“The End of Everything,” with Victor Davis Hanson | Uncommon Knowledge | Peter Robinson | Hoover Institution

Classicist Victor Davis Hanson is the Martin and Illie Anderson Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and the author of hundreds of articles, book reviews, and newspaper editorials on Greek, agrarian, and military history and essays on contemporary culture. He has written or edited twenty-four books, the latest of which is The End of Everything: How Wars Descend into Annihilation. The book—and this conversation—charts how and why some societies choose to utterly destroy their foes and warns that similar wars of obliteration are possible in our time. Hanson provides a warning to current societies not to repeat the mistakes of the past.

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
- It may not happen often,
but sometimes, sometimes
entire civilizations die in a single day.
Historian Victor Davis Hansonon "Uncommon Knowledge" now.
(gentle music)

(00:24):
Welcome to "Uncommon Knowledge,"
I'm Peter Robinson,
a fellow at the HooverInstitution here at Stanford.
Victor Davis Hanson is aclassist and military historian.
Dr. Hanson has published more than
two dozen major works of history,
including "A War Like No Other,"
his classic work onthe Peloponnesian Wars.
Victor Davis Hanson's newest book,

(00:45):
"The End of Everything, HowWars Descend into Annihilation."
Victor, thanks for joining me.
- Thank you for having me Peter.
- First question,
the destruction of Thebesby Alexander the Great,
the Obliteration ofCarthage by the Romans,
the defeat of Constantinople by the Turks

(01:08):
and the destruction ofthe Aztecs by Cortes.
Those are your four casestudies in this book.
All those happened a whileago. Why write this book now?
- I wanted, I was curious.
I've been, most of my career,I've been curious why Thebes,
or I can go into thedetails, but why these-

(01:29):
- We'll come to it.
- Yes, we'll come to it.
Why these civilizationswere not just defeated,
but were annihilatedand there were others.
There's a wide array in the ancient world
that the island of Melos,
towns in the Peloponnesianworld like Schioni, et cetera.
And this is very differentthan natural disasters
like the Mycenaeans, et cetera.

(01:50):
But I was wondering ifthere was a typology,
a repeating pattern,
and if it would beapplicable to any of a value.
And I found that there was,
both on the part of theattacker, certain mindset
and on the part of the defender,
and that those situations
that we think could not happen today
because we're supposedlya postmodern morals world.

(02:14):
- We're more advancedthan they were Victor.
- Yes. That's what we think.
So in the epilogue, Ijust did a brief survey,
well, not a brief survey, butI had a survey of countries
that are very vulnerable
as described either in thenature of their enemies
and the intent of their enemies,
or the neighborhood in whichthey reside, or their size,

(02:35):
or their limits.
So for example,
there's only 12 millionGreeks in the world.
- Right.- They're Cypriots, but Greeks
and they have a lot,
they have a bad neighborhood
and they have been existentiallythreatened by the Turks,
especially the present government.
Israel's another example.
The Kurds are an example.
The Armenians are still an example.

(02:56):
And all of them have had a history
where at times peoplethought they would be
existentially gone,
'cause that was the intent.
And yet we feel that todaywhen somebody threatens
to wipe somebody out,either with nuclear weapons,
or with convention, we discountthat that can't happen.
- It's mere hyperbole.
- And the epilogue, I think Imentioned maybe a half a dozen

(03:20):
or maybe even a dozen direct threats
by various Turkishfigures, Russian, Chinese,
where they actually threatenedto destroy and wipe out,
whether it's Ukraine or Taiwan,
or the Armenians, or Greeks, or Israel.
- And the argument is takethat possibility seriously.
Because every so oftenit really does happen.

(03:42):
- Every so often, the exception
that nobody thinks, the unimaginable,
or what people think it can'thappen here does happen here.
- The end of everythingpresents almost 300 pages
of your usual approach,which is meticulous,
thorough and engrossinghistorical writing.

(04:02):
This is television.
We can't go into it that deeply.
But I would like to touchon these case studies
at least briefly, becauseeven put in summary form,
my feeling was as I went through the book,
even in summary form, every oneof them is just fascinating.
- Yeah.- And surprising in some way.

(04:24):
Alright, Thebes, the end of everything.
I'm quoting you in 335 BCThebans not only revolted against
the Macedonian occupation of Greece,
but defiantly dared Alexander the Great
to take the legendary city,
that is to take Thebes itself.
He did just that.

(04:44):
Alright, briefly, thesignificance of Thebes.
It was a major city
who were the Macedonians,set it up. Set it up.
- Yes.
- Who are the Macedonians
and who is this brilliantfigure who arises
as a very young man, Alexander the Great?
- Well, for 20 years prior to 335,

(05:07):
Philip II of Macedon,
- Alexander's father.- Alexander's father
had taken a backwater area
that was deprecated asuncivilized by Greeks.
- The northern mountainous region.
- The mountainous region of today
is parts of northern Greece
and the autonomous state
of so-called Macedon, Macedonia.

(05:28):
And he had forged a imperialpower he'd borrowed,
he was a hostage at Thebes whenhe was a young man himself.
And he learned from thegreat master of Epaminondas
about Greek military tactics.
He lengthened the sarissa,
he did all of his military.
- Sarissa is?- Pike.
- Right.- So he innovated
and improved on Greek Phalanxwarfare, fighting in column,

(05:52):
and it was a juggernaut.
And he came from the north
and he conquered atthe Battle of Chaeronea
three years prior to this,
he destroyed Greek freedom by this,
basically it was an armyof Thebans and Athenians
and a few other city states.
And they were conqueredand they were occupied.
And there was no longer atruly consensual government

(06:14):
in the city, 1500 city states.
And he had a plan or an agendathat said, I will unite you.
And even though youthink I'm semi-barbarous.
Macedonian, it was sortof hard to understand.
You could understand that thelanguage and the tradition,
but it had no culture, the Greeks thought.
But we're gonna unite and take Persia

(06:36):
and pay them back for a century of slights
and get rich in the process.
And the Greeks revolted in 335.
He died, he was assassinated
and he had his 21-year-old son
who had been at theBattle of Chaeronea at 18
and had been spectacularin defeating the Thebes.
And they didn't take him seriously.
- Thebans or the Greeks?
The Greek city states in general.

(06:57):
- Yes. They thought, you know what?
- He's a kid.
- No, who's gonna take overfrom Philip II? He was a genius.
And he is got bastard childrenhere and concubines there.
And he's got this one guy named Alexander
and it's don't take, we're gonna revolt.
And everybody said,well, we hear about him
and he's kind of fanatic, be careful,
but we're willing torevolt if you revolt first.

(07:19):
And Thebes was at this time legendary
because it's the legendaryhome of Oedipus and Antigone.
It's the fountain of Greek mythology.
It has kind of a dark history
because bad things happen at Thebes,
like Oedipus kills his fatheror Antigone is executed or-
- Not a lot of cheerful stories.

