QotD: The Western Way of War

Free capital is the key to war making on any large scale, what Cicero called "the sinews of war," without which an army cannot muster, be fed, or fight. Capital is the wellspring of technological innovation, which is inextricably tied to freedom, often the expression of individualism, and thus critical to military success throughout the ages. That capitalism was born in the West, expanded through Europe, survived the alternate Western-inspired paradigms of socialism and communism, and found itself inextricably tied with personal freedom and democracy in its latest global manifestation explains in no small part Western military dominanace from the age of Salamis to the Gulf War.

Victor Davis Hanson, Carnage and Culture