Narrates the 1967 conflict which shaped succeeding geopolitics of the late 20th-century Middle East. Based on primary sources from most of the combatants (save Syria), the comprehensive work points up the Arab world’s explicit linking of Israel and the US over 40 years ago and the imperious role of defense minister Moshe Dayan, whose de Gaulle-like introduction to Levi Eshkel’s cabinet overshadowed the indecisive prime minister. Oren’s scholarship is somewhat tempered by choppy prose (i.e., howevers, buts, yets) that obscure the sweep of his direction. Though definitive, the work also seems to have been superseded (dated) by Islamofascism, which has positioned the Arab-Israeli problem as but one stumbling block in the feudalistic worldview’s inability to peacefully coexist with modernity and the West.
War
7. Paret, Makers of Modern Strategy (6 Nov 2009)
Illuminates enduring ideas and uses of military strategy since the 16th century. Leading thinkers and practitioners oscillate between views of strategy (following Clausewitz, the systematic approach to warfare absent one’s foes; tactics incorporate active engagement) as science and artifice. Clausewitz; Smith and Hamilton, who identified economics as a source of power; and Gordon Craig’s study of politicians as emergent strategists are among the most interesting chapters. The rise of German strategy, in various phases and components, inevitably forms a leading theme, given the country’s responsibility for the World War II and oft-presumed culpability for World War I. Cold War nuclear thinking is rather less interesting, particularly as the scholarship predates understanding Reagan. The next frontier is strategy in the era of terrorism, particularly Islamo-fascism. An outstanding collection.
3. Downing, Military Revolution and Political Change (18 Jan 2015)
The endurance of medieval forms of constitutional government and the revolution of early modern warfare, which required state centralization of resources, accounted for the democratic trajectory of western and central European countries. After reviewing forms of late medieval government and warfare, the author uses a comparative framework to evaluate Prussia and France as absolutist cases and England, Sweden, and the Netherlands as republican exemplars. The work is a useful riposte to class and economic determinism, but lacks truly original expression, the text being heavily footnoted with citations of generally accepted historiography. It is also written as if for a graduate seminar: impossible not to learn, but better off with Fukuyama.
On pursuing the low but solid
Larry Arnn on Churchill’s conclusions of the Anglo-Sudanese River War, and foreseeable consequences beyond:
In reaction to this gruesome spectacle, Churchill understood something that he remembered and developed the rest of his life. War, he saw, was becoming a “matter of machinery.” Soon he speculated on the disaster of two such armies meeting. Soon he predicted the cataclysms of any general war in Europe of this new and mechanized type. Soon he expanded this thesis to explain the movements of domestic politics that marked the twentieth century and now the twenty-first. Tyranny has given way to totalitarianism, more comprehensive, cruel, and sustained. Politics has given way to the administrative state. War has given way to total war. As men make things bigger, they become themselves smaller, dominated by the science they have discovered and the machines they have made.
19. Howard, Lessons of History (1 Nov 2018)
The French Revolution spurred the rise of nationalism in 19th-century Europe, a phenomenon which proved the major impetus for statecraft and warfare over the succeeding two centuries. More than simply self-conscious culture, nationalism in the 1800s was ideological, entwining a loose worldview with a defined sense of universal (often cultural) mission. It complemented economic modernization while overshadowing Marxism, which in its early phase had no conception of statecraft. Nationalism complicated life for Eastern Europe’s Jews, but (in its imperial guise) looked in colonial lands like routine military conquest. For social Darwinians cum nationalists, war was the ultimate test of folk strength – a view which died out after the carnage of World War I. In the 19th century, the Prussian mindset conflicted with German nationalism; Treitschke’s view that the essence of the state was power (macht), which required an army, bridged the two; ultimately, Nazism replaced Preussentum. Little is said of the interwar era. Howard coopts Churchill to makes a case for postwar British nationalism – as way to consensually accommodate postwar British decline – while giving the Russians a pass because the victorious Soviet army was ‘popular’ in postwar Eastern Europe! They and the Americans were the century’s inheritors of the universal mission, and in the current (when published) century, nationalism rather than social justice or economic equality remained the driver of public spirit. It provides the state apparatus with legitimacy: if unmoored (for example by supranational elites), the structure becomes alienating and oppressive. Turning to warfare, in which the author specializes, Howard’s primary insights are that 1) pre-WWI army doctrines failed to grasp the impact of mechanization despite the evidence of late-19th-century warfare – maneuver was ignored, and 2) in the greatest military literature, the hero cannot win, as abundantly demonstrated in WWI. As to history, the field is meant to train laymen – not professionals – to understand precedents of the contemporary. Howard asserts all ages of are equal interest to the historian, although the book fairly omits the developing world, and is comfortable with historicism though not polemical. In a ranging essay on ‘structure and progress’, he surveys why history has been held valuable and himself settles on its role in tracing society’s movement from the realm of necessity to the realm of choice. Such progress looks a leftward ratchet. The volume is not representative of his professional achievement and perhaps understates his contribution to understanding the relationship of warfare, society, and politics; however, it evinces the postwar bien pensant, the elite who could not see through the Soviets and uphold the enduring value of the liberal society.
