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lavishly through the Western marriage of capitalism, finance, and sophisticated logistics. By the same token, Europeans have been quick to alter tactics, steal foreign breakthroughs, and borrow inventions when in the marketplace of ideas their own traditional tactics and arms have been found wanting. Western capitalists and scientists alike have been singularly pragmatic and utilitarian, with little to fear from religious fundamentalists, state censors, or stern cultural conservatives.
    Western warring is often an extension of the idea of state politics, rather than a mere effort to obtain territory, personal status, wealth, or revenge. Western militaries put a high premium on individualism, and they are often subject to criticism and civilian complaint that may improve rather than erode their war-making ability. The idea of annihilation, of head-to-head battle that destroys the enemy, seems a particularly Western concept largely unfamiliar to the ritualistic fighting and emphasis on deception and attrition found outside Europe. There has never been anything like the samurai, Maoris, or “flower wars” in the West since the earliest erosion of the protocols of ancient Greek hoplite battle. Westerners, in short, long ago saw war as a method of doing what politics cannot, and thus are willing to obliterate rather than check or humiliate any who stand in their way.
    At various periods in Western history the above menu has not always been found in its entirety. Ideas from consensual government to religious tolerance are often ideal rather than modal values. Throughout most of Western civilization there have been countless compromises, as what was attained proved less than what Western culture professed as the most desirable. The Crusaders were religious zealots; many early European armies were monarchical with only occasional oversight by deliberative bodies. It is hard to see in Cortés’s small band religion and politics as entirely separate. Not a phalangite in Alexander’s army voted him general, much less king. During the sixth to ninth centuries A.D. there is little evidence that Western forces always enjoyed absolute technological superiority over their foes. German tribesmen were ostensibly as individualistic as Roman legionaries.
    Yet, abstract ideas must often be seen in the context of their times: while Alexander’s Macedonians were revolutionaries who had destroyed Greek liberty, there was no escaping their ties with the Hellenic tradition. That shared heritage explains why soldiers in the phalanx, commanders in the fields, and generals at Alexander’s table all voiced their ideas with a freedom unknown in the Achaemenid court. While the Inquisition was an episode of Western fanaticism and at times unrestrained by political audit, the tally of its entire bloody course never matched the Aztec score of corpses in a mere four days at the Great Temple to Huitzilopochtli in 1487. Even on the most controversial of issues like freedom, consensual government, and dissent, we must judge Western failings not through the lenses of utopian perfectionism of the present, but in the context of the global landscape of the times. Western values are absolute, but they are also evolutionary, being perfect at neither their birth nor their adolescence.
    In any discussion of military prowess, we should also be clear about the thorny divide between determinism and free will. Throughout this study, we are
not
suggesting that the intrinsic characteristics of Western civilization predetermined European success on every occasion. Rather, Western civilization gave a spectrum of advantages to European militaries that allowed them a much greater margin of error and tactical disadvantage—battlefield inexperience, soldierly cowardice, insufficient numbers, terrible generalship—than their adversaries. Luck, individual initiative and courage, the brilliance of a Hannibal or Saladin, the sheer numbers of Zulu or Inca warriors—all on