Editing Victor Davis Hanson (section)

===''Carnage and Culture''===
{{external media| float = right| video1 = [https://www.c-span.org/video/?166237-1/carnage-culture Presentation by Hanson on ''Carnage and Culture'', September 15, 2001], [[C-SPAN]]|}}
Hanson wrote the 2001 book ''Carnage and Culture'' (Doubleday), published in Great Britain and the Commonwealth countries as ''Why the West Has Won'', in which he argued that the military dominance of [[Western culture|Western civilization]], beginning with the ancient Greeks, results from certain fundamental aspects of [[Western Hemisphere|Western]] culture, such as consensual government, a tradition of self-critique, secular rationalism, religious tolerance, individual freedom, free expression, free markets, and individualism. Hanson's emphasis on cultural exception rejects racial explanations for Western military preeminence and disagrees with the environmental or geographical determinist explanations such as those put forth by [[Jared Diamond]] in ''[[Guns, Germs, and Steel]]'' (1997).<ref>Victor Davis Hanson
[http://www.nationalreview.com/article/214502/decline-and-fall-victor-davis-hanson Decline And Fall: A review of ''Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed''],  ''National Review Magazine'', May 20, 2005</ref>{{non-primary source needed|date=October 2023}}

The American military officer [[Robert L. Bateman]], in a 2007 article on the [[Media Matters for America]] website, criticized Hanson's thesis and argued that Hanson's point about Western armies preferring to seek out a decisive battle of annihilation is rebutted by the [[Second Punic War]] in which [[Roman Republic|Roman]] attempts to annihilate the [[Carthaginians]] instead led to the Carthaginians annihilating the Romans at the [[Battle of Cannae]].<ref name="Bateman">{{cite web | last =  Bateman | first = Robert | title = Bateman on Hanson, Round 1: Cannae, 2 August 216 B.C. | publisher = Media Matters | date= October 29, 2007 | url = http://mediamatters.org/research/2007/10/29/bateman-on-hanson-round-1-cannae-2-august-216-b/141508#2 | access-date = 2016-08-24}}</ref> Bateman argued that Hanson was wrong about Western armies' common preferences in seeking out a battle of annihilation and argued that the Romans defeated the Carthaginians only via the [[Fabian strategy]] of keeping their armies in being and not engaging [[Hannibal]] in battle.<ref name="Bateman"/> In a response published on his personal website, Hanson argued that Bateman had misunderstood and misrepresented his thesis. Hanson stated that in the Second Punic War, the Romans initially sought out decisive battles but were reluctantly forced to resort to a Fabian strategy after several defeats at the hands of a tactical genius until they had rebuilt their military capacity, when they ultimately defeated Hannibal in decisive battles. He also said that since the Carthaginians themselves had adopted many "Western" methods of warfare from the Greeks, Hannibal, too, was keen to seek decisive battles.<ref>{{cite web | last =  Hanson | first = Victor Davis | title = Squaring Off: Part II | publisher = Victor Davis Hanson's Private Papers | date= November 5, 2007 | url = http://victorhanson.com/wordpress/?p=5416 | access-date = 2016-08-24}}</ref>