Review: Michael McGerr. A Fierce Discontent: The Rise and Fall of the Progressive Movement in America, 1870-1920. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005.
In 1889 Woodrow Wilson stated in “Leaders of Men”, “Society is not a crowd, but an organism; and, like every organism, it must grow as a whole or else be deformed.” This is a succinct definition of the Progressive ethos. Wilson continued by arguing that social reform must be gradual and only attempted after the public mind had been properly “prepared.” In his closing chapter McGerr demonstrates how Wilson helped bring the Progressive Era to an end by his overreach during World War I. McGerr’s central argument is that Progressivism was a middle class movement that resulted from social tensions generated within the middle class by its increasing affluence. Unlike Rodgers’ thesis in Atlantic Crossings, McGerr discounts the importance of ideas for an approach based on class analysis, economic determinism, and psychology. This book provides a wealth of information and insight into the motives and emotional makeup of the Progressive reformer. However, it does not succeed in proving its thesis. In the last part of the book, the author even seems to lose track of his basic point in his description of the countervailing cultural factors at work in America that led the country to ultimately reject the Progressive enterprise.
In the context of his class based analysis, the crux of McGerr’s argument is that Progressivism was as much the result of stress from within classes as between them. This is particularly true of the growing, urban middle class of the late 1800s. In building his thesis, he takes a page from Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique. He contends that despite (or because of) their prosperity, middle class marriages became increasingly unhappy. Women in particularly grew restless and sought escape outside the home (McGerr, 12, 46). In this way, the Victorian mind-set became Progressive moralism, hostile to individualism and determined to remake America and Americans. Unfortunately, McGerr’s indifference to ideas and religion leads him to ignoring previous reform movements in the United States. He treats Progressivism as sui generis. Although he does quote both the German trained economists and Social Gospel leaders, they are not treated as catalysts or their ideas as having any special importance in creating the movement.
A major weakness is the book’s treatment of social groups and classes as monolithic blocks. This shortcoming is illustrated by such generalizations as, “With individualism in disrepute, the middle class needed another doctrine to guide them in the world” (McGerr, 64). It is as if rummaging through the ideological bargain bin, the “middle class” came upon a “third-way” version of a puritanical collectivism. This seems to be reversing cause and effect in that ethics is prior to politics. The author’s argument that the bad behavior of the rich led to the rejection of individualism never addresses why the Progressives came to that particular conclusion. This rejection must have been predicated on an already held view on the nature of self-interest and virtue. It is more likely that these unhappy busybodies observed American society besotted with “sin” and “selfishness,” which required their (coercive) ministrations for redemption.
The book’s last section illustrates the differing attitudes within the middle class. McGerr chronicles how in the first decade and a half of the twentieth century Americans threw off the vestiges of Victorianism and pursued self actualization and individual autonomy. He describes how entire new industries grew to meet this growing consumer demand by producing movies, automobiles, phonographs, sports stadiums, music halls, new musical forms, and theaters. The new media, particularly motion pictures, also led to more open attitudes regarding women’s sexuality. The new feminists asserted that women should seek their own individuality and sexual fulfillment just as men do. The Progressives were appalled by all this. In his final chapter, McGerr shows how the Progressive attempt to stifle these healthy developments by turning the nation into one vast army camp doomed not only the Wilson administration but also their movement. This last contention may be an overstatement. The will to engage in soft social engineering in order to “remake” America is still a part of the nation’s politics. In this regard, McGerr’s book provides good insight into the Progressive mentality.
Sunday, September 13, 2009
Monday, June 22, 2009
Charles B. MacDonald: Company Commander
In 1947 Charles MacDonald published Company Commander. It is his story of leadership under fire from the Siegfried Line to Czechoslovakia. In September 1944 Captain MacDonald was given command of I Company, 3rd Battalion, 23rd Infantry Regiment, 2nd Infantry Division. The lives of nearly two-hundred men were his responsibility; MacDonald was twenty-one years old.
MacDonald received his baptism of fire in a squalid, captured German pill-box part of the captured Siegfried Line his men were ordered to hold. Five days before the massive German attack in the Ardennes, MacDonald’s 2nd Division was relieved by the 106th Infantry Division. As a result of the German offensive that began on 16 December 1945, two of the three infantry regiments of the 106th Division would be surrounded and captured.