14. Kagan, On the Origins of War (14 Aug 2019)
To identify elements that commonly cause global conflicts, studies the Peloponnesian and Punic wars, World Wars 1 and 2, and the Cuban Missile Crisis. Despite the modern taste for social-science explanations such as irrational behavior or systemic competition (e.g., Kennedy’s belief miscalculation launched the Great War), Thucydides’ precept holds: wars commence from honor, fear, or interest. The historian of war ought to hold out hopes of statesmanship surmounting avoidable conflict: some wars are just and must be resolved, but many can be put off, sometimes through concession but more often by deterrence. There is a typology of treaties (e.g., victor’s peace, punishment without destruction, and mutual agreement that continuing costs surmount the gains) which are the starting point for defense of peace.
Peloponnesian War: The Spartans’ honor required defending its coalition and discouraging defections to Athens. Archidamus failed to stem his fractious allies, who were more like NATO than the common analogy of the Soviet bloc. Pericles sought to demonstrate Athens was a sated power, and through defensive strategy to show traditional Spartan warfare could not prevail, but lacked a credible offensive deterrent (such as encouraging slave rebellion).
World War 1: Germany undid Bismarck’s attempt to demonstrate its satisfaction through the belligerence of Kaiser Wilhelm and his cabinet. The pursuit of naval power and colonies was a point of honor (not interest) which threatened Britain’s traditional objectives to control the seas and the Low countries and well as to preserve a continental balance of power.
2d Punic War: Rome struck a poor peace, its Senate failing to ratify the first treaty and seeking a larger indemnity, both of which served to inflame Carthage. Additionally, Rome carelessly conceded vital interests, such as the security of Saguntum or defending the Ebro border.
World War 2: Versailles was not unduly harsh, but the Germans didn’t believe they’d lost, and the UK didn’t see itself as responsible for enforcement. Its economic power flagging, Britain was persuaded by traumatized, rationalist intellectuals to trust in the League of Nations. Well before Hitler’s rise, the Germans had shaken off occupation of the Rhineland, renegotiated reparations, and begun rearming (in cooperation with Soviet Russia). Subsequently, Chamberlain replaced moral disarmament with military unpreparedness as a reason for appeasement. France too, cowering behind the Maginot Line, lacked the will to defend Eastern Europe.
Cuban Missile Crisis: Geoffrey Blainey observes wars start when rivals can’t agree the allotment of power. Both sides agreed the US was stronger but Khrushchev perceived Kennedy wouldn’t act on it. The Bay of Pigs, disastrous Vienna summit, and erection of the Berlin Wall as well as Soviet premier’s skill at strategic deception and bluster shook the American president. In belatedly exposing the Soviet missile gap, Kennedy pushed his rival into a corner without intending to keep him there. Similarly, the warning against deployment was too late for prevention, too precise to explain away their discovery. Khrushchev underestimated the pressure on Kennedy to act, just as Chamberlain had been forced by opinion to confront Hitler. (The US cabinet saw Cuba as a domestic matter not a military problem, ruing that a less precise warning would have allowed the administration to eventually explain the missiles were no threat.) Kennedy contemplated trading missiles in Turkey for Cuba very early and volunteered the terms. Khrushchev accepted the concession, taking advantage of a weak player.