“But, we also see in this chapter a recurring, universally human theme across time and space.
The doomed, at the brink of civilizational destruction, have an attitude partly born of hubris
and partly of naivete, perhaps best summed up as ‘It cannot happen to us.’ ”
and,
“Epilogue: HOW THE UNIMAGINABLE BECOMES THE INEVITABLE
1. As a general rule, the besieged vainly counted on help that rarely appeared — especially if they were seen as likely to lose.
2. Those surrounded looked to their own bastions and their past impregnability, rather than assessing realistically the unique and existential danger below the wall.
3. Prior discord often explained the vulnerability of the besieged, and its contribution to defeat.
4. The defenders rarely equate their present existential peril with the enemy military genius who reduced them to such straits. Nor can they accurately assess in comparison the mediocrity of their own leadership.
5. The targeted never fully grasped that the antebellum negotiations and diplomacy that had allowed a final and brief respite no longer applied, either because politics had changed in the powerful party, or the technological and organizational capabilities of the enemy had evolved.
6. The effort to destroy rather than merely defeat a trapped enemy ensures unprecedented savagery. And the zeal necessary to resist overwhelming odds eventually ensures a level of counter-violence that seals the fate of the defeated.
7. Once the victors are unleashed — and they always are — their commanders post facto express regret over their nihilistic cruelty, without any sense that they would do anything differently in the future. Education and pretenses of high culture empowered rather than limited the retribution of the conquerors.” – Victor Davis Hanson, from The End of Everything: How Wars Descend Into Annihilation (2024)