victorhanson.com

VDH was awesome. I used parts of his speech in class last week.

Thanks for the tip on Kaplan’s BookTV chillin’

Saturday, October 15 at 1:50 pm

Monday, October 17 at 1:15 am

I finally received my copy of The Economist last Friday. The review of “Imperial Grunts” was rather horrid. However, Kaplan’s own words refuted much of the commetary in that review as well as that of the Nation (and I’m sure many more to come).

As a side, did anyone see Victor Davis Hanson speak on the Pelopenisian wars last week? His new book (”A War Like No Other”) should be a great read…

“Defending International Normas: The Role of Obligation, Material Interest, and Perception in Decision Making,” by Richard Herrmann and Vaughn Shannon, International Organization, Vol 55 No 3, Summer 2001, pp 621-654, http://journals.cambridge.org/ac…

Kaplan does a poor job of distinguishing between the stories people tell one another — about who they are, where they come from, and why other groups are good or evil – and the primordial, or unalterable, character of identities. He’s particularly given to simplistic generalizations (”Western religions emphasize ideas and deeds, Eastern religions emphasize beauty and magic” …this is just nonsensical) of the kind that are quaint in late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century travelogues (which I used to collect) but that no serious writer should be making in this day and age.

The Balkan conflict was not the inevitable result of deeply rooted ethnic hatreds, but of opportunism, greed, miscalculation, and simple thuggery.

Could you explain your view of Balkan Ghosts? It was a turning-point book for me, that lead me to Black Lamb and Grey Falcon and away from the material I had been reading.

But I don’t think this accounts for all of the negative reaction; there are problems with his work, some of which are deeply rooted. Subject for another conversation sometime, which will probably be more productive when I’ve actually read the book :-).

And yeah, on the wish list. Why not? I didn’t read Guns Germs and Steel until someone gave it to me.

A key problem, for example, is how will the West – not just the US – deal with the coming energy crisis? Last month’s publication Britain’s Energy Future recommends self-sufficiency instead:
“1. A move from oil dependency will result in a phasing out of the military “Ëœkhaki cost’ of defending oil and gas supplies of around $150 billion a year;
2. It will also include a phasing out of an annual cost of price fluctuations that is in the region of $400 billion a year for the global economy;
3. In addition to the phasing out of the combined military cost and impact of oil price fluctuations of close to $1 trillion a year, the global economy would have the benefit both of these resources and of an environment in which it was possible to plan business on the basis of stable electricity and fuel transport prices.”