Diagnosing our endemic disease
Michael Howard
WHY WARS HAPPEN by Jeremy Black Reaktion Books, £19.99, pp. 272 WAR AND THE WORLD: MILITARY POWER AND THE FATE OF CONTINENTS, 1450-2000 by Jeremy Black Yale, £25, pp. 334 People can be divided into two classes: those who ask, as does Professor Black in the title of his book, why wars happen, and those who wonder why they do not happen a great deal more often. Political scientists, especially American political scientists, usually belong to the former category. They regard war as a disease, a breakdown of natural order, and search for some basic explanation in order to prevent it. They have produced in this century hundreds, if not thousands, of learned studies which have not had the slightest effect in prevent- ing the incidence of war and are not likely to do so. Historians, on the whole, belong to the latter group. For us, war as such does not need any explanation, though par- ticular wars do. It happens all the time: it always has and, in some form or another, probably always will.
Professor Black is a historian and .a very fine one. His speciality until recently has been European warfare in the 18th century, but in these two volumes he has extended his field to cover not only the whole period of modern history but the entire world as well. Why Wars Happen is an analysis intended mainly for students, and should go rapidly into paperback. War In the World, a beautifully illustrated volume typical of the Yale University Press, is directed at the general reader. Both cover much the some ground, but both are rooted in, and draw strength from, Professor Black's profound knowledge of 18th-century Europe. Historians do well to dig deep, as he does, before they extend themselves in generalisations. There was one fundamental and very simple reason why wars happened in 18th- century Europe. The ruling classes liked war, and were desouvres without it. It had for the best part of a millennium been, as Professor Black nicely puts it, 'a continua- tion of litigation by other means'. Dynasties had established their right to rule by their military prowess, their policies were moti- vated by a continual quest for glory, and the best method they knew of establishing peace was by waging successful war. Histo- rians both contemporary and subsequent may have rationalised their activities by talk of a search for 'natural frontiers' or a `balance of power', but historians always display a 'propensity to emphasise reason . . . at the expense of passion, greed, and inertia', the qualities that Professor Black has found in the archives, together with, on the part of statesmen, ignorance, bewilder- ment and sheer guesswork. What mattered was that for European statesmen war was a normal instrument of policy and always had been; and in this respect there was nothing exceptional about the Europeans.
In the 18th century they developed weapons and methods that enabled them to wage war more effectively than anyone else in the world, but wherever they went they encountered societies quite as bellicose as they were themselves. Indeed 1,000 years of continuous confrontation with the most bellicose of the lot, the forces of Islam, latterly to be harnessed by the Ottoman Turks, had made bellicosity for the Europeans a necessary condition for survival.
In the 19th century the political power of the feudal ruling classes in Europe may have waned, but their bellicosity was disseminated by the advent of popular nationalism, a sentiment itself almost inconceivable without war. It was to take another 11 years, and 50 years of hideously destructive conflict, to create in the most privileged parts of West- ern Europe and North America a society that regarded war as an evil to be avoided at almost any cost, and accepted the use of force only as a policing measure for the maintenance of international order. But for those who do not find a western-imposed international order acceptable, or for those who simply find it boring, war remains a necessary option, and the images of war remain compelling. Professor Black uses his specialist knowledge to make another point of general significance. We usually think of the 18th century as the period when the whole con- cept of war and peace became tidied up after the confusion of the Thirty Years War; when war became formally declared, was conducted according to clearly defined usages, and concluded by landmark peace treaties. Not so, says Professor Black. Even then 'military operations took place along a continuum stretching from formal wars to actions against smugglers'. In other societies at other times there was no distinction to be drawn between war and peace, only between periods of lesser and greater violence. Such periods have indeed probably been the norm in human history, and in many parts of the world that, alas, is the situation today. Paradoxically, formal war may have been one of the blessings of civilisation, since without it there could be no formal and agreed peace.
Finally, Professor Black draws on his knowledge of 18th-century Europe to introduce War and the World with Edward Gibbon's famous analysis of how the development of military technology enabled the Europeans to draw clear of the cycle of hegemony and decadence that had condemned 'the barbarians' to ultimate failure. Black's own valuable comparative studies put paid to the Gibbonian distinction between European civilisation and the barbarian 'other'. But he reminds us how, throughout their history on both sides of the Atlantic, Europeans have felt justified in waging war against 'the other' by methods that they would have considered unthinkable between themselves. No holds have been barred in their defence and extension of 'order' and 'civilisation'.
As we become more averse to traditional methods of waging war which place our own lives at risk, and more adept at projecting unlimited force over unlimited distances with no discomfort to ourselves, are we not in danger of perpetuating this least attractive characteristic of traditional European culture?
Again? He's been working on his last words for ten years already.'
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