Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been reading John David Lewis’s Nothing Less than Victory: Decisive Wars and the Lessons of History. This is exceedingly good news.
Dr. Lewis’s book (three chapters of which originally were published in The Objective Standard) is a masterpiece of historic and philosophic essentialization and integration. Among other things, it concretizes the importance of moral certainty in war, the importance of moral certainty in one’s cause, and the importance of crushing the enemy’s morale and will to fight. As Daniel Wahl writes in his review of the book:
Lewis examines six major wars, devoting one chapter each to the Greco-Persian wars, the Theban wars, the Second Punic War, the campaigns of the Roman emperor Aurelian, the American Civil War, and two chapters to World War II. He shows how the Greeks defeated the mighty Persian empire, how the Thebans shattered the mirage of Spartan invulnerability, how the Romans swiftly ended a long war by attacking the enemy’s home front, how Aurelian battled enemies on many fronts to reunite Rome, how William Tecumseh Sherman marched through the American South and destroyed the Confederate will to fight, and how America achieved a permanent victory over Japan. While recounting the key events of each conflict, Lewis draws several important, universally applicable lessons. . . .
