Comments on: The Great War, Sir Mike, and Me

By: Ovid

Ovid — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 13:23:51 +0000

The Machiavellian types always have claimed in all historical epochs that theirs is the realistic view, but typically they just don't admit the magnitude and consequences of their own mistakes putting this idea into practice. A fine recent book that provides another example of this is The Imperial Cruise, which describes Theodore Roosevelt covertly agreeing to let the Japanese have Korea, which exceeded his Constitutional authority and paved the way for future problems of real enormity with Japan within a few decades, though TR was never one to second-guess himself or be overly honest with himself or anyone else. TR had the same problem many militarists do–at bottom he thought war was the most noble of human activities. Woodrow Wilson didn't share that view at all, and that's a large part of TR's subsequent contempt for him. There's too much love of militarism in our military today too, as one can easily see by reading Andrew Bacevich's books.

By: Ovid

Ovid — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 05:16:43 +0000

Lind's theory of Fourth Generation Warfare took off a few years after the Cold War ended, which was handy because there was no longer another superpower around as a threat to justify our military commitments and posture. An observant reader of James Mann's recent book, The Rebellion of Ronald Reagan, can witness the great sense of panic that permeated the National Security bureaucracy in the late 1980s as Gorbachev progressively took steps to end the Cold War and Reagan encouraged him. Reagon, a simple man, was eager to end the Cold War. Reagan's cabinet even called in Nixon and Kissinger to try to talk Reagan into mistrusting Gorbachev as merely the most clever communist leader ever. There was a pervasive fear in the military and intelligence community that all our commitments would be jeopardized by the Soviets abandoning communism and ceasing to be dangerous. But, of course, LInd and others found new dangers soon enough, with the help of idiots like Saddam Hussein who were stupid enough to believe that a wink and a nod meant we really didn't care who controlled all that oil in the Gulf. (Such a fool Saddam was!)

By: Ovid

Ovid — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 05:11:19 +0000

I have to disagree that Stalin's Russia was an aggressor state. It was a totalitarian state, and an undemocratic state, but it wasn't an aggressor state either before WWII or before the Cold War. The problem was that after WWII communism was a political threat almost everywhere. The United States precipitated the division of Germany and Europe for economic reasons–I don't think anyone is going to ever be able to rebut Caroline Eisenberg's Drawing the Line on that. And those who take the view that the United States wasn't a danger to Stalin or the USSR would have trouble explaining To Win a Nuclear War: The Pentagon's Secret War Plans by Kaku and Axlerod (1987). You can read in that book what the US military had planned for Stalin if they got in the position to pull it off without the Red Army being able to overrun Western Europe. They just never got to that position. Kaku's book is an important and inexpensive book, and people should read it.

By: Ovid

Ovid — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 05:08:22 +0000

A "complete detachment with reality" is pretty strong criticism. That reminds me of something Al Haig or Cheney might have said. And the general outlook seems to accept the necessity of force to the point of embracing it. Robert McNamara warned about the problems this gives rise to in his memoir, In Retrospect, and then also in Fog of War. We had a lot of very close nuclear calls because of this outlook, and a couple of nasty Asian wars with a few million deaths too, if we count the Koreans and Vietnamese. William Lind coined the term Fourth Generation Warfare and claims to view it as a big change in warfare for some reason, but he has also referred to multiculturalism as a "poisonous" ideology in our society and described Islam as "the Christian West's oldest and most steadfast opponent," ading that "immigration can be at least as dangerous as invasion by a state army." With that, he revealed how he views the world. Beneath the strategic veneer, Lind's is a very old-fashioned outlook.

By: jacDesVert

jacDesVert — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 07:13:25 +0000

Simple questions:
How do you deal with aggressor states who see war as the mechanism for furthering their religious, financial or domestic policies?

Do you have any actual understanding of fourth generation warfare? (You know, how we presently are fighting wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.) This diatribe appears to consider all was as being WW1 and never consider that the methods of war have changed on all sides.

You state that war persists due to the darkest evils in men's psyche, but that ignores that one side is defending itself and protecting its people and homes. Is this then an evil? I suppose the attacked could capitulate and become slaves, but would that be the romantic "let's all just get along" that you preach? I doubt you'd feel the same if it was you and yours that were being enslaved.

