RALEIGH – Given a choice between going out in a blaze of glory and achieving a quiet but significant victory, I’ll take the latter every time.
It’s not that I shrink from a rhetorical fight, or think that the only campaigns worth waging are those destined to succeed. But I have found that people who relish the idea of the glorious defeat – who imagine themselves as defiant captains going down with their ships or as heroic martyrs to a doomed but noble cause – tend to be seekers of acclaim, not seekers of truth.
They are, in other words, egotists and narcissists for whom the cause isn’t really the point. They are not true activists or philanthropists for liberty.
When I meet them, I encourage them to consider the story of Hannibal Barca, the Carthaginian general who despite his evident gifts led his country to a glorious defeat against the rising power of Rome.
The Carthage of Hannibal’s day was a commercial culture with trade, interests, and military outposts throughout the Mediterranean world. Originally settled by Phoenician traders from modern-day Lebanon and Syria, Carthage had by the time of its wars with Rome (the 3rd and 2nd centuries BC) established colonies and trading posts in North Africa, Spain, France, Sicily, and elsewhere. It came in conflict with an expansionist Roman Republic in southern Italy and Sicily.
Hannibal staged his famous transalpine invasion of Italy during the second war between the two powers, in the late 3rd century. Although Hannibal won most of his battles with Roman legions during his 15-year-stay in the Italian peninsula – most famously at the battles of Trebia, Lake Trasimene, and Cannae – his victories did not bring the war to a successful close. Finally, Hannibal was forced to return to North Africa to defend the city of Carthage from Roman attack, and was defeated by the Roman commander Scipio at the battle of Zama in 202 BC.
The usual explanations of Hannibal’s strategic failure in Italy are that he lost too many elephants and siege weapons during his initial crossing of the Alps, that he couldn’t supply his army because of Rome’s scorched-earth Fabian tactics, or that he lacked sufficient allies and resources to overcome the strength of Roman numbers.
None of these constituted the real problem, however. As the noted historian Richard Gabriel argued in a recent issue of Military History, what Hannibal really lacked was not opportunity, resources, or skill but an accurate understanding of his adversaries. Reared within and accustomed to a Mediterranean culture strongly influenced by the Greeks, Hannibal assumed that the Romans shared Hellenistic assumptions about the conduct and purposes of warfare. But they didn’t.
Hellenistic states went to war with some frequency, but they rarely went to total war. In most cases, military conflicts were relatively short, with decisive battles prompting losers to seek terms. “The expectation that wars were ultimately settled by negotiation had become the norm in Hellenistic warfare,” Gabriel wrote, “and it is reasonable to surmise that Hannibal accepted it as well.”
Hannibal assumed that by winning decisive victories such as Trebia or Cannae, he had “made his point” to the Romans, who would then sue for peace and negotiate terms. Instead, every time the Carthaginians and their allies won a battle, the Romans would get madder and more defiant. “The Romans considered Hellenes soft and corrupt,” Gabriel wrote, “and their response to Hannibal’s victories was to raise more legions and keep on fighting.”
Hannibal passed up an obvious opportunity to march to Rome itself in 218 BC and truly win the war. It is likely that he thought a siege of Rome to be an unnecessary expenditure of wealth and manpower, since the Romans would surely come to the negotiating table after his earlier victories. It was a disastrous decision that led his country to glorious defeat.
To assume that your rival shares your own assumptions and criteria for success is to court Hannibal’s fate. No thanks. In the rhetorical and political contest for freedom, I prefer to win the war, not just to plant a few spectacular battle flags along a well-traveled road to serfdom.
Hood is president of the John Locke Foundation.