Book Reviews

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A HISTORY OF WARFARE *

REYEWED BY MAJOR

FRED L. BORCH**

John Keegan's many years as a military historian give him a breadth of knowledge matched by few. His earlier books, among them The Face qfBattle, The Mask qf Cmmnd, and Si%Armh in Normandy,are well known and reflect solid scholarship. However, his iateat effort, A History qf Warfaare, is a disappaintment. A His-tory of Warfare does a fine job in tracing the evolution of war from the distant past to the present. The book ultimately fails as good military history, however, because of Keegan's flawed view of PNS-sian General Karl von Clausewitz and his influence an modem western warfare. Keegan insists that warfighters in the West are addicted to Ciausewitzian "total war" concepts, and that Clausewitz is "the ideological father" of the ever more destructive path that war in the West has taken. Because this Clausewitzian path may lead to the West's own destruction, we8tern military thinker's must "denounce" the false "ideology" Clausewitz. Otherwise, Keegan warns, western civilization "shall not survive." This intellectual CNsade against Clausewitz and his influence is the major theme of A Hi8tow qf Warfare. The crusade fails, however, because Keegan's dkussion of Clausewitz is inaccurate and incomplete, If not simply wrong. Consequently, the major theme of A History of Warfare is flawed. The result is an erroneous picture of the theoretical foundations of western warfighting today. Consequently, judge advocates looking for a balanced, comprehensive analysis of the western method of war will not find it In this book.

Most of A History of' Warfaare is given to an interesting and, at times, lively discussion of the nature of war over the millennia. Keegan describes the ritualistic combat of early man, and explores war as fought by the ancient Greeks and Romans, Easter Islanders, Mongols, Samurai, and Zulus. h examining everything from barbarian tribesmen to atomic weaponry, Keegan's breadth of knowledge is unpressive. Military lawyers wlll find Keegan's discussion of early attitudes toward new weapons most interesting. Just as the law of war today wrestles with the legality of laser and particle beam weap- *JOHN KBECAL, A H ~ R I

OF WARPARE

(New Yark Alfred A. Knopf. he , 1QQS).432 pages: S27,60(hardcaver)

**Judge Advacate General's Corps, Urnled States Amy. Currently esdmed a

B

Student, Uruted States Army Command and General Staf College, Fort Leavenworth, KS- 181

onry, the sixteenth century faced the "lawfulness" of crossbows and handguns. Keegan explains.

Armed with a crossbow a man might, without any of the long apprenticeship to arms necessary to make a knight, and equally without the moral effort required of a pike-wielding footman, kill either of them from a distance without putting himself in danger. What was true of the crossbowman was even more true of the handgunner; the way he fought seemed equally cowardly, and noisy and dirty as well, whlle requiring no muscular effort whatsoever.

It 18 no wonder that early crossbowmen were executed when taken prisoner-"their weapon was a cowardly one and their behavior treacherous." Passages like this one in A History of Wavaare are both educational and entertaining.

Had Keegan focused on the history of war when writing A History of Wqfare, the book would be of value to the reader. He persists, however, in examining war's place in modern eivllization, and perhaps more Importantly, what Keegan believes is its future role in the West. War in the West, he argues, has evolved to the point that It "may well be ceasing to commend itself LO human beings as a desirable or productive, let alone rational, means of reconciling their discontents." This means that war "truly has become a scourge." In sum, unlimited war of the kind now practiced in the West brings only increased human suffering, and virtually no benefit. But a study of war through the ages, according to Keegan, proves that war need not be a part of human society. Consequently, the West can-and must-stop the destructive total war it wages today. Keegan maintains that Clausewitz and his theories must be rejected, because they are the cause of this western way of war. Western thinkers must recognize that waris not a continuation of poiitics, so that the West's culture can change LO have a "potentially peaceful future "

Given John Keegan's rather virulent criticism of Clausewitz, cloaeiy examining this Prussian general and he theory of war is worthwhile. Such an examination reveals why Keegan thinks ill of him It also shows, however, why Keegan simply is wrong about Ciausewitz and Clausewmmn theory Finally, this careful scrutiny of Ciausewita explains why this review concludes that A Histoly ofWarfare distorts the theoretical underpinnings of war in the West.

Although Ciausewitz's famous On WW contams thousands of words, the book 1s known chiefly for its dictum that war 1s the continuation of politics "by other means" Ciausewitz's iinkage of war with politics grew from his own observations of eighteenth century European society He saw Napoleon's actions and the conflict

unleashed by the French Revolutian as inextricably connected to political forces. In the context of Clausewitz'sown time, and modern European hstary, war certainly was a continuation of politics.

However, Clausewitzian theory 1s about far more than this political outlook on war. Additionally, what Clausewitz has to say about other aspects of war does not depend on the validity of hisopinion that war is an extension of poiitm.

The hallmark of Clausewitzian theory is its insistence that war

is "unpredictable, ambiguous and intuitive rather than dear, precise and manageable." Warfighting does have rational elements. Clausewitz's conclusion, however, that war fundamentally is dominated by the irrational Sets him apart from all others who have written about war. Clausewitz believed that war cannot be reduced to a neat set of principles or 111188. He believed, however, that its complexity could be understood by a "military genius"-that although war cannot be taught like science or mathematics, it can be understood by some In short, men and women will always exist who can bring victory out of the chaos on the battlefield. "Friction" and the "fog of war" mean chaos on the battlefield, but a study of past wan, experience, training, and "military genius" point the way to success.

The opening line of A Histmy of Waflare is: "War is not the continuation of policy by other means.'' Keegan's point is clear-he rejects Clausewitz's famous pronouncement, Instead, Keegan insists "that war embraces much more than politics: that it is always an expression of culture, often a determinant of cultural forms, in some societies the culture itself." Consequently, Keegan concludes that Clausewitz's view of the nature of war is "mcomplete, parochial and ultimately misleading."

Keegan's insistence that war is far more than an extension of politics makes sense. Wars can be apditicai, reflecting instead a society's culture. The horse people of the Steppes, for example, did not wage...