(07:40):
- Yes, in Euripides Bacchae,
it's under the shadows of Mount Cithaeron.
But the point is that it hadbeen under a Epaminondas,
a Pythagorean enlightened society,
the first really expansive democracy.
It was trying todemocratize the Peloponnese.
So it was the moral leaderat this point, not Athens-
- Roughly, how big a population is?

(08:00):
- It was small. It was somewhere between
15 and 25,000 citizens,and maybe at most five
or 10,000 residents.
But it was the capital
of what we would call today in English,
a province called Boeotia.
- Right.- And that probably had
somewhere around 150 to 250.
And it was the capitalthat subjugated that.

(08:22):
- Okay.- But it had a separate dial.
Deepened dialect was differentthan the Boeotian dialect.
And it was the stellar city.
So Alexander then says, if you revolt,
we're gonna come down.
So he eliminates hisenemies, he starts to march.
The Athenians are egging the Thebans on
and said, don't worry, we'll come
and the Spartans are gonnacome, both of them in decline.

(08:45):
And the long and the shortof it is he arrives there,
Thebans mock him.
They think we can replay theBattle of Chaeronea, we'll win.
And all of a sudden when he shows up,
they have no idea who he is.
They don't know what he's intending.
Had they studied his career,they would see he's a killer.
And he is a genius.
And he is about ready toconquer the Persian empire.

(09:08):
And he needs to have a solid home front.
And he means business.
And he doesn't play by the rules
and the rules of Greek warfare,except for the Peloponnese.
You don't destroy your enemy.
You don't even Athens after,
as it lost the Peloponnesian War,
they did not destroy Athens,the Spartans and the Thebans.
So Spartans say they're gonna come,

(09:30):
the Athenians are gonna help 'em.
They egg them on, they revolt,
they kill the Macedoniangarrison or they imprison them.
And Alexander pulls upwith this huge army.
You can't get 200 milesfrom the north in 10 days.
You can, if you're Alexander,
you march at 20 plus miles a day.
He pulls up, they build siege crop, and.

(09:51):
- So he, is it fair to say he'sa little bit like Napoleon?
- Yes.- He's shocking.
- He's quick or Caesarquickness of Caesar,
Napoleon audacity,
it's like Danton andthe Spartans dissipate
and the Athenians dissipate.
- You're on your own.- You're on your own.
And they think, well, thisis the seven gates of Thebes,

(10:12):
of magnificent walls of Thebes.
We've only been broachedonce after the Persian war.
We can endure. We're on the defensive.
We've got this wonderful army.
We'll go out in front of the,
and they are defeated and they think-
- Not just defeated,- Not defeated.
They think they can negotiate, I think.
And he says, I'm gonnakill every single person

(10:35):
that's over the age of 16.
I'm gonna enslave every woman and child,
but you know what, I will savethe descendants of Pindar,
the poet, his house, andmaybe some religious fines.
And he levels the citydown to the foundations.
And there are no more Thebans.
Later the Macedonians will take
the site and bring inother people, other Greeks.

(10:58):
And so there is no longer a Theban
who have been there for twomillennia, they're gone.
- They have their ownculture, their own history.
It is recognized as such by theentire Greek speaking world.
And they even have their own,not quite their own language,
but their own dialect.
- Yes.- And it just ends.
- Yes. And some of thesurrounding the ocean villages,

(11:20):
of course don't like them.
So they join Alexander
and they haul off the marble columns.
They haul off the rooftiles, they level it.
After Alexander's death,
some two decades later,
they think it's be goodpropaganda to refound Thebes.
And they call it Thebes, whichis the modern city today.

(11:41):
- Right.- But it's not
the same culture.- Not the same.
Okay. That's example number one.
By the way, do we havefrom contemporary sources,
who would've written that?
What effect did that event have?
It shocked all the other Greek city states
into total submission.
- Yes. They could not believe it.

(12:03):
They completely folded. And it was-
- So he got the stable home base he wanted
that permitted him to advance into.
- Yes. And it became, evenamong the Macedonians,
it became a shameful
that Alexander haddestroyed this legacy city,
the fountain, as Isaid, of Greek mythology
and of Epaminondas, the great liberator,
his legacy Pythagoras,

(12:24):
the Pythagorean group there.
And he'd wiped them out andthey regretted it later.
But at the time, nobody came to their aid.
They were very confident.
They didn't think anybodywould ever do that.
And they were shocked.
It was something thathad not happened before.

(12:44):
- Carthage.- Yes.
- Rome and Carthage, the endof everything, your book,
the three centuries longgrowth of the Roman Republic,
this is BC with, we're not at Caesar,
we're not certainly not close to Augustus.
We're seeing Rome grow from a city
to the dominant forcein the Mediterranean.

(13:05):
The three centuries long growth
of the Roman Republic was often stalled
or checked by its formidableMediterranean rival Carthage
on the other side of theMediterranean at the northern tip
of northern edge of Africa.
The competition between Rome and Carthage
involved antithetical civilizations.

(13:25):
- Yes.- Explain that.
- Carthage was founded aboutthe same time as Rome was,
but it was that we used the word,
they used, it's an ancient word, Punic.
And all that is aPhoenician transliteration
for Phoenician culture.
That would be today whereGaza is along that area.

(13:46):
This was a colony,
colonists founded under the mythical Dido
at what is modern Tunisia, right?
Just, you know, 90 miles opposite.
So narrows point of the Mediterranean
- 90 miles opposite Sicily.- Sicily.
- Yes.- And they were
a Punic Semitic culture.
So their language was notlinguistically related to Greek

(14:09):
or Latin.
They did things thatclassical culture abhors
such as child sacrifice.
However, they did, wewere heavily influenced
by Greek constitutional history.
So they actually had aconstitutional system.
They learned about western warfare
from Spartan task masters.
And so they fought these series,what we call a Punic war,

(14:32):
first and second.
Unfortunately for Rome,
they were confronted withan authentic Alexander,
Napoleon like figure onHannibal, who took the war home.
- Second Punic war,
he goes across into what is now Spain.
- Yes.
- And it goes be homebehind the Roman line.
So speak famously, takingelephants up over the Alps

(14:53):
and then wreaking havoc-
- From two 19 to 202, this war went on.
- In Italy itself.
- And a series of battlesat the River Caecanius,
Trebia, Lake Trasimene and Cannae.
He killed or wounded aquarter million Italians.
And he ran wild for over a decade in Italy
until Scipio Africanus

(15:16):
invaded Tunisia and forcedhim to come home. But what-
- I'm giving to defend his home.
- Yes. And he lost the Battle of Zama.
He was exiled, but that was such a trauma
or wound in the Italian mind.
It was always Hannibal ad Portas.
They scared little kids withHannibal's at the gates.
- Right.- And they were traumatized.
So they had given a very punitive piece

(15:41):
to the Carthaginians.
And they said, you aregonna pay this huge fine,
and you can never make warwithout our permission.
You're gonna surrenderall of your European
and Sicily colonies.
We're gonna have it.
And you're gonna be largelyconfined to the city of Carthage
and some satellite villages.