MacDonald’s unit was moved north for an attack into, and through, the Siegfried Line aimed at taking the Roer Dams. The jumping off point for this attack was along the north flank of what was to become “The Bulge.” On the evening of 16 December, MacDonald was ordered to quickly deploy with the other companies of 3rd Battalion to hold a vital crossroads “at all costs.” Nobody knew it at the time but elements of two German Divisions, the 277th Volksgrenadier and the 12th SS Panzer, were headed for that crossroads.
The 17th would witness concentrated hell in the forest in front of the crossroads. MacDonald’s men held off six successive attacks by German infantry. The Germans got closer to the American foxholes with each successive attack. MacDonald’s men were getting low on ammunition and had received no artillery support. Except for two M4 Shermans somewhere behind their position, I Company had no anti-tank defenses. At that moment five Tiger Tanks rumbled up the road. The German tanks began to systematically blast the Americans in their foxholes. After approximately thirty minutes of that I Company broke for the rear. The Shermans got two of the German tanks before being destroyed.
MacDonald arrived at the battalion headquarters only knowing where a handful of his men were. As he states he was disgusted with himself feeling he had failed to hold the crossroads and by allowing many of his men to be killed or captured. He wondered if he would be court-martialed and if it would not have been better to have been killed in the battle. The first thing his battalion commander said to him was, “nice work, Mac.” The 3rd Battalion had held the crossroads under impossible conditions just long enough for the 2nd Division’s other regiments to get into position. MacDonald received the Silver Star.
Richard E. Cowan was a machine gunner from M Company assigned to MacDonald’s unit during the battle. For staying at his gun and covering the other men in their retreat, Cowan became the subject of both German infantry and tanks. Nevertheless, Cowan held his position and was the last man to pull back. He was killed the next day. For his efforts on 17th December he received the Medal of Honor.
Jose Lopez, another machine gunner who was attached to the neighboring K Company, also received the Medal of Honor for his courage on 17th December. Fortunately, Lopez survived the war and lived to a ripe old age. Reading the award citations gives some indication of the ferocity of the German attack.
A month later leading his company in a counterattack MacDonald was wounded. After two months of recuperating, MacDonald was given command of G Company of the 2nd Battalion of his old regiment. MacDonald led this company from the Rhine to Leipzig and into Czechoslovakia by the war’s end.
The book isn’t all blood and gore there are moments of humor and dialogue right out of a movie. For example, MacDonald reports the following comments by his troops who had just witnessed a P-47 fighter-bomber attack on German positions:
“Well, their work’s done for the day,” someone said. “Yeah,” a mortarman answered, reaching for a shovel, “they’ll go home now and have a short Scotch and a hot bath and shack up with some mademoiselle or some Limey wench. What a life!” “Yeah, and draw a double salary for it,” a headquarters man put in. “That’s the life for me.” Willie Hagan said, “Oh, dry up. You never had it so good.”
In passing MacDonald notes that the 3rd Battalion surgeon was Edward T. Matsuoka of Honolulu. Matsuoka received his medical degree in 1941 and was awarded the Bronze Star for his efforts during the Battle of the Bulge.
MacDonald was wounded on 17 January 1945. The final volume of the Green Series on the European Theater, The Last Offensive, takes off from around that time and concludes with the war’s ending. This volume of the series was written by Charles B. MacDonald who retired as Deputy Chief Historian, U.S. Army in 1979. MacDonald also wrote or co-wrote two other books of the Green Series, The Siegfried Line Campaign and Three Battles: Arnaville, Altuzzo, and Schmidt. He also contributed to Command Decisions.
After retiring, MacDonald wrote A Time for Trumpets (note the title). This, I believe, was his last book. It is the history of the Ardennes Offensive and concentrates on the first two weeks of the struggle. Needless to say, this was a deeply personal work for him:
I approached the work with a kind of messianic zeal, for I wanted to tell the story to my own satisfaction (the battle had shaped my life, and I have always felt that I left a little something of me in the Ardennes).
This leads to the question, can someone with such an intense personal involvement write an objective history? I believe he did. It is the best work I’ve read on the battle (not that I have read them all). Perhaps, MacDonald had a personal need to understand what had happened and therefore, he wrote an honest account because of his personal involvement.