Nice vision, but a complete detachment with reality.

By: mgerber937

mgerber937 — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 00:25:22 +0000

Thanks for reading, Jac! Here are a few simple answers, though I doubt you will agree with them.

You deal with aggressor states by not creating them in the first place. Hitler's Germany and Stalin's Russia, the prototypical modern aggressor states, were both directly created by the traumas felt by the German and Russian civilian populations in the First World War. Aggressor states are deviations from the norm, mutations made infinitely more likely by wide-scale suffering, want, and feelings of powerlessness. You can also prove the case from the other direction: In 1945, we acted differently towards the defeated nations–rebuilding their societies into stable, prosperous systems–and got the opposite result. This is not romanticism, but intense practicality.

Our actions in Iraq and Afghanistan are excellent examples of how modern technology has made warfare impractical, increasing civilian trauma without effectively solving the problem. A US Ranger friend of mine with Central Asian tours under his belt once said to me, "The Army breaks things. That's what it's good at, and what it's designed to do." Sending the military into Central Asia to break things, without committing to rebuilding that region–something I'm not sure we could do, given the complexity of the societies–seems likely to sow more, not less individual trauma, which leads to more, not fewer, broken institutions, and eventually more, not fewer, aggressor states.

The whole point of WWI, Jac, is that none of the major powers were in any danger of being "enslaved" in 1914. The whole of Europe had enjoyed seventy years of peace, with concomitant increases in material wealth, health, education, and social mobility. Britain and France were liberal democracies; Russia, Germany, and Austro-Hungary were all autocracies progressing at various rates towards liberalization. And yet, at the beginning of the War, each government used exactly the terminology that you did–"defending oneself," "protecting one's people," keeping from "being enslaved." The rhetoric was so incessant that it speedily created a reality–one where all of Europe was indeed, under attack. But the death of the crown prince of Austria-Hungary (soon to assume the throne, and speed up the liberalizing of that empire) did not HAVE to cause a global conflagration. It was the romantic attachment to rhetoric, and the too-hasty use of military might, which created the crisis.

To be sure, there are times when war is, perhaps, the lesser of two evils. But it is very, very difficult to predict when the reasons given for war are indeed a factual revelation of clear and present danger, and not propaganda, yellow journalism, or a convenience of power. Because technology continues to magnify the consequences of our actions in this area–as it does in so many areas–it's incumbent on us to be ever more cautious in our exercise of military force. You may find that idealistic; to me it seems utterly practical.

Thanks for reading!

By: jerry nk

jerry nk — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 13:02:26 +0000

thanks, michael. nice thoughts about the bleakness of the great war. it's only through teaching about it that i've come to see it as meaningful — for me it'd always been persona-less and inaccessible just as you describe.

and then of course the unspeakable irony is that less than 20 years later they were at it again. italy in ethiopia was the same damn thing that got them all into it the first time.

and because my history classes have just been enjoying the surprisingly vivid poems that came out of the war, here's the end of eric bogle's song about the war, written well after but spot on for the sentiment. the last lines are too horrible for me to make it through.

Did you really believe them when they told you the cause?
You really believed that this war would end war?
But the suffering, the sorrow, the glory, the shame –
The killing and dying – it was all done in vain.
For Willie McBride, it's all happened again
And again, and again, and again, and again.

By: dirk voetberg

dirk voetberg — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 06:18:41 +0000

Jesus H. Great post. Ugh. One of the biggest things that's occurred to me is that, yes, war is absolutely out-date, obsolete. We're constantly trying to figure out how to deter and protect by attacking or walling off, attacking and walling off, and on and on. The Bush Administration and, still, Cheney seem to think it's naive to crack that pattern. But, really, that continued habit of attacking and walling off is what's naive. You can't just keep doing that and expecting that, magically, one day, despite all that, the world becomes safe and clear of conflict or, even weirder, that you can just keep attacking more and more and building higher and thicker walls, for absolutely ever.

Now, Obama is adding troops to Afghanistan. That seems maybe continuing down the same path. But, maybe(?) with this new twist of immediately bringing in administrative/governmental infrastructure once a town's "liberated" will be a step in the right direction? I don't know.

But you're absolutely right. All those lives lost. And it doesn't work.