(16:01):
- So the Romans, I'm thinkingnow of a phrase that was used
by Madeleine Albright to describe
what we had done to Saddam Hussein.
The Romans had Carthage in a box.
- Yes.- Alright.
- That was the idea.
- So may I set up thethird Punic war here,
which brings us to the event
to which this chapter is dedicated.
I'm quoting the end of everything.
After the first two Punic wars,

(16:22):
there was no call at Rome tolevel a defeated Carthage.
And yet Rome attacks Carthage again.
- Yes.- Why?
- Well, it's very ironic and tragic
because they paid theindemnity off early and-
- The Carthaginians did.- Yes.
- They were the Carthaginians.

(16:43):
- And they discovered thatwithout these overseas colonies
and given their primelocation in North Africa,
you gotta remember that this time,
north Africa was the most fertilepart of the Mediterranean,
much more fertile thanthe shores of Europe,
southern shores.
And so they sent a delegationthree years earlier

(17:03):
to Carthage to inspect what was going on,
and how did they pay the fine off.
And they were astounded.
The city had somewhat fiveto 600,000 people in it.
It was booming, it was lush.The countryside was lush.
They were confident. Andunfortunately for them, there was-

(17:25):
- And they had one of the greatports of the ancient world?
- Yes. It was the Port of Carthage,
it's about 20 miles of modern Tunis today
was starting to rival Rome again.
And yet they professedno bellicosity at all.
He said, you know, wehave no problem with you.
- We've learned our lesson.- We learned our lesson.

(17:45):
We're just a mercantile.
They were sort of refashioning themselves
from an imperial power tosomething like Singapore
or Hong Kong.- Right.
- And Rome unfortunately wasin this expansionary mood.
They had now consolidated Spain,
they had consolidated Italy,
they consolidated much of Greece,

(18:06):
and soon would conquer allthe Greece and Macedon.
And they had Cato The Elder.
And he got up, you know, legendarily
and said, Carthage must be destroyed
as the epithet of every speech.
So there was, after theinspectors came back,
they said, these people are insidious.
They may not have Hannibal,
but they're gonna rival us again.
- They're doing too well.- They're doing too well.

(18:27):
And we've gotta eliminate.
There were people in theRomans Senate that said,
no, no, don't do that.
They don't pose a threat.
And actually they're good for us
because the more that they'rethere, they put us on guard
and we don't get lack.
The Romans had this idea that affluence
and leisure make you decadent.
So just the fact thatthere are right across
the Mediterranean means itwill always be vigilant.

(18:49):
- Competition is good for us, Cato.
- Yes. Kind of whatAmericans used to think
what 19th century.
So unfortunately, they decided
that they would presentCarthage with a series
of demands that could not possibly be met
and still be autonomous.
So they sent a group fromthe Senate down to consuls.

(19:11):
Consuls were, you know,
consular army was rare,
but they brought two consuls in an army
and they landed them there.
And they said to them,you're gonna move your city
at least 15 miles from the ocean.
You're not gonna be a sea power.
And if you get mad aboutit, we are the same way.
We're Rome, we have Ostia,we're from inland. No problem.

(19:32):
But you're gonna destroythis ancient city,
and then you're gonna have tomove, lock, stock, and barrel.
And by the way, we want all of your arms.
We want your elephants,your famous elephant.
They had personal names even.
We want your elephants,
we want your siege craft,
we want your armor, we want everything.
And if you're willing to do that, we'll-

(19:53):
- You'll live.
- We'll consider that the city can live.
And they're willing todo that, not to move.
They sent a delegation.
They said, okay, here's our catapults,
here's our body armor
and we'll negotiate about the rest.
And they came back and they think,
I think we're okay.
And then they went back the next time.

(20:14):
And the Romans who were campedaway with this huge army,
he said, you know?
- you said that the army,
the Romans took an armyacross the Mediterranean at-
- To Utica right nearthem about 20 miles away.
- That was bigger than the landing force
in the invasion of Normandy.
- Yes.- It was a vast force.
- Our sources aresomewhat in disagreement,
but it could have beenanywhere from 70 to 90

(20:34):
to a hundred thousand people.
It took us all day to land 135,000.
Us being the British and the Americans.
But the Americans themselvesdid not have as many people
as the Romans landed at Utica.
- Right.- And so the Romans then
told all of the Carthaginianallies on the North coast,
are you with us or against us?

(20:54):
Because if you're with us,we're gonna destroy them.
And you're gonna be a favorite colony.
You're gonna get to share inthe spoils. We won't tax you.
You'll be the guys thatrun North Africa for it.
If you're with them, we'regonna do to them what-
And so most of 'em, not all defect.
And then the legates come back

(21:14):
and they tell the Carthaginians,
we blew it.
They're gonna kill us.
And now we have no weapons
because they were gonna make us move.
We thought if we turned in our weapons,
they might not make us move.
So they bring out a retirement Hasrbal,
who's this fanatic,

(21:34):
not the famous Hasrbal father of Hannibal,
but another named Hasrbal.
And he is a complete maniac.
And they had not trusted him.
And he says, kill all the legates,
anybody who was an appeaserwe're in full more.
We're going to re-arm. And they do.
They get all the women's hair,

(21:55):
they make catapults and they go crazy.
And then they put a siege around the city.
The problem the Romans have is,
these walls are until Constantinople,
they're the greatest wallsin the ancient world.
27 miles of fortifications.
Carthage is on a peninsula,
and it's kind of like around circle with a corridor.

(22:18):
And they've got that all area walled
and they have a fleet still.
And it's very hard to take that city.
And the Romans are notknown for their siege craft.
And they can't take it.And they lose, lose, lose.
And they get the newMidian allies to join them.
And suddenly after two years,

(22:39):
they've lost probably 20 or 30,000 Romans.
Sometimes they break into the suburbs,
but not the main walls.
And it looks like itis an ungodly disaster.
And they are very confident.
And then just in the case of Alexander,
they don't know who they're dealing with.
They bring out of thisobscurity, Scipio Aemilianus.

(23:00):
And he is the adopted nephew, grand nephew
of Scipio Africanus, the famous one.
And he is a philosopher,like Alexander the Great,
he's a man of letters.
He wouldn't do such a thing.
He has a Scipionic circle,playwrights, terrains,
he's a friend of Polybiusthe Great historian,

(23:20):
just like Alexander hasthis student of Aristotle.
So he comes and they,
he's a legate and he's been there
and he keeps saying theconsoles are incompetent
and they don't know what they're doing.
And I should be, buthe's a lowly young guy.
And they said, you take over.
So he comes, he gives a big lecture
and says, you guys are pathetic.
His soldiers, you're lazy.This is what's going to happen.

