Trooping to slaughter
George Gale
War And Politics Bernard Brodie (Cassell £3.50)
The idea of this book, central and simple and borrowed from Clausewitz as we are told, is "that the question of why we fight must dominate any consideration of means," and it is true enough that this theme had been mostly ignored. I am not so sure that it is also true of this theme that "when not ignored, usually denied," as Professor Brodie suggests; and I am quite sure that the theme is very far indeed from being •what Brodie says it is, namely "absurdly simple." There is nothing at all absurdly simple about why men go to war and, ironically enough, in view of the statements in his preface, Brodie has written a book which establishes if nothing else the complexity of what he claims to be absurdly simple. It is a huge subject and it is a brave academic who attempts it; and if, in the end, Brodie fails to answer the question he has asked himself, and indeed comes near to forgetting that he asked it in the first place, nevertheless he has produced a most substantial piece of work. Almost every reader will be the more knowledgeable for having read the book; and there is very much incidental good sense to be picked up on the way. Its flaw, which is substantial only in terms of the author's stated ambition, is that at the end we are not much wiser than we were at the beginning about why rulers go to war and — which is far the more important and difficult problem — why the ruled so often troop willingly to their slaughter.
It may be that we will never know the answer to why we fight, rulers and ruled, but if so then the outlook must remain permanently gloomy, for if we do not discover why, or how we get ourselves into the position of not being able not to, then sooner or later some or other limited war will become unlimited. Rulers and generals have already contemplated total nuclear warfare and it is probably only a matter of time before one or other of them unleashes his missiles, unless those who will suffer and die find means of constraining him. Such constraints are unlikely to be discovered, let alone applied, so long as the making of war remains part of respectable political vocabulary, to use the metaphor preferred by Brodie's mentor, Clausewitz, who wrote "War has its own language but not its own logic," a very characteristic euphemism. "We may extend this metaphor," Brodie notes, "by adding that the language is most cruelly obscene but that the logic it serves may at times give it some redeeming social value." Perhaps it may; but as often as not there is no redeeming social value at all, and this Clausewitz knew perfectly well, having witnessed from the Russian side the destruction of Napoleon's Grande Armee in 1812, cruelly obscene certainly and without a scrap of redeeming social or any other value. It is not too difficult to understand, or to think one understands, why Napoleon embarked upon that disastrous campaign; but why did his troops willingly accompany him? Why, after his forced abdication of 1814, following the capitulation of Paris, did so many flock again to his side after Elba; and why, come to that, despite Waterloo, did his name remain an inspiration to almost all Frenchmen? We may pose a similar question: Why was it that Haig, one of the butchers of World War I, became the hero and father figure of the ex-serviceman's British Legion, and how could it possibly be that his name is still commemorated, with what many would regard with most cruel obscenity, in the Earl Haig Poppy Day appeals? It is the willingness of common men to kill and to be killed which makes 'total' or 'unlimited' war possible; and the French revolution and the ensuing Napoleonic wars mark the historical watershed. Previously, apart from the great marauding movements of tribes seeking new lands, intergovernmental wars had been conducted between rulers employing professional and often mercenary soldiers. During the Napoleonic wars much of the traditional practice remained — civilians continued to be able to move about in 'enemy' territory; but if the Napoleonic wars marked the end of the old style, they also marked the beginning of the new, with the concept of a citizen army and with a correspondingly vast increase in carnage. International wars took on the character of civil, religious and tribal warfare, culminating in the massive squandering of soldiers of World War I, and the total disregard for civilian as well as for military lives of World War II. Slaughter became an object of policy, instead of its by-product; and the massacre of civilians became the normal, instead of an abnormal, practice of war. To this extent, the second World War was much more, not less, barbarous than the first; and just about the only convention of warfare which remained observed was that hostilities had a clearly defined beginning and end, Not even this can be said for the Vietnam war, which was never declared, which 'escalated' (another piece of characteristic euphemism) in a series of miscalculations, and which displayed a degree of moral and physical brutality unsurpassed in warfare between countries utterly remote from each other, in no way comparable in size, and without a political interest in each other. If, to revert to Brodie, the language of World War II was most .cruelly obscene, it could nevertheless be argued that the logic it served may have given that war some redeeming social value. This could not be argued of World War I, although its language was not quite as foul as that yet to come; and it could not be argued of the Vietnam war either, and its language was the foullest yet.
