A Philosophy of War

Rating:
Summary: The prose is overwhelmed by the ideas
Review: Much of this book depends on the economic views of Mises and Hayek, in which government expansion is often an enemy of pure economic activity, and cooperative exchange forms the basis for a free society. In the Conclusion of A PHILOSOPHY OF WAR, the most basic form of this idea is attributed to philosophers, but then modern complications set in:

"As trade increases, the desire for war should decrease. This is an argument deployed by Hume, Kant, Cobden, and a series of pro-market economists in the 20th century, but the pacification of the market is not a necessary development. Against free market optimists, we may recognize the benefits of cooperative activity over non-cooperation, of the international division of labor over the parochial, yet rationally such beliefs may be confused or countered by competing visions of the self and other, especially if the other is foreign: rhetoric may fall back on the atavistic language of prejudice to produce highly complex theories rationalizing isolationism or aggression, some even using economic analysis to explain the ostensible economic rewards of war." (p. 246).

I might have read half this book, but the further I went, the more I questioned how well I could keep reading it. Chapter 11, Rationalism and War, has a section on "The Failure of Realism: the Vietnam War" (pp. 188-195), which was not a good place for me to start. The first sentence, on "all attempts by man to impose an ideal state of affairs or balance of power on the world," (p. 188) had a note quoting Mark Twain on his own progress from "When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant . . ." (p. 202, n. 81) to illustrate how "utopias are often the product of immature minds." (Ibid.). The next note seemed incomplete:

"82. Bismarck, German Chancellor, certainly proved a capable" (p. 203).

If this book was meant to be published lecture notes, as some books undoubtedly are, a professor might prefer to finish such an aside with some grand strategy balance of power play that would have some appeal for students taking classes that year. Perhaps the author meant to fill in more ideas as publication approached in the year 2002, but sent it to the press without a final read-through to see if readers would have any idea what he was trying to say. On Nam, he imagines that the Americans were in cahoots with both sides. "In effect, America had bank-rolled the French defense, but America had also undermined Western efforts to control Vietnam by sponsoring a coup led by Ho to overthrow the pragmatic Vietnamese emperor." (p. 194). Usually, Americans give credit to Diem for winning an election against the emperor in 1954, like it was the South Vietnam primary and practice ballot box control exercise to prepare for the 1956 re-unification of Vietnam vote that never took place. Then "Eisenhower acquiesced in realist fears, side-stepped democratic obligations to set up elections, mumbled about defending freedom, and finally committed America to defending South Vietnam." (p. 194).

A few generalities in this book are worth knowing. Reasons can be important, because "Man chooses war, and by this is meant that each individual participant chooses war (or has to choose differently, if war is thrust upon him through invasion or conscription). The individual is a volitional being, whose cognition is free to use and direct; and in group activity such as a battle, each individual must contribute his thought and effort -- even if only accepting the orders of others." (p. 39). One of the big questions in any war is whether anyone knows what everybody else is going to do, and the intellectual overview misses the big picture as often as anyone else does. As warfare becomes more modern, five-man teams, like those which hijacked American airliners on September 11, 2001, might be ideal, and the fact that only 19 hijackers have been identified, instead of 20, is a good sign that five percent of people who want to do this stuff will not end up on crashing planes, whatever their intentions were. What can be done against such groups is considered in this book:

"Tightly organized groups of soldiers, cooperating, whatever the nature of their tactics, more often than not overwhelm the loosely organized, . . . : such becomes the menace of the guerrilla or the terrorist (the more advanced guerrilla, who employs civilian cover for his tactics and who deploys total or unrestrained war against civilians).

". . . Waging war against terrorist and guerrilla groups invalidates tactics that are useful in the classic pitched battles of the modern era, yet, as with all armies, such cells need supply bases and directing leaders to sustain them. These become the targets for those having to wage war on an apparently amorphous enemy." (p. 113).

People who live in the area of such attacks can be expecting soldiers to break down their door in the middle of the night, looking for weapons and explosives, for years to come. Such small groups are capable (5,000 equals five times a thousand) of causing trouble, collective aggression, and "wars are likely to be sustained or re-invoked, even when a culture has apparently settled upon a peaceful life." (p. 114). Most of the book is about ideas, beliefs, the influence of our animal nature, and culture. The animal instinct is supposed to make everyone gather tightly together in a herd, all think alike, and repel any outsider. There is not much in the index, pages 263-266, not even a Freud, though an attempt to quote "Why War" in note 49 on page 118 turned into a quote of the quotation itself: "Indeed it might well be called the ` . . . "death instinct", ' ".