glory of brave, heroic single combat as in tribal worlds, but for bravery in aiding their fellow troops as required in the moment – especially for not breaking rank.

Hanson argues that time and again, Western militaries have faced non-Western ones and beaten them because the latter had only some of the above Western factors at best, and often none at all, despite often having greater numbers of troops, resources, as well as battlefield experience and success:

The chief military worry of a Western army for the past 2,500 years was another Western Army

Given all that it’s interesting to see his take on the recent attack on Israel by Iran, and Israel’s response, Iran’s Nightmares:

The larger message sent to the world was that Israel could send a retaliatory barrage at Iranian nuclear sites with reasonable assurances that the incoming attacks could not be stopped. By comparison, Iran’s earlier attack on Israel was much greater and more indiscriminate. It was also a huge flop, with an estimated 99 percent of the more than 320 drones, cruise missiles, and ballistic missiles failing to hit their planned targets. Moreover, it was reported that more than 50 percent of Iran’s roughly 115-120 ballistic missiles failed at launch or malfunctioned in flight.

Hanson thinks that this is a historic blunder by Iran because it puts their vaunted nuclear weapons program in a different light from all their boasting about what it could do to Israel:

It showed the world the impotence of an Iranian aerial assault at the very time it threatens to go nuclear. It revealed that an incompetent Iran may be as much a threat to itself as to its enemies. It opened up a new chapter in which its own soil, thanks to its attack on Israel, is no longer off limits to any Western power.

Okay. But then why didn’t Israel engage in “decisive shock battle” with Iran in the wake of this, especially when they have a perfect casus belli, courtesy of more than 320 drones, ballistic and cruise missiles fired at Israel?

The obvious answer is that Israel already has enough on its plate. First, it has to focus on wiping out Hamas in Gaza (which this article, Israel Has Chosen The Least Bad Of Bad Alternatives, contrasts with America’s use of atomic bombs to avoid invading Japan). Second is the looming threat of Hezbollah to its north in Lebanon, a foe larger and better armed than Hamas: the common estimate is that Hezbollah has some 150,000 missiles, many of which come from Iran.

It’s a tough decision and this WSJ article argues that, contra Hanson, Iran is winning with its strategy:

The clerical elite learned early that they could inflict pain on their adversaries with a measure of impunity if they hid behind their proxies. Their record of achievement is extraordinary…Through all of this mischief, Iran’s territory remained immune from retaliation as its embattled adversaries kept insisting that they could not expand the conflict.
…
Khamenei surely anticipated severe Israeli retaliation [following Gaza’s October 7 massacres], while also assuming that the old rules would prevail: Iran would stoke its “rings of fire,” inflaming Israel’s frontiers through its proxies, and the ever-anxious West, led by the escalation-dreading Biden administration, would step in and impose a settlement on Israel. A badly battered Hamas would eventually emerge from its tunnels and declare victory.

To a large extent, the script has played out as Iran anticipated. 

The authors then argue that what Iran will aim for with nuclear weapons is not a decisive stroke like vapourising Tel Aviv, but an umbrella under which it can wage its proxy wars against Israel with even greater confidence; death by a thousand strokes.

I agree, which is why I’ve long thought that the Obama-Biden approach to Iran was stupid, perhaps even insane, precisely because it enabled all of that.

Obama looked at all the Middle Eastern instability over many decades, culminating in the 9/11 attacks that triggered the US invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq in Bush’s doomed effort at re-crafting them as democracies, and concluded that it was largely due to Israel being the regional super power, with US backing (hence his “apology tour” in 2009).

What was needed instead of a War on Terror or democracies that Arab peoples wouldn’t accept, was simply a counter to Israel. The Arab States were too small and fractured for that purpose, having lost every war they’d waged against Israel. The “answer” was to allow Iran to become the second super power of the region; populous, economically powerful once sanctions were lifted and tens of billons of frozen Iran-Revolution Era dollars were repatriated, and permitted to have nuclear weapons:

That “deal” consisted of a short-term freeze of portions of Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for a lifting of economic sanctions on the regime. The objective was, supposedly, to work towards a long-term agreement…. Under Obama’s nuclear “deal”, Iran was given over $150 billion in cash.