The title of the work is of interest because of the ongoing debate about “Drums and Trumpets” military history that focuses on battles, leaders, weapons and campaigns and the future and direction of the field. This may be what MacDonald had in mind when he penned the closing paragraph of A Time for Trumpets:
Hitler saw the American soldier as the weak component (the “Italians”) of the Western alliance, the product of a society too heterogeneous to field a capable fighting force. Bouck, Crawford, Tsakanikas, Umanoff, Moore, Reid, Descheneaux, O’Brien, Jones, Erlenbusch, Goldstein, McKinley, Mandichak, Spigelman, Garcia, Russamano, Wieszcyk, Nawrocki, Campbell, Barcellona, Leinbaugh. Black men, too, although their color was hardly reflected in their names. The heterogeneity was indeed there, but at many a place – at Krinkelt-Rocherath, at Dom. Butgenbach, in the Losheim Gap, behind the Schnee Eifel, at St. Vith, atop Skyline Drive, at the Parc Hotel, Echternach, Malmedy, Stavelot, Stoumont, Bastogne, Verdenne, Baraque de Fraiture, Hotton, Noville – the American soldier put the lie to Hitler’s theory. His was a story to be told to the sound of trumpets.
Update, 22 June 2009: Prior to joining the Army in 1942, MacDonald had graduated from Presbyterian College in Clinton, South Carolina. He was from Little Rock, South Carolina. The Presbyterian College archives have made seven of MacDonald's wartime letters available online in PDF format.
Sunday, May 3, 2009
Review: This Republic of Suffering by Drew Gilpin Faust
Harvard president Drew Gilpin Faust’s latest book is This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War. Her main point is that the immense number of casualties endured by Americans—North and South—during the war had a profound effect on the nation. The accepted approximation of the death toll of the Civil War is 600,000 military deaths. Civilian deaths are difficult to estimate, but 50,000 deaths from all causes are not unreasonable to assume. Faust argues that this unprecedented bloodbath (for the United States) was the impetus for a reevaluation of the nature of human life: “The presence and fear of death touched Civil War Americans’ most fundamental sense of who they were, for in its threat of termination and transformation, death inevitably inspired self-scrutiny and self-definition” (xv). She states that all Americans had to deal with the war’s death and destruction, which required rethinking many deeply held values. For example, Faust contradicts the general belief that Emily Dickinson’s work was unaffected by the Civil War: “War provided Dickinson with inexhaustible material for her metaphysical speculations” (205). Faust cites Dickinson’s concern for the life of her friend Thomas Wentworth Higginson, the well-known Bostonian abolitionist.
Beside the vast number of deaths, Faust bases her argument on the importance of what she calls the “Good Death.” She observes that until the Civil War most Americans died at home, surrounded by their loved ones. Death on the battlefield was often anonymous and unconfirmed. Families would be left wondering what happened to their fathers, brothers and sons. This was because of an overwhelmed military establishment that had no formal means of notifying a soldier’s next-of-kin in case of death, disappearance, or capture. The author includes many vignettes of people who traveled to the battlefield in order to discover the whereabouts of their relatives in uniform. She does discuss the impact of photography on bringing the battlefield to the public. This new technology, along with the spread of mass-market magazines with their illustrations, brought the horrors of war to the American people as never before. However, she does not mention the Transportation Revolution that made possible the movement of civilians to war zones, and quick, efficient communications via both the U.S. mail and telegraph.
Faust’s thesis is less than convincing. She cites examples in support of her position that have multiple interpretations without bothering to provide full context. The almost universal preoccupation by soldiers to fight courageously and not dishonor themselves or their cause is presented as something new during the Civil War. She quotes a letter of condolence written by James Connor to General Wade Hampton upon the death of his son. Faust stresses the perfunctory reference to Christian values in the letter, while neglecting to emphasize the centrality of Southern honor in it (25). She contends that the Civil War created a “new relationship with death” for mid-century Americans (xi). While this is undoubtedly true, Faust discounts the suffering and death toll of the Revolutionary War in order to support her argument. The Revolutionary War resulted in over 25,000 American dead. Although far lower than Civil War casualties in absolute numbers, the Revolution’s death toll was nearly one percent of the total population. Revolutionary America had to learn how to deal with the same issues as Civil War America; the main difference between the two eras was that the eighteenth century lacked the infrastructure and wealth enjoyed by the later occasion.[1] If one factors in the Napoleonic Wars and the Crimean War, Faust’s thesis on the uniqueness of the American response to horrendous death in time of war is not very convincing.
