Athenian America

America owes much of its national identity to Athens. From our ruthless military supremacy to our quasi-democratic political system, we are in debt to the principal polis of the ancient Greeks. But as empires are wont to do, Athens reached too far and fell, and it is this fascinating tale of war and human hubris that classicist Victor Davis Hanson tells again in "A War Like No Other: How the Athenians and Spartans Fought the Peloponnesian War."

Hanson is also a columnist for National Review, but unlike the vast majority of books published by members of the commentariat, VDH actually knows whereof he writes. His familiarity with Thucydides, the primary source for the greater part of the war, is intimate, and his deep knowledge of the politics, events and their underlying causes is inescapable. Moreover, as he previously demonstrated in "Carnage and Culture," he is an engaging writer, as he brings to life what in the hands of other, lesser authors would be dry and dusty bones.

TRENDING: Report: Capitol cop who shot Babbitt is in hiding

Rather like the war it describes, "A War Like No Other" is not a conventional history. (The Peloponnesian War of Thucydidian fame is actually the second Peloponnesian War and encompassed several wars, some of which did not involve one of the primary belligerents.) The author clearly recognizes this, and indeed, recommends no less than five more traditional histories to the reader. Instead of chronicling events according to their order of occurrence, VDH structures his history around the various martial elements involved, dividing the book into sections with deceptively simplistic names such as Armor, Horses, Walls and Ships.

While this leaping around the timeline can be confusing at times, especially when one can never be entirely certain whose side Alcibiades is on at the moment, it is a colorful and effective way of communicating the war and its vagaries to the modern reader. The horror of the many merciless sieges, the arrogant madness of the Athenian Assembly and the prickly obstinance of the Lacedaemonians comes shining through the text – no author of fiction could ever hope to get away with so many wildly improbable twists of plot.

The work is not unflawed. While VDH's frequent comparisons to more recent historical events are usually apt, his use of modern political terms – he sprinkles words such as "right-wing" and "conservative" about – to describe politics circa 420 B.C. is as inaccurate as it is annoying. And like most classicists, VDH's focus is Athenocentric and the reader's comprehension of Spartan thinking and war-making suffers accordingly.

But these are minor defects, and "A War Like No Other" makes for a welcome addition to any thinking man's library. For all that it addresses ancient events, the book is a timely one and its analogical relevance is particularly illuminating given the situation in which the intellectual heirs of Athens currently find themselves. While VDH touches lightly on America's Global Struggle Against Violent Extremism and ancillary events, the many similarities between the actions of two imperialist democratic non-empires separated by 2,436 years will be more than a little haunting to the perceptive reader.

Like Athens before her, America is a rich and militarily superior democratic state seeking to forcibly bring democracy to a diverse group of non-democratic peoples. She is engaged in hostilities with an asymmetric and multifaceted foe, who can neither defeat her nor be conventionally defeated by her. And while there are dissimilarities too – for all his friendliness toward Islam and the Saud family, it seems improbable that George Bush will actually switch sides – Americans contemplating the wisdom of the Iraqi occupation as a pillar of the war against the global jihad should keep in mind VDH's dry critique of the Athenian invasion of Sicily.

"In the last analysis, one does not defeat the proximate oligarchic enemy by sailing 800 miles distant to attack a democratic neutral."