WAR AND THE WORLD:
Military Power and the Fate of Continents, 1450-2000
By Jeremy Black
Yale University Press,
334 pages, $35
From a sandbagged hilltop overlooking border villages in the Balkans came a newspaper dispatch noting that several hundred American soldiers were on patrol as peace-
keepers in Macedonia. In Macedonia? The name evokes schoolbook images–not of GIs in camouflage outfits armed with semiautomatic rifles but of Alexander the Great’s warriors with spears and shields fighting ancient, mythic wars of conquest.
Flash forward to “War and the World,” a new book by British military historian Jeremy Black, which reminds us that while the weapons have become more sophisticated and horrible, national, ethnic and religious rivalries are still omnipresent in our so-called civilized world.
This ambitious book covers more than a half-millennium of vainglory, militarism and war. The great achievements in science, medicine, commerce and communications stand in sharp contrast to the warrior mentality that has reduced great nations to revengeful tribes.
“War and the World” leans heavily on the author’s knowledge of European conflicts, especially before the two World Wars. He covers the limitations of organized religion in preventing wars; the increased role of firepower; the importance of big navies to carry out the expansion of empires; the subjugation of indigent people for commercial reasons, including slavery; the conflicts between kings and colonists; the significance of air power; the link between industrialism and militarism in the major wars of the past.
An American reader will be particularly interested in what Black, a history professor at the University of Exeter, has to say about the role of the U.S. in several wars. These are some of his insights–and omissions:
– The Civil War. “(H)aving been defeated at First Manassas/Bull Run in 1861, the Union reorganised its forces into the Army of the Potomac, developing a well-disciplined, well-equipped and large army. Yet organisation and resources were of limited value without able leadership.” George McClellan (his last name is misspelled in the book), “who became General-in-Chief in November 1861 and who organised the new army, was indecisive, cautious and defence -minded, allowing the Confederates to gain the initiative in the eastern theatre for most of 1862-3. (Gen. Ulysses S.) Grant, in contrast, understood what it took to win.”
– World War I. The Yanks get one sentence: “The Americans, who entered the war on the Allied side in 1917, were to discover (the cost of frontal attacks) when they launched human-wave assaults on the Western Front.”
– World War II. Even in a broad-gauged military history, how can the author ignore the roles of President Franklin Roosevelt and Prime Minister Winston Churchill as the two great democratic leaders who led the Allies to victory?
– Vietnam. Here, Brown comes closer to reality when he writes that, despite the vast tonnage dropped by heavy bombers, “The Americans found that air power could not defeat their Vietnamese opponents” and “the Viet Cong learned how to respond to the American use of helicopters.”
In general, there’s great emphasis in the book on Britain’s military role in the wars and not enough on Clausewitz’s dictum that war is a continuation of politics by other means.
Black’s interpretations do have a sweeping, analytical quality, which can be expected in a book that covers so much time and territory with authority. But one misses the human voices and anecdotal material that enliven the work of so many modern American historians. To name but three of the strongest: the late Barbara W. Tuchman, David McCullough and Stephen Ambrose.
After absorbing “War and the World,” the reader wonders: Can the old-fashioned hot wars be repeated? With a touch of irony, the author cites Edward Gibbon’s optimistic conclusion in the 1770s that Europe would never again succumb to the barbarians. “Cannon and fortifications,” wrote Gibbon, “now form an impregnable barrier against the Tartar horse.” Of course he was dead wrong; the worst wars were still to come.
That is why, with a mixture of pride and fear and hope, we read that those GIs stationed in, of all places, Macedonia, and in other corners of the world, are there as admired peacekeepers.