Another serious problem with This Republic of Suffering is its presentism. Faust quotes an anonymous Union captain’s letter to an embalmer: “I do not want this body expensively embalmed, but well done….” She continues by pointing out that the dead soldier to be embalmed was a private: “For a private, ‘well done’ was seemingly good enough” (94). Needless to say, such judgmental sarcasm directed at such a minor historical figure is not acceptable. As if to prove this point, she then spends the next several pages of the book explaining how embalmers cheated their customers with inflated bills. In other words, within a few pages of text, the president of Harvard manages to refute herself. One must wonder how this blunder made it through the editorial process.
There are numerous examples in this book of how contemporary concerns inform its argument. The northern clergyman is another target of Faust’s incomprehensible personal attacks. She all but calls the man a “chickenhawk”: “Bushnell spoke as a victor. One also suspects that he could talk so enthusiastically about blood because he had spent the war in Connecticut, distant from the battlefields….” (191). There is simply no excuse for this. Faust possesses the uncanny ability to peer into the hearts and minds of those long dead. Mrs. Charles J. Williams may have been amazed to find herself understanding “the nature of this gendered claim” (on women working to honor Confederate war dead) when the quote provided illustrates no such understanding (242-3). A letter from Clara Barton to Edwin Stanton that pressed for government responsibility in accounting for war dead by asserting the rights of women survivors is also cited. Faust alleges that Barton “sought to minimize and even erase a gendered divide and a gendered hierarchy that Civil War death had only rendered more profound” (231). How does Faust know this? No evidence is supplied indicating that Barton was thinking in such modern terms.
Tenuous assumptions litter this work. On page seventy-five, Faust observes the deep apprehension Americans had of premature burial during the nineteenth century. She claims that this concern was a result of a “fundamental uncertainty about the boundary between life and death.” Yet, it has also been argued that this fear resulted from a “fundamental uncertainty” on the competence of nineteenth century physicians. Since this view does not conform to Faust’s thesis, it is not mentioned. One could fill many more pages with such complaints on this boring book’s style and content; fortunately, it lends itself to skimming. I cannot understand its rave reviews.
[1] Allan R. Millett and Peter Maslowski, For the Common Defense: A Military History of the United States of America (New York: The Free Press, 1994), 82.
Beside the vast number of deaths, Faust bases her argument on the importance of what she calls the “Good Death.” She observes that until the Civil War most Americans died at home, surrounded by their loved ones. Death on the battlefield was often anonymous and unconfirmed. Families would be left wondering what happened to their fathers, brothers and sons. This was because of an overwhelmed military establishment that had no formal means of notifying a soldier’s next-of-kin in case of death, disappearance, or capture. The author includes many vignettes of people who traveled to the battlefield in order to discover the whereabouts of their relatives in uniform. She does discuss the impact of photography on bringing the battlefield to the public. This new technology, along with the spread of mass-market magazines with their illustrations, brought the horrors of war to the American people as never before. However, she does not mention the Transportation Revolution that made possible the movement of civilians to war zones, and quick, efficient communications via both the U.S. mail and telegraph.
Faust’s thesis is less than convincing. She cites examples in support of her position that have multiple interpretations without bothering to provide full context. The almost universal preoccupation by soldiers to fight courageously and not dishonor themselves or their cause is presented as something new during the Civil War. She quotes a letter of condolence written by James Connor to General Wade Hampton upon the death of his son. Faust stresses the perfunctory reference to Christian values in the letter, while neglecting to emphasize the centrality of Southern honor in it (25). She contends that the Civil War created a “new relationship with death” for mid-century Americans (xi). While this is undoubtedly true, Faust discounts the suffering and death toll of the Revolutionary War in order to support her argument. The Revolutionary War resulted in over 25,000 American dead. Although far lower than Civil War casualties in absolute numbers, the Revolution’s death toll was nearly one percent of the total population. Revolutionary America had to learn how to deal with the same issues as Civil War America; the main difference between the two eras was that the eighteenth century lacked the infrastructure and wealth enjoyed by the later occasion.[1] If one factors in the Napoleonic Wars and the Crimean War, Faust’s thesis on the uniqueness of the American response to horrendous death in time of war is not very convincing.