(23:43):
He has discipline.
They build a counter wall.
And over the next year he turns out to be
an authentic military genius.
He cuts off the city,he cuts off the corridor
or he cuts off all of theallies supplying them.
And he desieges them.
And they will not surrender,

(24:04):
but they still have a hopethat he's a man of principle.
And he will negotiate with 'emand he will give them terms.
And he is a killer. And hedoes not give them terms.
And he systematicallybreaks for the first time
and only time in history,the great walls of Carthage.
He gets into the city.
And then over a two week period,he is systematically kills

(24:28):
every single person that the Romans.
In fact, the thedescriptions are horrific.
- Now, are we still dealingwith half a million people
or have many of them fled by?
- Yes.- No.
It's still densely possible.- They have nowhere to go.
They're stuck and they're starving now.
- So this is an act of butchery?
- Yes.- This is like slaughtering
cattle or sheep?
- Well, our sources, wehave accounts in Diodorus

(24:48):
and somewhat in Libya, Polybiusfragments here and there.
We're told that the Roman armyhas to scrape off the bodies
because they've killed so many people.
'Cause they're in,
it's like Gaza or Fallujah or Mosul.
It's fighting in block by block.
And they're destroying to get rid

(25:08):
of the Carthaginian defenders.
They're destroying thebuildings and they topple
and then the bodies are there
and then the army can't move.
So they go, go, go untilthey get to the pinnacle,
the capital.
And there is Hasrbal and his wife.
And of course he flipsand cuts a deal with-
- I'm on your side now boys.
- Skips and he leaves his wifeand they burn themselves up.

(25:31):
And then he goes, he endsup in retirement in Italy,
one of the few people whois endures a Roman triumph
and humiliated in the parade.
And they let him live.- And they let him live.
- And then they wipe it out.
I don't think it'saccurate to say they sowed
the ground with salt as myth goes.
But they did completely declare it

(25:52):
a inhospitable place.
And it was sacrosanct to even get near it.
They took it down to the foundation.
There is no more formalPunic center of knowledge.
They had a very richagriculture agronomy literature.
It's gone. What happens?
There's remnants of peoplewho in Augustine's time,
in the fourth century,

(26:13):
fifth century and there'sstill people who they claim
speak Punic, very few of them.
And Romans under Caesar,
then they make something calledCarthago Nova, a new city.
But it's a Roman city built on the,
somewhat near the old city.
- So it's gone.- It's gone.
- It's just disappeared.- Gone. Caput.

(26:34):
- Alright. I want to get two more stories.
- Yeah.- We probably don't have time
to go into as much detail,which is heartbreaking.
- Yeah. I won't go.
- But well these becomea little bit more, so
maybe we know a littlebit more about them.
I mean, maybe listeners will know more.
Constantinople, the end of everything.
Quote, the most infamous
of wartime extinction was the destruction

(26:57):
of Byzantine Constantinopleon May 29th, 1453.
Let me just set this up to go to,
so I can do the setup,
kind of condense thematerial a little bit.
We have the emperor Constantine
in the very early fourth century,
moves the capital of the empire from Rome

(27:18):
to this city in what is now Turkey.
It's been called Byzantium.
He refound the capital as Constantinople,
walls get erected, it remains,
it becomes a Christian,Greek speaking empire
that lasts a thousand years.

(27:39):
- Beyond the west.
When the west falls a thousand years-
- A thousand years after Rome itself falls
eighth century AD, wehave the rise of Islam.
And now pressure begins
to be brought on theChristian Byzantine empire
century after century, aftercentury, after century.

(28:04):
And in 1453, on May 29th, what happens?
- Black Tuesday, I lived in Greece,
and on black Tuesday I wasawakened by my landlord
to make sure that I went to mass
or Greek Orthodox services to lament
that the emperor Constantinehad been marbleized
and saved by the archangels.

(28:25):
And he was gonna come oneday and free Constantinople.
So at around noon, the Ottomans under Met,
had brought this
- Sultan.- Yes Sultan.
And he had his father
and everybody had said they're declining.
The empire of 20 millionis now shrunk down

(28:46):
to about a million.
And there's only thecity of a million people
because of the fourthcrusade where Christians,
western Christians sacked it.
It's in decline. And weall we have to do is wait.
And it's very lucrative
because it's still a beacon
of western culture in our area.
So Venetians come in, Genovese come in,

(29:06):
they bring in crossbows,they bring in gunpowder.
It's very-
- You can trade with these people.
- Exactly.
So most Sultans had let it live
and there was actually Turkishpeople within the city.
This movement, the greatsays, no, no, no, no, no, no.
I am 19. I'm gonna destroy this.
And he systematicallyfortifies the Hell's Point,

(29:30):
the entrance in the Black Sea.
And he takes the Dardanelles,you can't go in or out.
And he squeezes it.
And when he surrounds the city,
there's only about sevento 8,000 actual combatants
of a city, that's no more than 50,000.
And he thinks it's gonna be easy.
But the walls of Constantinople,
the so-called, built bythe emperor Theodosus are,

(29:53):
they remain the mostimpressive walls in the world.
They were tri-part system.
- When you say remain, you mean today?
- Yes.- You can go to-
- Yes. You see them.
There was a mo-
- Istanbul and go ahead.
- There's a mound. There was a moat,
another mound, and thenthis so-called outer wall.
And then with turrets, 30feet, 20 to 30 feet high.

(30:14):
And then in between akilling space of a plaza
where there's nowhere to hide.
And then the massiveinner walls of 40 feet
and gates where they could retreat in.
And no one had ever taken,
no one had ever taken that.
The fourth crusade came inthrough a fluke on the seaside,
but no army had ever,it was like a triangle.

(30:34):
So there was sea on the golden horn,
sea on the, on the sea of Marmara.
And then the exposed landhad the Theodosian walls
five to six miles.
And they camp out there.
And they cannot take it.
Even with this reduce,
they have these brilliant Genovese
that are fighting forthem, some mercenaries.
They call to Christendom,
help us we're the yourChristian brotherhood.

(30:56):
And they said, nah, you're orthodox
and we're not gonna helpyou. They said they were.
- How many forces has Mehmet got?
- It's debatable, buthe's probably got 250,000
and probably at least a hundred thousand.
- On land?- Yes. A hundred.
The whole force is 250,000
and probably a hundred thousand on land.

(31:17):
And he's got at least10,000 cracked Janissaries,
the mercenary elite.
And they can't take the city.
- So that says something about those walls
that 7,000 defenders canhold off a hundred thousand.
- Yes. And they have the massive,
the so-called a Hungarian cannon
that was built by a Hungarian huge.
And they have these huge cannon

(31:39):
and they knock down holeson the walls at night.
The civilians are all mobilized.
And then Giustiniani,
the famous Genovese merchant gets wounded
and he is these-- The leader of the defenders.
- Yes. And even though he's Italian,
he's a spiritual anchor and he,
for some reason, theywithdraw the contingent
and people say, oh myGod, he's withdrawing.

(32:01):
And they panic. And whenthey leave the outer wall,
they don't do it in orderto get into the inner wall,
they leave the gates open.
And then it's every man for themselves.
And it's one of the mostheart wrenching descriptions
in Byzantine literature,
we have about 11 differentsources in Italian, Turkish,
Byzantine Greek.

