War and Democracies

The recent news that Israel is attempting a hostage exchange with Hamas made me think of Victor Davis Hanson’s book, The Soul of Battle.

I read it some years ago and it analyzes three disparate campaigns waged by democratic governments. Here is a quote from a review published by the Army War College: “Epaminondas of Thebes, who united farmers from the Boeotian plain and marched across the Spartan Peloponnese in the fourth century B.C.; William T. Sherman, who gutted southern agriculture and infrastructure by leading his army across Georgia in 1864; and George S. Patton, whose army advanced across Europe to help destroy the Nazi slave state. All three captains possessed supreme talent in war but were ill-suited for peacetime. Remembered as brutal warriors, all three were in fact great moralists whose destruction flowed from an innate humanitarianism. Their marches of liberation are distinctive from the campaigns of such captains as Alexander the Great and Napoleon, whose victories advanced autocracy and empire.”

My take is that, according to VDH’s analysis, a democratic government will (rightfully) wage total war when properly motivated. Israel currently faces a literally existential threat; their government should not just decimate but absolutely destroy Hamas. Yet we already see the 21st-century tendency to mitigate the response.

Can modern democracies fight wars anymore? It really seems to matter, because the obvious answer scares me.