Another serious problem with This Republic of Suffering is its presentism. Faust quotes an anonymous Union captain’s letter to an embalmer: “I do not want this body expensively embalmed, but well done….” She continues by pointing out that the dead soldier to be embalmed was a private: “For a private, ‘well done’ was seemingly good enough” (94). Needless to say, such judgmental sarcasm directed at such a minor historical figure is not acceptable. As if to prove this point, she then spends the next several pages of the book explaining how embalmers cheated their customers with inflated bills. In other words, within a few pages of text, the president of Harvard manages to refute herself. One must wonder how this blunder made it through the editorial process.
There are numerous examples in this book of how contemporary concerns inform its argument. The northern clergyman is another target of Faust’s incomprehensible personal attacks. She all but calls the man a “chickenhawk”: “Bushnell spoke as a victor. One also suspects that he could talk so enthusiastically about blood because he had spent the war in Connecticut, distant from the battlefields….” (191). There is simply no excuse for this. Faust possesses the uncanny ability to peer into the hearts and minds of those long dead. Mrs. Charles J. Williams may have been amazed to find herself understanding “the nature of this gendered claim” (on women working to honor Confederate war dead) when the quote provided illustrates no such understanding (242-3). A letter from Clara Barton to Edwin Stanton that pressed for government responsibility in accounting for war dead by asserting the rights of women survivors is also cited. Faust alleges that Barton “sought to minimize and even erase a gendered divide and a gendered hierarchy that Civil War death had only rendered more profound” (231). How does Faust know this? No evidence is supplied indicating that Barton was thinking in such modern terms.
Tenuous assumptions litter this work. On page seventy-five, Faust observes the deep apprehension Americans had of premature burial during the nineteenth century. She claims that this concern was a result of a “fundamental uncertainty about the boundary between life and death.” Yet, it has also been argued that this fear resulted from a “fundamental uncertainty” on the competence of nineteenth century physicians. Since this view does not conform to Faust’s thesis, it is not mentioned. One could fill many more pages with such complaints on this boring book’s style and content; fortunately, it lends itself to skimming. I cannot understand its rave reviews.
[1] Allan R. Millett and Peter Maslowski, For the Common Defense: A Military History of the United States of America (New York: The Free Press, 1994), 82.
Thursday, June 19, 2008
Sparrowhawk by Edward Cline
Originally posted at Hawaii Reporter:
On October 18, 2004, Chris Matthews interviewed ex-President Jimmy Carter. During the discussion Carter stated that the American Revolution "was an unnecessary war...and of course now we would have been a free country now as is Canada and India and Australia, having gotten our independence in a nonviolent way."
Unfortunately, this attitude is not unique to the former president. In the article for the May 1995 issue of Commentary, Walter A. McDougall catalogs many of the problems with the train-wreck known as the National Standards Project. One of his complaints about the Standards was "how Tory it is. Students are repeatedly asked whether the English Parliament’s position on taxation was not in fact reasonable, whether the colonies’ resistance was really justified…" I have to agree with McDougall; in the name of "balance" many American textbooks denigrate, or minimize, the historic achievement of the Founders. This attitude demonstrates that the American Revolution is not a forgotten event, but rather an unknown one. Edward Cline’s series of novels, Sparrowhawk, is an antidote to shelves of cynical history textbooks.
In a letter to Hezekiah Niles, John Adams articulated the meaning and cause of the Revolution. "The Revolution was effected before the war commenced…This radical change in the principles, opinions, sentiments, and affections of the people, was the real American Revolution." Edward Cline’s Sparrowhawk series dramatizes this change in colonial attitudes towards the mother country. The Fourth of the series, Empire, was published in 2005. The final two volumes, Revolution and War are also now available. The previous three are: Jack Frake, Hugh Kenrick and Caxton. Caxton ends by establishing the central conflict of Empire:
Cline superbly dramatizes this revolution in Empire, the plot of which revolves around the passing of the Stamp Act in Parliament and the Virginia Resolves in the House of Burgesses.