(32:23):
And it's a free for all. Andthey slaughter everybody.
And 7,000 go into the great church,
that you can go to today at Hagia Sophia,
they think the archangel isgonna come down and save them.
He doesn't. The Janice series break in
and it's three days ofabsolute slaughter wreckage,

(32:45):
sort of like the fourth crusade.
But the net-
- It's more deadly.
These are being people,
civilians are being slaughtered.
- Yes. Right. And so atthe end, after three days,
Mehmet and the Sultan, his entourage,
realize that we need somebody
to run this city becausewe're not gonna destroy it
like Carthage or Thebes.
We're going to take a new DNA and use it,

(33:07):
'cause it's a beautifulcity and we'll put menoroth.
- We could use those walls.We can use that church.
- We could use those walls.
It's got the best location in the world.
We need menorets on Hagia Sophia,
we'll turn it into a mosque.
So they get a few there.
And that within 50 years,they have wiped out
what had one time
been 20 million ByzantineChristian Greek speakers

(33:29):
in the ancient home.
The Celtic Turks
who became Ottomans werenot indigenous to that area.
Something Mr. Erliantoday does not understand.
This was from time memorial,
a Greek speaking area way back.
And now it never would be again.
- Cardinal St. John HenryNewman referred in this history.

(33:52):
He referred to the Turks as the people
who had destroyed halfthe civilized world.
He was very conscious thatByzantine culture represented
half of Christendom up until it was gone.
Okay, but what is the legend
that you referred toat the very beginning?
- Constantine didn't die.- That the last emperor.

(34:14):
- Yes, Constantine.- Is turned into marble.
- Yes, he's marbleized.
And he went into a secretchamber in Hagia Sophia,
and he was lifted up into heaven
and he's in suspended animation.
And in 1920, 21, therewas the Megala Iida,
the idea that after world war I,
Greeks had bet on the winning side
and Turks had been on the losing side

(34:35):
and they were gonna reformand they got almost to Ankara.
And then the Greeks did.- Yes.
- And maybe he was gonnacome out of Marbleization
and they would have Constantinople
as the spiritual,political, religious home
of Hellenism again.
And then of course they werebetrayed by the Europeans.
They cut off and they were slaughtered.
- So we have, and that is an extinction,

(34:59):
well I suppose the mostdramatic way of describing
how completely it ended.
We still have Orthodox, westill have the Orthodox church,
we still have devout Greeks
who remember that day andshake young Victor awake
and saying, you mustremember this day with us.
You must go to Orthodox Mass.
But Hagia Sophia, which was for centuries,

(35:23):
the largest church inChristendom is now a mosque.
- Yes. And today, if you or I were to walk
along Ionia and see the ancient,
the richest part of Hellenism,
the ancient or the freeSocratic philosophers,
the lyric poets were,if we went to Didama,
or Pergamum

(35:43):
or Ephesus or Miletus, it'sOttoman Muslim culture, Turkish.
If we went to Constantinople,
especially under Mr. Erdogan,it's there's not current-
- Yes. Leader of Turkey.
- There're Christianchurches are being shut down.
And this was a UN historicalsite, Hagia Sophia,
the Great Cathedral.

(36:03):
And now it is a mosqueagain under his leadership.
- Oh, it was a museum. Andnow it's back to being a-
- He took it away from it's UN status
and made it into a mosque.
And there are no Greeks to speak of,
who speak Greek and openly are Christian
in all of what was a 20 million person.
There is no such thing as Hellenism,

(36:25):
or Greek speakers outsideof Cyprus and in Greece,
except the diaspora say inEurope, the United States.
- Okay.- He extinguished it.
- This brings us tothe last of these four,
which I'm going to try to compress.
This is like turning an oxinto a bullion cube here.
We're engaging in anactive compression Victor.

(36:46):
(Victor laughs)
Hernan Cortes lands in Mexico in 1519.
He has 500 soldiers,about a hundred sailors.
The sailors climb out of theirships and march with him.
So he has 600 men, some horses, some guns.
And two years later

(37:08):
he destroys the Aztec capital 1521.
And, well, let me quote you.
Although they had become familiar
with Aztec civilizationover the prior two years,
the Spanish almost immediately sought
to obliterate its religion,race, and culture.
In their view, they hadmore than enough reasons

(37:30):
to destroy the Aztec empire. Close quote.
Now the book describesthe way Cortes does.
He's a politician as well as a general.
And he discovers that
many of the subject tribesin the area hate the Aztecs.
So he assembles a force thathe can use against the Aztecs.
The history here is rich and fascinating.

(37:50):
And it is an astonishing story
of how this small Spanishforce conquers Mexico.
But what I want to get to,
this Spaniards had morethan enough reasons
to destroy the Aztec Empire.
Could you explain that a little bit?
This was not just raw hunger for land.

(38:13):
- No.- It wasn't just gold lust.
What else was going on?
- Unfortunately, for the(indistinct) Tenochtitlan,
the historic capital,
it had an empire of 4 million people.
And this was 1492 to1519 was only 30 years.
Not even that. So theydidn't really know what,

(38:34):
the westerners didn'tknow what was in Mexico.
They'd heard of this legendary civil.
- 1492 being Columbus.- Yes.
- First encounters the new one.
- And Cortes was a minor official.
He wasn't a general,he wasn't, he was just,
he was an entrepreneur.
And he got it in his head
that he got temporary permissionfrom the governor of Cuba
to form this tiny force and go explore.

(38:56):
But he knew that he wantedto do more than that.
So he goes in, he marchesand he's entertained.
They cannot, they think he's,
it's debatable whether theyreally think he's a God.
But they've never seenpeople with white skin.
They've never seen people with armor.
They think the horses andthe man are one person.
They're centaurs. They think the dogs are,

(39:19):
they've never seen thesemass-steeped dogs before.
They've never heard gunpowder before.
They have no idea what steel is. Steel.
They use obsidian blades.
They don't know what Toledo steel is.
They have no idea what the wheel is.
They've never seen except in toys.
So these guys come andthey think they're gods.

(39:39):
And then the more theysee, they like to eat,
they like to drink, they like to have sex,
they bleed and they start to get wary.
So there's a faction
and on the Noche Triste,the sad night of sorrows,
they almost get completely slaughtered.
And they're chased out.
They come back with more soldier.

(40:01):
Never at one time did heever have in one place
more than 1500 soldiers.
Unfortunately for the Aztecs,
they were not dealing withPlymouth rock and pilgrims.
They were dealing withthe most warlike deadly
Europeans in the world.
They were dealing with the Spanish
who had just finished the Reconquista
and fought for 300 years against Islam.

(40:24):
They had been fightingduring the Reformation field.
They had been in Italy. They had been-
- By the way, both ofthose are religious wars.
- Yes. And the people who came
with Cortes were someof the most brilliant,
Pedro Alvarado, people like that.
Some of the most skilled soldiers.

