Theatres of War: Mendelsohn

¶ … Theatres of War," Daniel Mendelsohn points out how political Conservatives Donald Kagan and Victor David Hanson find in Greek history, especially Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War, an argument on behalf of "plain hawkishness, a distaste for compromise and negotiation when armed conflict is possible." These present-day views on Greece demand a certain degree of rewriting of Thucydides. Mendelsohn explains how Kagan recognizes the opportunities presented by the new world order for revisionism or rereading the Peloponnesian War to shed light on current events. At the beginning of his book, Peloponnesian War (2003), Kagan informs readers that he wants Thucydides' work to "meet the needs of readers in the 21st century" and will refrain from drawing parallels between the ancient event and any modern counterpart because "an uninterrupted account will better allow readers to draw their own conclusions."

Unfortunately, notes Mendelsohn, Kagan's report may be "uninterrupted," but it does not allow people to draw their own conclusions. Readers tend to come away from Kagan's interpretation of the Peloponnesian War with an entirely different view than the one by Thucydides. Adds Mendelsohn: "Unsurprisingly, Kagan's view could be taken to support a very twenty-first-century project indeed: a unilateralist policy of preemptive war."

Kagan's perspective on events and personalities originally suggests a commendable interest to see the war with a fresh and unsentimental eye. However, it is not long before it is clearly recognized that Kagan represents the Ollie North take on the Peloponnesian War: "If we'd only gone in there with more triremes," he seems to be saying, "we would have won that sucker." Similarly, during the war in Afghanistan, Hanson uses Thucydides (although inaccurately) to support the battle cry.

Mendelsohn's essay and the idea of revising history raises certain questions. Is it possible to use the past to predict the future? Is it possible to have a correct idea of what has happened in the past? Both of these concerns deal with the idea of objectivity. Regardless of how objective anyone, even a historian, wishes to be, personal values, interests, biases will somehow to a varying degree be a factor in the overall analysis. Notes historian Howard Zinn in his books Declarations of Independenc (1991) and The Politics of History (1990):

Objectivity is not possible if it means not taking a stand, not having a point-of-view. Because writing or teaching history inevitably involves choosing from a great mass of historical data what you will present, and your choice depends on your view of what is important to present, and that is affected by your social stance, how you think about race or class or war, etc. Therefore, to claim objectivity is not quite honest, because you can't help being subjective, so you may as well declare yourself openly, which allows your reader/listener to judge what you say, to measure that against other viewpoints and decide for himself/herself.