Empire is a self-contained masterpiece and can be read alone. But don’t, you will be missing out on five first-rate historical novels. Jack Frake and Hugh Kenrick introduce the two main characters of the series. Both novels describe the moral development of Jack, the commoner, and Hugh, the aristocrat, into independent spirits, two variations of the same theme. The events of both books take place entirely in England. Cline, apparently, wants to emphasize the point that although the ideas of the American Revolution originated in Europe, it was Americans who gave those ideas life and spirit. One of the highlights of these two books is the tour of Samuel Johnson’s London they provide. The action in Caxton takes place towards the end of the French and Indian War. The third volume introduces Jack and Hugh to each other and colonial Virginia to the reader.
Caxton also introduces a third character, Etain McRae, daughter of a Caxton, Virginia merchant. Etain will have to make the unenviable choice between Jack and Hugh as her "beau-ideal of Virginia manhood." This is a decision that Cline will save for her until Empire:
As noted, the central event of Empire is the passing of the Virginia Resolves. Their historical importance can hardly be overestimated. After the Boston riot of 14 August 1765, Governor Bernard of Massachusetts wrote to Lord Halifax, Secretary of State, stating that: "I thought that this People would have submitted to the Stamp Act without actual Opposition. Murmurs indeed were continually heard, but they seemed to be such as would in time die away; But the publishing the Virginia Resolves proved an Alarm bell to the disaffected." The Virginia Resolves had lit the fire of colonial rebellion to Crown taxation:
These novels have to be read to appreciate the wealth of research Cline has put into this series. One example is the exchange between Patrick Henry and Hugh Kenrick in which Henry points out "Young man, I note here in the act that even papers necessary in ecclesiastical courts must be stamped to have any legal force…However, there are no ecclesiastical courts in this or any other colony on these shores." And it is there, buried in the turgid text of the Act, "For every skin or piece of vellum…or renunciation in ecclesiastical matters in any such court, a stamp duty of six pence."
Cline’s style is clear, yet evocative. To open a Sparrowhawk novel is to step onto the streets of Enlightenment London, Colonial Williamsburg or the deck of a sailing ship. The heroes are men of action. Yet, the theme is the values and ideals that give meaning to their actions.
Empire is the most daring of the series to date. This is because historical figures, such as Patrick Henry, interact with the fictional characters. Cline is able to create a seamless integration between a plot based on a historical event, his fictional characters and the historical characters. This type of fiction strikes me as much harder to write, and more fun to read, than "counter-factual" history.
Cline does take some "artistic license" with the historical characters. By doing so he brings vividly to life the issues at stake at Empire’s climax, the debate in the House of Burgesses over the Virginia Resolves. He defines the dilemma of the House "moderates" from the perspective of Peyton Randolph:
This is no hyperbole on Cline’s/Randolph’s part. If Parliament had not repealed the Stamp Act in 1766 there was the real possibility that the American Revolution would have started ten years early. Cline has one of his fictional heroes answer the smarmy calls for accommodation on the House floor:
There are actually two climaxes in Empire. There is the debate and passing of the resolves; there is the crisis of conscience of the above speaker as his price for colonial victory.
The book ends with Governor Fauquier dissolving the House of Burgesses and the Patriots making plans to further oppose the Stamp Act. Also, towards the end of Empire, Cline quotes from the poem "The Heroic Mind" by Thomas Browne, which is also the moral theme of the series:
On October 18, 2004, Chris Matthews interviewed ex-President Jimmy Carter. During the discussion Carter stated that the American Revolution "was an unnecessary war...and of course now we would have been a free country now as is Canada and India and Australia, having gotten our independence in a nonviolent way."
Unfortunately, this attitude is not unique to the former president. In the article for the May 1995 issue of Commentary, Walter A. McDougall catalogs many of the problems with the train-wreck known as the National Standards Project. One of his complaints about the Standards was "how Tory it is. Students are repeatedly asked whether the English Parliament’s position on taxation was not in fact reasonable, whether the colonies’ resistance was really justified…" I have to agree with McDougall; in the name of "balance" many American textbooks denigrate, or minimize, the historic achievement of the Founders. This attitude demonstrates that the American Revolution is not a forgotten event, but rather an unknown one. Edward Cline’s series of novels, Sparrowhawk, is an antidote to shelves of cynical history textbooks.