(40:44):
And they had horses andthey loved to fight.
And they were accompanied bya zeal that was in reaction.
It was just the very beginningof the counter reformation.
And they felt that their religionwas going to be questioned
unless they got souls.
They come here and they say, oh my God,
25,000 people are being sacrificed,

(41:06):
human sacrifices on the great pyramid.
- Now this, by the way, thishas become a matter that
intrudes into political correctness.
- Yes.- And I'm, lord knows,
I'm not an expert on this,
but in my little lifetime we were taught
that the Aztecs engaged inwidespread human sacrifice.

(41:28):
Then we have a revisionistschool that says,
well no, wait a minute.
The only authority we onthat is the Spanish documents
and they clearlyoverstated what was taking.
And now it's my understanding
that the archeologists arediscovering more and more
and more evidence
that it was indeed not justoccasional human sacrifice,

(41:49):
but a regular feature.
A daily feature.- Yes.
- Of, I mean, it's almost asif in the island of Manhattan,
every single day therewere some human sacrifices
at the top of the Empire State Building.
- Yes. Well, the whole we know.
- Is that right or?- No, It's not.
- And you insist on that in this book.
- Yes. Well, you look atcontemporary archeological reports
that confirm what Bernal Diaz said

(42:11):
or Prescott said in the 19thcentury, great historian.
But more importantly thereare pictorial skull racks
that can be,
that they have numerical records.
And we know that lake,
the lake that surroundsit's an island civilization
Tenochtitlan was pollutedbecause of a festival

(42:33):
where they may have sacrificed 20 or 30
or 40,000 within a four day period.
It was something like Auschwitz.
And they threw the bodies into the,
so I don't think anybody object challenge.
What they challenge is,
there are anthropologists that say,
well, there was no large herbivore.
So there was no source ofprotein for this sophisticated,

(42:54):
systematic, centrally planned economy.
And they were very architecturallyadvanced astronomically.
And they needed in this very urban society
of a quarter million people.
And the Spanish said it wasmore impressive than Venice.
- Right.- Venice at its height,
it had a very sophisticated system of law.

(43:14):
- No, but the Spanish are not saying
these people are barbarians?
- No, they're not.
They're saying that they arevery sophisticated people,
which means that we have,they're even more dangerous
because they have spread three,
or four things that we think are terrible.
They're cannibals.
And we know that they did eat portions
of the sacrificial, theyengage in ritual sodomy,

(43:35):
which we don't think is permissible.
And they sacrifice humans.
And so it's our duty asemissaries of Christianity
defined as Catholicism of theSpanish Reconquista period.
To kill people, to save them.
We've gotta kill thepeople who are doing this.
And then we are gonnasurround all of the people

(43:57):
around the lake of the empirewho resent being harvested.
When they lose, war isnot fought to take land.
War is fought to get captives.So-called flower wars.
So you don't try to killsomebody, you knock them down
and tie them up and you drag them.
And then the guy that has themost captives is very famous.
And then they're brought up to Tempo Major

(44:20):
and they're sacrificed.- Right.
- And the Spanish find this horrific,
but they also discoverthat it's in their interest
because they're not, whenyou get Spanish Toledo steel
male helmet,
especially if you're mounted Toledo blade,
arquebus, gunpowder.
- They can't capture you.
- They can't capture. Andthey're trying to capture.

(44:41):
They're not trying to,
if they would just swarm them
and cut their throat, they might've won.
- Right.- But they're trying
to knock them down and talk.
And then they, final thing about it is
they don't know who Cortes is.
He's more gifted thanAlexander in some ways.
He's more gifted than men.
He's probably moregifted than even Scipio.

(45:03):
And he, nobody knows that.
He's never had any experience in this.
And it turns out he is anatural military genius.
And every time they should have been
extinguished, they lose.
They've got, they're sick, he comes
- He finds a way out.- and he finds a way out.
He's an authentic militarygenius. And he's ruthless. And-
- So Victor on the Spaniards

(45:26):
wipe out the Aztecs.
To what extent, I'm just trying to think,
to what extent
is that an annihilation ofthe kind that takes place?
In the other examples we have, you know,
I have a Mexican friend who said,
well, just look around Mexico City.
You see very few peopleof Spanish descent.

(45:48):
- Yes.- And millions of people
of Indian- Yes.
or Aztec descent.
They didn't destroy-- Aztec is a key word.
- Oh, is that so? And andthe other thing is there is,
I checked on this, I went online,
there is still a duke de Montezuma.
- Yes.
- In Spain today. Theytook the grandchildren
of the last emperor ofthe Aztecs back to Spain.
- They did.- And honored them by making,

(46:09):
giving and ennobling them.
Okay, so.- So.
- What gets destroyed? What is ended?
- Nahuatl, the languageexists in Mexico today.
I have been in my hometown
where people who've come from Mexico
and Spanish speakerscannot understand them.
So, but Aztecs as a city,

(46:30):
as a unique culture amongindigenous people is destroyed.
So when you talk to somebody
and you say, well, ifsomebody says to you,
the San Diego Aztecs, theynever say the San Diego,
you know, the sports team, college team.
They never say the SanDiego Tlaxcalans or Toltecs
because why do they not do that?

(46:51):
- Couldn't spell itapart from anything else.
- Because first of all,we have a chronicle
of this majestic civilization
and how advanced they were,
as I said, an architecturetown planning, sanitation,
very sophisticated.
But they don't wanna talk aboutthe downside of cannibalism,
human sacrifice.
But the point is, if wewere transported to 1521,

(47:13):
Cortes would've never been able
to defeat them without thehelp of the Tlaxcalans,
he had and their allies.
He must have had at least at,he drew on an army of at over
that two and a half yearperiod of over 200,000.
And they probably lost.
- 'Cause the surrounding tribeswere tired of being raided

(47:34):
for captives who would be sacrificed.
- As soon as the word got outthat Cortes was back again,
that he was not annihilated.
He came back. And this timehe had brigandines or boats
and he would navigate.
And that combined amphibious
and land attack on thecauseways and by land.
And he'd figured out how to beat 'em.

(47:54):
And he gave them an ultimatumthat I wanna save your city
and make it the capital of New Spain.
But if you don't, I'm gonna destroy it.
That word went out
and all of a sudden these fickle allies,
it sometimes it helped.
They masked. I said, my God,you're going to destroy.
- We have a moment here.
- And I can pay them backfor all the things they did.
And they ran wild.

(48:15):
In fact, he says in his letters,
and so does contemporarysources that he regretted
that once he unleashed these people,
they butchered and butchered and butchered
and they destroyed Aztecscentral civilization.
So yes, there are people
who survive the Holocaustand that's what it was.

(48:35):
But centrally plannedcivilization with a precinct class
and urban center and(indistinct) no, it's now Spain
and the Spanish build on top of it,
right on top of Tenochtitlan.
And they use the veryfoundations of the destroy.
They destroy it down tothe foundations. It's gone.