All this with a nation that had chanted “Death To America” since the 1979 revolution that put the Mullah’s in power and that had committed yet another casus belli by invading the American embassy in Tehran and kidnapping most of Carter’s staff there for 444 days. And that’s before we get to the Little Satan. The results have been entirely predictable:

Iran got busy, using the money to unleash hell in Yemen, Syria, Lebanon, Afghanistan and Iraq. To this day, it supports proxy terrorists and Shia militia groups, posing a direct threat to the homeland and U.S. interests abroad. It supports Hezbollah, which is active in the Middle East, Latin America, and America, where Hezbollah operatives have been arrested for terroristic activities perpetrated within our borders. Most notably, Iran finances Hamas, and everything that comes with them: terror tunnels, hostages, murder, and torture, included. And they have no plans to stop. The Ayatollah has said flat out that whether he reaches some illusory “deal” or not with America, “we will never stop supporting our friends in the region and the people of Palestine, Yemen, Syria, Iraq, Bahrain and Lebanon.”

Israel got a breather during the Trump Presidency as he abandoned Obama’s JPCOA nuclear deal, put sanctions on Iran even more crushing than those of Carter and Reagan, and beat up its military from time-to-time, plus adding pressure in other areas like diplomacy.

But when Biden became President the Obama approach was re-started, with more nuclear negotiations to try and re-start JPCOA, lifting of many sanctions, bucketloads of cash (another $50 billion, including $1.5 billion directly to Hamas). And more besides:

Biden even named former Obama aide Robert Malley as special U.S. envoy for Iran in January 2021. To be fair, Malley was a key player in shaping the Democratic Party’s Middle East policy. To be accurate, in 2023, Malley’s security clearance was suspended because he may be a spy for…Iran.

FFS. Idiocy piled upon idiocy. Since October 7, Biden has appeared to want Iran to be treated like an Affirmative Action subject, in a war it can’t win against Israel, which must therefore be restrained:

Instead, the Biden administration sees war leading to equality of result as something to be waged “proportionally,” especially when the power attacked is stronger and Western while the attacking aggressor is weaker and non-Western. The method, then, is to restrain the western power and give repeated chances for the non-western aggressors to catch up.

That article makes the argument that it would be better if Biden made it clear to Iran that if this crap continues it was going to get hit, hard – instead of telling Israel to “take the win” after the counter-strike, thus allowing this tit-for-tat war to continue forever.

In fact that crack about affirmative action is a good description of how the entire West has drifted away from its own history of decisive shock battle that decides a conflict once and for all. That’s something the rest of the world has noticed, with the West holding itself back because it’s worried about access to Middle Eastern oil, Muslim immigrants inside both the USA and Western Europe, and magical thinking about “smart diplomacy” inside the “rules-based international order” – plus the more recent surge of old-fashioned Jew-hatred in the West (this time led by the Far Left instead of the Far Right).

The article laments the decline of the West with all this, but merely talks of more pushback against Iran and company, perhaps in the manner of the USA vs the USSR.

It’s no longer enough. Israel doesn’t have to invade and occupy Iran, but it does need to break its military will, which would also likely lead to breaking the Mullah’s control of the nation. There were hints of this in the response of the former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett to the Iranian attack:

Israel’s strategic mistake for the past 30 years was to play along this strategy… We always fought the Octopus’ arms, but hardly exacted a price from its Iranian head….This should change now: Hezbollah or Hamas shoots a rocket at Israel? Tehran pays a price.

Israel fits all of the features of the Western societies described in Carnage and Culture and it should therefore apply the traditional Western military solution to Iran. Seeking decisive shock battle with the Iranian military (and only the military) seems to increasingly be the less risky option for Israel, although I think they have to take care of Hamas and Hezbollah first.

As I said in 2020, in response to articles about Iran by Paul Buchanan where he criticised Trump’s dealings with Iran was “all stick and no carrot”, my approach was an echo of Reagan’s with regard to the USSR:

We win, they lose.