A HISTORY OF WARFARE

By John Keegan
Alfred A. Knopf (1993)
$27.50 432 pages
Reviewed by J. Douglas Allen-Taylor

Is war necessary?

I had the chance to ponder this question when, while driving along a South Carolina backroad on vacation a month or so ago, I stopped at a roadside plaque commemorating a Civil War battlefield. Here in 1864, it read, units of the Union and Confederate armies fought for possession of this field.

It wasn't much of a field...just a lumpy stretch between two scraggly strands of pine woods...certainly not anything that appeared particularly worth dying over. On a million days in the history of the world, including today, a man could take his time and walk across that field, and the only thing to impede him would be a breeze blowing warm and gentle in his face. But on that one day in 1864, a line of armed men knelt in those woods across the way, partially hidden among the pines, and they shot at any who attempted to pass.

I cross the field at my leisure, imagining what it would have been like on that 1864 day. The casualty rate of Civil War battles could be terrible. I hear the patter of musket shot hitting the ground on either side of me like thick hail. An artillery shell from a hidden battery gives out a hellish scream as it slams into a thicket of men running next to me; I see a man's head explode into nothing, his body taking one last, extra step before it realizes its loss; I see the bloodied stumps of limbs hurled in either direction; in just that instant, these are men no more. The stinging smoke clears for a moment, and the faces of the men kneeling in the woods across the way become clearer. I can see their beards. I can see the white of their teeth as they howl their defiance at me and mine and reload their weapons. I hurl myself at them, unheeding. What is so important about this field and those woods? Why do they seek to block me? And why don't I simply turn around and find another way?

Why do men fight wars? Is war inevitable? Is war a throwback to our bestial, sub-human past that will gradually, though painfully, disappear from human culture? Or is the path from "primitive" to "civilized" a downward path rather than upward, a mad scramble to find more efficient ways to kill each other, until we are no more? These are question that has padded behind human society since our days at Olduvai.

"A History Of Warfare" is British military historian John Keegan's provides some thoughtful, reasoned answers in a way that is both highly readable and thoroughly documented.

Unlike its title suggests, the book is not merely a narrative account of the various battles of the world. Instead, Keegan has some points to make, and he marshalls an wealth of facts and disciplines to support them.

At first glance, the points are as conservative/reactionary as you might expect from the defense editor of the Daily Telegraph of London. Armies, Keegan believes, are as necessary to the modern world as police are to modern society, a "[silent concession] that man has a darker side to his nature which must be constrained by fear of superior force." "The written history of the world is largely a history of warfare," he writes, "because the states within which we live came into existence largely through conquest, civil strife or struggles for independence. The great statesmen of written history, moreover, have generally been men of violence for, if not warriors themselves, though many were, they understood the use of violence and did not shrink to use it for their ends." "The world community," he concludes, "needs...skilful and disciplined warriors who are ready to put themselves at the service of its authority." Their purpose, he feels, is to "fight for civilization...against ethnic bigots, regional warlords, ideological intransigents, common pillagers and organized international criminals..."

But Keegan, and "A History Of Warfare," are not so easily categorized. He hopes aloud that he has "cast doubt on the idea that man is doomed to make war or that the affairs of the world must ultimately be settled by violence." He shrinks back from the horror of what he calls the "Western way of warfare," which brought us both the carnage of the two world wars and the potential for an earth-ending all-out nuclear exchange. He describes Western warfare as a combination of the type of face-to-face battle to the death originating with the Greeks, the concept of "holy war" that put God in the ranks of the army and freed Christian soldiers from the restraints of the "thou shalt not kill" commandment, and the development of technological weaponry beginning with firearm and cannon and ending (hopefully) with missiles and nuclear bombs. Unlike many writers of European descent, however, Keegan does not confuse "Western-style" with "white." "The reason for [the] final abandonment of the psychology and conventions of primitivism in the West and for their persistence elsewhere baffles analysis," he writes. "[But] [i]t seems dangerous to ascribe any racial explanation to the phenomenon. During the nineteenth century, both the Zulus and the Japanese acquired the disciplines of Western-style combat apparently from first principles and certainly by their own effort. All that can be said is that...there is...a 'face-to-face' combat frontier, and that Westerners belong by tradition on one side of it, and most other peoples on the other."

You do not have to agree with Keegan's conclusions to benefit from this book. He avoids the date-and-place-detail school of historical writing (my criticism of this style echoes that of J.J. on the old Good Times television show: nobody is going to step out of an alley and threaten your life unless you can tell who won the battle of Hastings in 1066). Instead, Keegan concentrates on how and why societies made various advances in war technology, and the means by which each new method supplanted the old: armies fighting on foot with club and spear gave way to those with weapons and shields forged of bronze, who were later blown away by the Huns and Mongols sweeping down on horseback from the great steppe plains of Central Asia, to be defeated by those who learned to build castle fortifications, to fight pitched battles and to make weapons of edged iron, and who were superseded, finally, by the masters of hurled explosives: bullets, artillery shells, and bombs.

The book is also a treasure of battle stories, giving some human dimension to this historic sweep. In describing the curious ritual and chivalry that existed in war in many parts of the world during much of human history, Keegan describes an incident in a Chinese chariot battle of the sixth century B.C.: "[The Duke of Sung's son] found himself opposite a warrior with an arrow already notched to his bow. He shot, missed, and notched another arrow before the duke's son was ready to shoot. The duke's son then called out, 'If you don't give me my turn, you are a base fellow' (literally, not a gentleman). His opponent gave him his chance and was shot dead." In an earlier war, the Duke himself gave the following justification his army's defeat after he refused to attack an enemy who was not yet ready to fight: "The gentleman does not inflict a second wound, or take the grey-haired prisoner...Though I am but the unworthy remnant of a fallen dynasty, I would not sound my drums to attack an enemy who had not completed the formation of his ranks."

Keegan concludes with far more hope than, at first, may seem justified. "Yet, despite a potentiality for violence," he writes, "we also have an ability to limit its effects even when no superior force stands ready to spare us from the worst of which we are capable. It is for that reason that the phenomenon of 'primitive' war...is so instructive. Because the wars of this century have taken such an extreme and ruthless form, it has become all to easy for modern man to slip into the supposition that the trend to extremity in warfare an inevitable one. ... Yet warmaking man, as the 'primitives' show, does have a capacity to limit the nature and effects of his actions. ... The style in which the [protectors of civilization] fight for civilization ...cannot derive from the Western model of warmaking alone. Future peacekeepers and peacemakers have much to learn from alternative military cultures, not only that of the Orient but of the primitive world also. There is a wisdom in the principles of intellectual restraint and even of symbolic ritual that needs to be rediscovered."

The effects of war can be limited, perhaps. War can be "civilized." But is war necessary?

The sun is growing low in the sky. I have sat for more than an hour at the far end of the Civil War battlefield, hoping my proximity to such a wounded and angry ground would provide some answers. In a hurry now, I cross back over the field, unmolested. No one fires a shot. I get back into my car, pull into the road, and head north. No one seeks to stop me; no dogs or pattyrollers pursue. Though I am an African American in a Deep South state, there are no roadblocks where I must display a pass showing I am on my master's business. The Civil War was fought, I recall, to end such things. Is war necessary? Some wars are, I conclude.