(48:56):
And there is no formal Aztec culture.
There are indigenous people of course,
'cause they form about1% of the population
in what is Mexico, Spanish.
- And you can go to theZocalo in Mexico City today.
And on the very side of the Templo Mayor,
the great Aztec pyramid is agigantic Spanish cathedral.

(49:17):
- Yes.- Which says
among other things, what itsays is, we won and you lost.
- Yes. And they wereactually given special cons.
There were concessionsgiven from the Spanish
to the Flaxcawans.
And they honored them.
In other words, that youare not gonna be subject
to the same degree of subservience,
of the scattered remnants
of anybody who fought for the Aztec.

(49:40):
- I see. Last questions.
You've got a number of themesof relevance to us today.
One theme here is thecapacity of the doomed
for self delusions.
Thebans fail to grasp,
the military revolution that'staken place under Philip.
They failed to grasp,
even though they have some intelligence,
they have reasons to question

(50:00):
their own judgment of Alexander's ability.
They say no, the Carthaginians fail
to grasp the change in Roman power
and determination over two centuries.
The Byzantines cannotbring themselves to imagine
that a city that has lasteda thousand years could fall,
let alone fall on a day.
The end of everything.

(50:20):
I'm quoting you, thegullibility and indeed ignorance
of contemporary leadersabout the intent, hatred,
ruthlessness, and capability
of their enemies are not surprising
given unchanging human nature.
- Yes.- At the beginning
of the program,
you talked about the plight of the Greeks,

(50:41):
you talked about threats against Israel.
What are Americans to make of this?
- Well, I think we should takethese lessons very seriously,
both from the point of theattacker and the attack.
Because you mentionedsome of the commonalities
at the end of the book,
I give you a kind of acommon denominator blueprint.
And people who have not been defeated,
or accustomed to a period toa position of superiority,

(51:05):
culturally, militarily,
they think that they'reinvulnerable forever.
And they're not aware ofinsidious decline Thebes
that Alexander took is notthe Thebes of a Epaminondas.
And yet the walls look asstout as they ever were.
And the people are the same, they think,
same thing with Carthage,
the same thing with Constantinople.

(51:27):
They said nobody's evergonna get through the walls.
They tried just early, you know,
50 years early, they couldn't do it.
We're invulnerable.
And people said, well,we're not the same people.
They don't think thatanybody would ever dream
of extinguishing them.
We've been here a thousand years.
We're the children of Oedipus.

(51:47):
To note Shitlan, we've been here.
This is the pinnacle of ourcivilization, et cetera.
Constantinople, this is the city of
of Constantine and Justinian.
We can't fall. So there's a on reality.
And then they have noidea who they're facing.
They have no idea what'sin the mind of Cortes.
They have no idea.
- Do we have any idea what's in the mind

(52:08):
of Xi Jinping, of Vladimir Putin?
- We have no idea.
We think that he, wethink that Xi thinks as,
I think George H.W. Bush,George W. Bush, Bill Clinton,
Barack Obama, all bipartisan,
they all thought that he is so impressed
with Western civilization.
He's globalizing, he'schanged his economy.

(52:29):
Yes, he's rough around their edges,
but our leisure, our affluence,
globalization will acculturate them
and hit China will take their place
among the family of nations.
- 'Cause of course theywant to be like us.
- They want us. And theydon't understand that
that is exactly what theByzantine said about the Ottomans.
That's exactly what peoplesaid about Alexander.

(52:51):
That's exactly what theysaid about the Carthage.
And these people don't understand.
So in our, whether it's Putin,
so when Putin says I'm gonnause nuclear weapons if I lose
and there's been about 17 threats
from high members of the Russian military,
high members of the Russianparliament, such as it is,

(53:15):
and Putin himself tactical nuclear even.
We say this is crazy.
They would never do that.
We never say, well, if I was going to lose
and be humiliated, if I wantedUkraine, the bread basket
of the old Soviet Unionand ports on the Black Sea
and a window right under Europe,
I'd be willing to doa lot of stuff for it.

(53:36):
- Right.- And I've done so.
- There's an unreal reality.
And then on the part of the attacker,
they need to understand whatthe attacker is capable of.
I just add one quick thing.
- Yep.- I also mentioned
the serial threats thatChina has given Taiwan.
And they even made a brieffilm about nuking Japan

(53:57):
if it interfered calling the war criminal.
- The Chinese have.- Chinese commerce.
- And they've distributed that in China.
- Yes, yes. Just like Erdogan has said
that he was gonna sendmissiles and destroy Athens.
He was gonna destroy Israel.
He was going, he said,
I'm gonna do the samething to the Armenians.
And he just ethnically cleanseda hundred thousand of them.

(54:17):
I'm gonna do the samething as my grandfathers.
They had the solution.
So these people areserious when they say this,
but I had one line in the epilogue
to that effect of what China,
and that's a very bigmarket, the Chinese market.
And I've had some, a lot ofsuccess with other books.
- Victor one other of the-
- But anyway, just to to-
- Yeah go ahead. I'm sorry.
- I was given notice bythe Chinese publisher.

(54:40):
I had to take out that line orthere would be no book sales
and everything would be canceled.
No Chinese translation in the epilogue.
- So they are serious.- And so I didn't do it.
And there's not gonna be a book in China.
That book will never be in China.
- Oh well, alright. Yes.
You don't think somebody will,
okay, well that's a separate conversation.

(55:00):
Another of the themesthat strikes me here,
war changes things.
I'm quoting you again,the end of everything.
Once Alexander grasped thefull extent of Theban hatred,
he concluded that onlydestroying the city,
rather than merely capturingit would end Greek opposition
to Macedonia.
Cortes decided there was no way

(55:20):
to root out the imperial systemwithout knocking the Aztecs
infrastructure down upon them.
Such revised decisions are common
throughout military history.
Near the end of World War II,
US Army Air Corps general Curtis LeMay
decided the only way
to destroy Japan'sdispersed manufacturing,
which was deeply embedded withinthe neighborhoods of Tokyo,

(55:42):
was to ignite the city.
And we get the firebombing of Tokyo.
Again, war changes things.
So we are supplying the Ukrainians
with weapons of material.
We have two carrier groupsin the Eastern Mediterranean

(56:06):
to support the Israelis.
And we have our forces disposed,
our naval forces disposed in the Pacific.
We don't know where ourattack submarines are
because there's no reporting on that.
And there shouldn't be.
But we're concerned about Taiwan.

(56:27):
We're very concerned about Taiwan.
What are the lessons of theend of everything for Americans
as we face trouble?
Military challenges on three fronts.
- If we would look atourselves dispassionately

(56:47):
and not say we're Americans,
we're always number (indistinct).
We would say the following,
we've never had in terms ofthe percentage of GDP debt
or in actual numbers,
except for a brief period inWorld War $35 trillion we owe.
And we are borrowing 1trillion every hundred days.
It's completely unsustainable.
We've never had the military admit to us

(57:12):
that it is short 40,000 troops
and they don't know whereto get them at a time
when the American populationhas never been larger.
- The army missed its recruitinggoals last year by 10%.
- Yes.
- And that was not the first year.
- No. And we have had a porous border.
We have never had no borderat all. It ceased to exist.
We've had 10 million peoplewalk across without audit.

