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Rating: 
Summary: Excellent Book!
Review: As a survey of military thought from the Enlightenment up to the Cold War, I found Professor Gat's book to be comprehensive, thought-provoking, well researched, and well written. In particular the effect of established opinions on the nature of war and how it should be waged, and the reaction of succeeding generations to these established opinions is very interesting. Specifically, the military theories developed during the Enlightenment and the reaction of military theorists to the victories of Napoleon (such as Clausewitz) were of special interest. As Professor Gat himself remarks, there is a tendency to treat the period before Clausewitz as a kind of intellectual void, during which there was no discussion of the theory and practice of war at all. In fact there was a great deal of controversy on military matters taking place in both France and Germany. Admittedly this is a specialist book, not for everyone. But for anyone interested in this topic, I highly recommend this book.
Rating: 
Summary: Disappointing survey of military thought
Review: This is the one-volume collection of Azar Gat's trilogy on military thought. He explores thinking about war and strategy ranging from Machiavelli to the 1950s, relating the ideas to their cultural and historical contexts. As he writes, "New ideas emerge during periods of revolutionary change or at times of crisis, in response to great historical challenges." The great strategic thinkers Jomini and Clausewitz developed their revolutionary ideas in response to the French Revolution. Gat argues that World War One's massive slaughter forced a paradigm shift from Clausewitz's ideas to the new idea of limited war. But Julian Corbett, limited war's greatest theorist, first published his ideas before 1914. Corbett argued, like Clausewitz, that wars were means to an end, continuations of policy. But he showed that wars could take many forms, with differing limits, depending on their political aims. Gat exaggerates the importance of J. F. C. Fuller in the interwar period. Fuller plagiarised Ernest Swinton, who first proposed using tanks offensively in numbers to achieve breakthrough. Fuller fantasised that tanks alone could win wars, without infantry and combined arms. Gat also over praises Basil Liddell Hart, who idealised limited war, just part of Britain's military experiences. In the 1930s, Hart predicted that wars would become more humane and rational: World War Two was the most destructive war in history. In this war, the greatest test of Britain's survival as an independent and sovereign nation, Fuller and Hart encouraged Hitler to attack the Soviet Union. Hart opposed the Allies' policy of total war against Hitler, and called for Britain to collaborate with Hitler. Hart claimed that victory was unattainable and that fighting Hitler would 'only lead to mutual suicide, and the collapse of civilisation'. Gat asserts that Hart pioneered a 'Western way' of warfare, of limited war, containment and economic coercion, based on the reactionary dreams of European and World Federation. But there is no such 'Western way': Western ruling classes waged all sorts of wars against national liberation struggles, annihilatory against Korea, Algeria and Vietnam, relatively limited against Malaya and Kenya.
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