The best books on war in general

Contrary to expectations of heavy reading, the work is presented in digestible short chunks, especially in this abridged version which skips all the dated parts. Clausewitz’s work is so outstanding because he started with a (relatively) clean slate, aiming to reach a better understanding of what drives war in general, rather than, as most of his predecessors, to write “how to” manuals. Clausewitz died of cholera before he could finish revising it – as he had changed his mind about a fundamental question: was all future warfare going to be like Napoleonic War? When he had set out to write, he had thought it would, but it dawned on him later that it might not.  Therefore some important contradictions remain. Still, the majority of Clausewitz’s insights are still extremely valuable today.

This historical-analytical overview covers the last – wait for it – two million years. Gat surveys publications from zoology, paleoanthropology, and evolutionary psychology – to conclude (spoiler alert) that fighting is hard-wired into (human) males. This alone does not explain warfare, which is about getting organized groups to go and fight, and not spontaneously, but after extensive preparations. Using archaeology and urban-architectural history, taking the approach of an anthropologist, Gat marches us through dozens of civilisations of Antiquity and the Middle Ages which at earlier or later points developed urban settlements, generally seeing the need to fortify them to keep raiding nomads from pillaging. 

Moving on to modernity, Gat engages with several key debates about the causations and fueling of wars – was it gunpowder, was it industrialisation? And are liberal democracies peaceful?

John France has a knack for making the history of war interesting and readable, without taking away its gore and horror, without making you think it in any way romantic or desirable. The title already captures it: the book is largely about the rise of Europe (or later: the West) on the back of military prowess, but at what perilous price! The book aptly traces military traditions and continuity of ideas and concepts, but also profound changes, from Antiquity to the present, giving us a grasp of the essence of warfare during different periods. This book can be said to replace Sir Charles Oman’s old classic.

This book begins with our inherited views of what constitutes victory – the proudly-displayed Greek panoply of captured weapons, the Roman triumph, the medieval view of battle as awesome divine judgment, and the modern quest for “decisive battle” in mind. By contrast, other cultures – Iran, Assad’s Syria, China, and Russia for example, which are covered brilliantly – may be content with indecisive, drawn-out conflicts which give them the chance to keep their fingers in many pies and incrementally increase their influence. 

Thus our modern Western construct assuming that peace is the norm and war the exception, or that war should aim for a neat victory, and a lasting peace settlement imposed on the defeated adversary, is just that: a construct, rarely reflecting views and practices in other times and in other parts of the world. 

We are in danger of engaging with war as though it were a philosophical enquiry or a strategic game if we leave out its essence: the death, the suffering, the destruction, the fear, the devastation that it brings, reflected in many among the texts in this anthology, written by eye-witnesses. Others – including the poems – are the product of a different sort of engagement with war: not the attempt at rational analysis but of artistic sublimation of the experience. This, too, represents a thoroughly valid approach missing from the academic works recommended in this section. 

If this collection can be faulted, it is for leaving out works – many of great impact at their time, and some not without literary merit – that turned the experience of war into its direct or indirect praise. We thus look in vain for excerpts from Ernst Jünger’s Storm of Steel, for example. This omission is understandable, perhaps even commendable, but gives a skewed picture of how War was interpreted and how its image was passed on to new generations.