[FULL DISCLOSURE: I received my copy of this book free from the author. I was not paid for this review and the opinion expressed is purely my own] Given that 2014 is the 100th anniversary of the outbreak of World War I, there has been a virtual flood of new books and scholarship on the war in the past few years. A flood that I sincerely hope does not stop anytime soon as the renewed emphasis on the war is starting to change the traditional view of the war. One area that has gotten particular emphasis this year is the Origins Controversy, as in, what really caused the war and … More after the Jump…
In the past 100 years man has gone from a man, to a killer ape, to a man again. I find it hard to believe that he ever was a killer or lover of mankind, but more like a hungry creature who needed a reason to do anything other than satiate himself. First of all, we don’t have evidence to prove that the Battle of Gaugamela was “a giant shoving match.” We do have evidence that modern soldiers have misfired their rifles on purpose in order to avoid shooting the enemy, but many conclusions can be drawn from this. I would argue that Europeans have gone through four stages in … More after the Jump…
I have probably read 30-40 books exploring the origins of World War I in the past 5-6 years and I thought that just about everything relevant there was to be known about the events of the month leading up to the war were known and historians have just been stirring the ashes and finding trivia in trying to determine a more accurate chain of causation. July 1914: Countdown to War by Sean McMeekin disabused me of that notion. This work has made me aware of several things about the critical month between the Assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and the outbreak of World War I that I am amazed have not … More after the Jump…
I read part of this work in High School over twenty years ago and decided a few weeks ago to finish reading it. Now that I am done, I wonder why I waited so long. The book was written by Xenophon, and ancient Greek soldier and general, in the late 4th Century BC. Xenophon’s account in The Anabasis is one of the first true (in several senses of the word) adventure stories to be transmitted from antiquity. There is as much adventure here as will be found in any modern day work of fiction. One of the things that makes this book so great is that as I was reading … More after the Jump…
There is a very interesting pair of essays in the Baen free non-fiction compendium for 2011. The essence of these two pieces is the geo-strategic position of the United States in the early 21st Century and what the American prospects for maintaining global dominance are. This piece is not necessarily about geopolitics but it did get me thinking about another idea I have been tossing around in my head for the past few years, and that is tactics. Specifically tactics and the way their use affects the course of battles both classical and contemporary. Too often, tactical considerations are given short shrift in accounts of battle. For example, it is … More after the Jump…
I wrote about the war/action/conflict/kinetic what have you in Libya when it kicked off in March, April, and again in June. With the rebels now storming Tripoli itself and being on the verge of success under the cover of NATO, the question now becomes what will the successor regime look like. I will guess here and say that it will be a notional democracy wit an oligarchy of strongmen in power. They will also make all the right noises to placate the soft-heads in the west and make them feel good about their policy of R2P. It will probably not be long before the new regime starts hunting down Qaddafis … More after the Jump…
I have been pondering this one for a while now. Â What exactly, is the west trying to accomplish in Libya? Â I have posted on this before here and here, and I am still puzzled as to what we are trying to accomplish in Libya, protect so-called innocent civilians or topple Qaddafi’s regime? The stated goal of the administration is to protect civilians in line with the UN Security Council resolution # 1973, but the way in which the air campaign is being waged certainly makes it seem as if toppling Qaddafi is the goal of the bombing. Â Their were intense air attacks yesterday, and one of his son’s was killed … More after the Jump…
The Mexican-American war of 1846-1848 was not inevitable but both sides placed themselves on a collision course that seemingly made it so. A combination of Mexican unwillingness to recognize Texas independence and the desire of Texans for statehood with American desire for westward expansion set the stage for the first offensive war in the short History of the United States. Tensions between Mexico and the United States had been building for decades, ever since the Mexican government invited Anglo settlers into Texas in the 1820’s. The war with Mexico was the result of long-standing Anglo grievances that were mostly of the Mexican government’s own making. Perhaps … More after the Jump…
All classical military theorists point out that military strategy and national policy are intermingled. Clausewitz devotes a lengthy portion of his treatise to the ways in which military action should serve the needs of the state; indeed, his most famous quote concerns politics and war. Most of the combatants in World War I seem to have forgotten that policy drives strategy. When the Elder Moltke was Chief of the German General Staff, German war-plans and policy neatly interlinked however, during Schleiffen’s tenure as Chief of the General Staff that link between policy and strategy was lost. The Great Memorandum of 1905 ignored political reality in favor of … More after the Jump…
The conventional explanation for why the Western Front in World War I settled into a stalemate is that the power of defensive weapons was stronger than the offensive methods employed. The theory is that the defensive potential of machine-guns, artillery, repeating rifles, and trenches was unbreakable with infantry and artillery alone. This simplistic explanation does not suffice under close scrutiny though. If this were so, why were the Germans not stopped in France until after they had removed troops to the Eastern front for the Battle of Tannenberg and why were the French stopped cold when they attempted to invade Germany in August 1914? The reasons for … More after the Jump…
Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations?, Foreign Affairs, Summer 1993, pp. 22-49 This article set off a debate in academia that continues to this day. What Huntington argues in the paper is that after the fall of communism in 1989, the world is no longer looking at a standoff between ideologies but that the world will revert to clashes between civilizations. The basic thesis is that the ideological struggle between liberal democracy and communism covered over or subsumed the natural differences between civilizations. He argues that prior to the end of the Cold War the conflicts that shaped history were primarily Western and have gone through three phases since … More after the Jump…
In light of the beginning of Attacks against Libya and the UN Security Council Resolution authorizing the establishment of a No-Fly Zone over part of Libya I thought it would be useful to have a post about Acts of War and historically what has been considered a legitimate reason to go to war. I will focus this post on the Westphalian System established in 1648 by the Peace of Westphalia ending the Thirty-Years War that also inaugurated the current system of Sovereign nation-states operative in the world today. The Westphalian System did not spring fully formed in 1648, mainly because it was focused on monarchical and dynastic states and not … More after the Jump…
The Oxford Illustrated History of the First World War
The Oxford Illustrated History of the First World War, edited by Hew Strachan, is one of those rare history books that manages to be both readable scholarly at the same time. Indeed, it is an even rarer breed of book because it is an anthology and not by a single author. Where many history books are written for the specialist historical crowd and there is an element of haughtiness in the writing, that condescension is entirely missing here. This history book does not assume knowledge on the part of the reader, but at the same time does not present its material in such a way that the non-historian would be put off by it.
In Decisions for War, 1914-1917, Richard Hamilton and Holger Herwig present a new thesis for the origins of World War I. They argue that in all the belligerent countries the decision for war was made by a one person or at most a small group of individuals regardless of the type of government. Given the wealth of material written about the origins of the First World War it seems incredible to me that this possibility has, if not been overlooked in all previous scholarship, then certainly ignored, as the authors claim[1]. While Hamilton and Herwig do not entirely discount that other factors than pure national self-interest on the part of the leaders played a role in the decision for war, they do contend that this was the overriding concern in most if not all of the wars belligerents.
           I found the book to be a fairly easy to read, the writing style was not as dry as might be expected given the topic of discussion. Even though I do not necessarily agree with the authors, the book was fun and captivating to read. They write with a style similar to what I try to achieve in my own writing. It is written such that it is simultaneously engaging, factual, and descriptive, just a good read. I do not have to agree with a book to enjoy it, and the authors certainly made reading this enjoyable. It was laid out well and the chapters flowed in a logical progression, discussing each country in the order in which it declared war.