(57:34):
We've never seen anything like it.
We have the largest numberof foreign born residents,
both in numbers 50 million
and in percentages ofthe resident population,
we've ever had.
At a time when we haven't lost confidence
in the melting pot.
Okay. We've had high crime areasbefore, high crime periods.

(57:55):
We've never had a periodin American history
where our elites say thatthe crime is not crime.
It's a social construct.
And you have to let somebody,a violent criminal out
the same day that he's arrested.
That's a new theory,critical legal theory, okay?
We're a multiracial society
and we're the only successfulmultiracial democracy.

(58:16):
We know that it depends on relegating
your tribal affiliationsto the general idea
of being an American.
We are regressing into tribalism.
So when you look atall of these challenges
and you look at the symptoms,
we have never doneanything like Afghanistan,
just completely flee andleave $50 billion in weaponry

(58:37):
to a terrorist organization
that's selling all over the globe.
Never had that before.
We have never had sinceWorld War II, a Verdun,
we have passed the numbers ofdead and wounded in Verdun.
We're above 700,000 wounded,
missing or killed Russians and Ukrainians.

(58:58):
And we're headed to Psalm territory
and nobody has any idea how to stop this.
Russia is not gonna beable to take all of Ukraine
and we are not gonna be able
to get back the Donbass in Crimea.
So it's gonna continue.Nobody has an answer.
Nobody takes serious
that the Chinese would be crazy enough
to go across the TaiwaneseStrait and try to take that city.

(59:21):
They say they can do it.
So my point is, never have we been faced
with such existentialchallenges in the post-war here
at a period when we are so weak,
or at least we we're not naturally weak.
Our Constitution as thereare natural resources,
we lead the world.
But when you look at crime,when you look at debt,

(59:43):
when you look at theborder, when you look at
our universities, whichwere the envy of the world,
they were the engine thatdrove American culture
and power and technology.
And they're in crisis,sciences in crisis, so.
- So we're like Thebans,we're not the same people.
- We're not the same people,we're not the same people
that maybe we have it in us,
we're not the same peoplewho stormed Omaha Beach

(01:00:05):
when the first 2000people were mowed down,
they just kept coming.
- Victor, I wanna playa brief video excerpt.
You both work here, you'reamong the intellectuals
who are, you're off stage,
the members of Congress are on stage,
but they're always turningaround saying, Blumenthal,
did I get that right?
Bridge, what about this?Is this town serious?

(01:00:25):
Do you feel a sense ofseriousness descending
that is adequate to the moment?
- Absolutely not.- Absolutely not.
- Absolutely not.- We're in a world of warfare
and we're not on a war footing.
- Victor,
Washington is,
there's no sense ofseriousness in Washington.

(01:00:46):
- No. We think that
the most important thingis canceling student debt,
or an inaugurating new woke programs.
But it's gonna take us seven years
to replace the Javelin Anti-Tank weapons.
We're short, 155 millimeter.That was our signature.
We were the biggest producer

(01:01:07):
of shells in the world.
- Victor, can I ask one?
The book is called "TheEnd of Everything,"
and you describe four episodes,all of which take place,
the most recent of which takesplace about four centuries
before the invention of nukes.
- Yeah.- So let me quote if I may,

(01:01:29):
here's a quotation from Clausevitz,
who saw the Napoleonic Warsas a young Prussian officer
and meditated on military theory
and the rest of his life.
Here's Clausevitz. Thishas always bothered me.
If one side uses forcewithout compunction,

(01:01:51):
that side will force theother to follow suit.
Even the most civilized of peoples
can be fired with passionatehatred of each other.
The thesis must be repeated.
War is an act of force
and there is no logicallimit to the application
of that force.
Thebes wiped out.

(01:02:15):
Carthage leveled,
Constantinople, civilization blotted out,
Aztecs, gone.
And now we have nuclear weapons.
- Among other things. Wehave AI, we have bio weapons,

(01:02:35):
apparently that an accidentalrelease from the Wuhan lab.
- So should we,
what I'm desperate to dohere is to end on an upbeat,
if I can find one anywhere.
Should we take encouragementfrom the long period
of the Cold War whenwe had nuclear weapons,
but managed to defeat Sovietcommunism without any use,

(01:02:58):
without warfare, without a major war,
without a major confrontation?
Should we be cheered by that?
- We should learn-- Or are we doomed?
- No, we're not doomed.- Alright.
- We need to learn from wise men
like Franklin Roosevelt, HarryTruman, Dwight Eisenhower,
John Kennedy, even to anextent, Lyndon Johnson,
Richard Nixon, and the rest of 'em,

(01:03:19):
they all had one thing.
- You're not gonna mention Ronald Reagan?
- Yeah, I'm getting to him.- Oh, all right.
- And in a period of doubt
where people had questioned
their so-called Neanderthalapproach to human nature
that they believed the deterrence
and not dialogue or the UN kept the peace.
Along came Ronald Reagan
and he said the, he basically said,

(01:03:41):
the degree which we are safe
is the degree to which we help our friends
and tell our enemies to becareful because we will defend us
and we are gonna havethe capability to do it.
Deterrence, deterrence, deterrence,
which is just a Latin word
to scare somebody off fromdoing something stupid.
And if you don't believe indeterrence, then as Vegeta said,

(01:04:03):
if you want peace, prepare for war.
If you want war, prepare for peace.
- Victor, will you close our conversation
by reading a passagefrom Victor Davis Hanson,
the author of "The End of Everything,"
reading a passage from"The End of Everything?"
- Well thank you to thedegree that I can read well.
The fate of Thebans,Carthaginians, Byzantines

(01:04:24):
and Aztecs remind us that
what cannot possibly happencan indeed on occasion occur
when war on leashes,timeless human passions
and escalation ratherthan reduction in violence
becomes a role of conflict.
In this regard, we should remind ourselves
that we really do not know the boundaries

(01:04:44):
of what may follow from the dispute
in the Ukraine or a standoff over Taiwan
or strikes on nuclear facilities in Iran.
Like their predecessors,
modern attackers will on occasions
insist on impossible term.
They will sometimes becomefurther enraged by prolonged
and toxic resistance.
The targeted will believethat doomed resistance

(01:05:06):
may not be so impossible,
that their defenses are underestimated
while there are enemies,powers are exaggerated
and that reason rules war.
And so they will hopethat even their own defeat
cannot possibly entailthe end of everything.
- Victor Davis Hanson,
author of "The End ofEverything." Thank you.
- Thank you very much for having me.

(01:05:27):
- For "Uncommon Knowledge,"
the Hoover Institution and Fox Nation,
I'm Peter Robinson.
(gentle music)