Having written this, let may say that on the first occasion that I went to Vietnam, which was in the early days of American military 'advisers,' I swallowed the domino theory. I was impressed by the calibre and devotion of the American captains and sergeants especially in the Mekong delta, and I argued in favour of the intervention. I continued to do so, with diminishing fervour, on and following subsequent visits, and it was not until 1967-8, very late in the day, and much later than percipient American journalists, that the corruption of that war became evident to me. I had been duped by the doctrine of 'containment' (excellently analysed by Brodie) and a general hostility towards Soviet and Chinese dictatorships, which seemed to justify the Korean as well as the Vietnamese interventions. At the same time, I had been strongly opposed to the use of conscripted British troops to maintain British rule in Cyprus (even though the prevention of full-scale Graeco-Turkish hostilities provided "some redeeming social value") on grounds which applied with equal force to the use of American conscripts in Vietnam. I mention this as an example of the ease with which we can adopt double-standards when we are convinced that issues of predominant magnitude are involved — the size of the combined containment-domino theories induced a moral glaucoma. I think that when an issue looms with massive magnitude men may well become incapable of exercising moral judgment, and may indeed suffer a loss of will to resist what they may take to be the common will. It is also evident that a man will far more easily drop bombs which could kill and maim thousands of women and children than he could machinegun a handful. The horror with which the deeds of Lieutenant Calley were discovered by those who had not, hitherto, grasped the nature of the Vietnam war, was a consequence of the imaginability of what he did; the unimaginable arouses less horror, and often none at all, so that, for example, the system within which Calley worked, and which he also served, escaped, and still escapes his particular odium, and senior officers have escaped the blame and punishment Calley has (justifiably) endured. At the same time, the growing awareness of the nature of the Vietnam war has produced a backlash of sympathy for Calley, on the grounds that he was unlucky to be singled out, and that there but for the grace of God, might I have gone.
The fact is to be faced that if a man believes himself to be at war, or to be a member of a country or a nation at war, he will more than likely abdicate moral conventions with which he judges his and his fellow men's actions; and he will unthinkingly obey orders which tear him away from his home and way of living, which may make him into a mass killer and Which may also make him vulnerable to being wounded, captured, or killed. He will do all this, and more, without, morally or reflectively, doing much more than bat an eyelid. He may have only the vaguest notion of where and why he is being asked to kill and to risk being killed, or who is the enemy whose blood he seeks to shed. He may have no hatred for his enemy; he may even have been holidaying or studying or working with him the fortnight previously. He will not mind much all this. He will not, normally, ask himself whether the war is just, or sensible, whether its language will be cruellY obscene, or whether the logic it serves may be giving it some redeeming social value. Without questioning, he will put on his uniform; and in that very action, he will have sloughed off the
skin of a civilised being. Why? How, let alone why?
This is a question Professor Brodie does not get to grips With, although at times in his discussion he seems to show signs of coming Close: particularly in the chapter "Changing Attitudes toward War." This is an excellent analysis, which in effect notes that although much has changed, much has nevertheless remained the same. Thus, what has changed was changed, for want of a better date, in the Law of August 23, 1793: "The young men shall fight; the married men shall forge weapons and transport supplies; the women will make tents and clothes and service in the hospitals; the Children will make up old linen into lint; the old men will have themselves carried in to the Public squares and rouse the courage of the fighting men, to preach hatred against kings and the unity of the Republic." But if we are changed, we are also the same men as those Whom Seneca scorned: "We are mad, not only individually but nationally. We check manslaughter and isolated murders, but what of war and the much vaunted crime of slaughtering Whole peoples?" Brodie rightly reminds us that it was Pliny the Elder who said that man, the only animal given to waging war upon his own kind, was not only morally inferior to the most savage beasts but lives in more disorder and violence than any animal. The Stoics saw it all, knew it all, as did Erasmus. But men have preferred the theories of Plato, Augustine and Hegel, and have sought and found justification for their activities in the Platonic idea of the state, in the Augustinian notion of the just war and in the romantic Hegelian fancy that the will of the state is the highest good and that freedom consists in subjecting one's own will to that of the state.
We will not, 1 think, discover the answer to Brodie's "absurdly simple" theme that the question why we fight must dominate any consideration of means, without probing and dissecting the idea of the state and the nature of Political obedience; and if this be thought too general and theoretical for a work of this nature, then at the very least I think Brodie would have done better to have paid more attention to the doctrine of superior orders than he has done. In his chapter, "Some Theories of the Causes of War," he examines such theories as those of ec.onomic causation, of capitalist greed, of the 'military-industrial, complex, of "the special case of oil," of psychological aggressiveness, and of certain political theories such as that of the arms race, that of the balance of power, and that of alliances. It is a peculiar chapter. It takes no account of religious wars and crusades; it deals only in Passing with what must, on any analysis, be °ne of the chief causes of war, namely the ambition of rulers for aggrandisement; it does not treat seriously the need, or greed, for more land; and it does not do more than hint at the 'cock-up' theory (which probably comes closest of all to the true explanation of World War I). In this chapter Brodie seems to turn away from his ,°riginal purpose: the chapter should be central, Out becomes peripheral. • There follows a shrewd discussion on vital interests and a first-class discussion of nuclear 1‘7aPons, "utility in nonuse" as he puts it. The ook peters out with a chapter on strategic thinkers, planners and decision-makers which unfortunately emphasises Brodie's final inconFlusiveness. Yet although War and Politics lacks form and a conclusion, lacks indeed a central argument or thesis, it is filled with remarkable insights; it is, incidentally, an excellent anthology of arresting quotations and citations; and, above all, it opens up ground which has been fallow too long. It may well be, a,nd certainly it deserves to be, a seminal work,
u _,1°r ue.which thanks as well as congratulations are
9eorge Gale, formerly editor of The Spectator, 18 currently conducting a daily 'Open Line' Pr°grarnme for London Broadcasting
Previous page
