A History of Warfare by John Keegan

In this densely written and closely argued book, renowned military historian John Keegan poses questions that have dogged philosophers for centuries: What is war? Why are wars fought? What lies at the heart of mankind's seemingly insatiable penchant for bloodshed?

The book's title is somewhat misleading. While Keegan does provide in-depth analysis of the changing face of warfare over the millenia, his examples are more selective than exhaustive. It would be more accurate to call this work a study of warfare, and how culture and human nature feed off each other to make it so terrible.

Keegan begins with a lengthy introduction in which he takes issue with the conventional wisdom that war is "a continuation of politics by other means." This rather limited definition of human conflict was first offered by the 19th-century Prussian military strategist and author, Carl von Clausewitz, in his hugely influential book, On War. Clausewitz was a product of his times; a veteran of Waterloo, he viewed war through the prism of European Enlightenment philosophy, which holds that social ills--including war--are the result of political defects, and, consequently, can be remedied by political action.

Keegan's view of war is more bleak. Noting that war predates politics and government--the sources of conflict in Clausewitz's analysis--Keegan instead points to culture as the most important determinant of war. For evidence, he delves into some of the world's most primitive cultures, where combat is highly ritualized, deliberately restrained, and fought for decidedly non-political reasons. In a more modern example, Keegan shows how the advent of nuclear weapons has irrevocably discredited the Clausewitzian mandate of a decisive, all-or-nothing battle. If the overriding purpose of all governments is to perpetuate themselves through the intertwined means of politics and war, how then can the strategy of Mutually Assured Destruction be explained? In this case, success depends on the inverse of Clausewitz's "decisive battle" theory; only by avoiding the battle altogether can political governments hope to survive. This strategy of avoidance through strength is more in line with the theories of the ancient Chinese military philosopher, Sun Tzu.

Keegan's account of how the vast expanses of the Eurasian steppe--the land of origin for the Huns, Turks, and Mongols--have shaped European, Middle Eastern, and Oriental military history and theory is both highly original and endlessly fascinating. Keegan traces the ferocity of combat to these horse peoples, whose long-range weapons revolutionized warfare by making the act of killing an easier, less personal affair. This dehumanizing regression in war left the great civilizations on the steppe's periphery gravely shaken, and in turn forced them to further militarize their own societies in order to avoid extermination. In some areas (Russia, for example) the deep-seated cultural fear instilled centuries ago by the hordes of Mongolian cavalry lingers to this day.

In the end, Keegan concludes that war persists--and will always persist--due to a combination of human nature, cultural forces, and the sheer influence that thousands of years of habitual warmaking has had on mankind. This is not to say that war cannot be avoided, or its effects unlimited. But the need for professional armed forces, ready to enforce peace, and, when necessary, to deal out death and destruction on a horrific scale, will tragically always be with us. The sooner we accept this disturbing truth, the safer we will be.