In a letter to Hezekiah Niles, John Adams articulated the meaning and cause of the Revolution. "The Revolution was effected before the war commenced…This radical change in the principles, opinions, sentiments, and affections of the people, was the real American Revolution." Edward Cline’s Sparrowhawk series dramatizes this change in colonial attitudes towards the mother country. The Fourth of the series, Empire, was published in 2005. The final two volumes, Revolution and War are also now available. The previous three are: Jack Frake, Hugh Kenrick and Caxton. Caxton ends by establishing the central conflict of Empire:
Some historians date the first serious articulation of revolution to Otis; others, to Henry. This is a moot point. Their words, verging on the received definition of treason, were not "shots heard ‘round the world," but rather presageful alarms that stung the restive consciousness of any man accustomed to thought. They set the tone and terms for everything that was to follow. Jack Frake and Hugh Kenrick, rebels from two distinct strata of English society, and moved by differing visions of liberty, would now become dedicated revolutionaries: one imbued with a steady, quiet certitude; the other, with an articulate, impassioned patriotism…
Cline superbly dramatizes this revolution in Empire, the plot of which revolves around the passing of the Stamp Act in Parliament and the Virginia Resolves in the House of Burgesses.
Empire is a self-contained masterpiece and can be read alone. But don’t, you will be missing out on five first-rate historical novels. Jack Frake and Hugh Kenrick introduce the two main characters of the series. Both novels describe the moral development of Jack, the commoner, and Hugh, the aristocrat, into independent spirits, two variations of the same theme. The events of both books take place entirely in England. Cline, apparently, wants to emphasize the point that although the ideas of the American Revolution originated in Europe, it was Americans who gave those ideas life and spirit. One of the highlights of these two books is the tour of Samuel Johnson’s London they provide. The action in Caxton takes place towards the end of the French and Indian War. The third volume introduces Jack and Hugh to each other and colonial Virginia to the reader.
Caxton also introduces a third character, Etain McRae, daughter of a Caxton, Virginia merchant. Etain will have to make the unenviable choice between Jack and Hugh as her "beau-ideal of Virginia manhood." This is a decision that Cline will save for her until Empire:
Etain, too, knew the histories of Jack and Hugh. For her, their scandals were acts of heroism…She shared with them some special approach to life. She was certain of this; it was felt by her as an emotion, yet she knew that its root was a knowledge whose words eluded her. There was Jack, who had risen and grown and triumphed in spite of a society that had repeatedly knocked him down. He was a living, incurious contradiction of that society. There was Hugh, who had rebelled against that same society, yet who seemed to be a purified symbol of it…
As noted, the central event of Empire is the passing of the Virginia Resolves. Their historical importance can hardly be overestimated. After the Boston riot of 14 August 1765, Governor Bernard of Massachusetts wrote to Lord Halifax, Secretary of State, stating that: "I thought that this People would have submitted to the Stamp Act without actual Opposition. Murmurs indeed were continually heard, but they seemed to be such as would in time die away; But the publishing the Virginia Resolves proved an Alarm bell to the disaffected." The Virginia Resolves had lit the fire of colonial rebellion to Crown taxation:
Colonel Barre warned insensate and indifferent minds in the Commons, "jealous of their liberties…ready to vindicate them if ever they were violated." Those minds chose not to believe him. But across an ocean the flambeaux and the candles joined together to create a conflagration. The brightest and most fiery flambeau burned in the Virginia House of Burgesses, spread to the other colonies, and imparted a new color to the flames that roared up in those venues of the empire. The ferocity of the conflagration took both England and its loyalists in the colonies by surprise. Parliament counted on familiar docility in the colonials; the colonials counted on recognition of injustice and an admission of their appeals to reason. Neither was forthcoming. The result was a test of wills…Except to a very few discerning observers among them, the hand that lit the flames was as invisible to the English and the Continental as was the modest colonial capital from which they rose. The hand had a name: Patrick Henry…
These novels have to be read to appreciate the wealth of research Cline has put into this series. One example is the exchange between Patrick Henry and Hugh Kenrick in which Henry points out "Young man, I note here in the act that even papers necessary in ecclesiastical courts must be stamped to have any legal force…However, there are no ecclesiastical courts in this or any other colony on these shores." And it is there, buried in the turgid text of the Act, "For every skin or piece of vellum…or renunciation in ecclesiastical matters in any such court, a stamp duty of six pence."
Cline’s style is clear, yet evocative. To open a Sparrowhawk novel is to step onto the streets of Enlightenment London, Colonial Williamsburg or the deck of a sailing ship. The heroes are men of action. Yet, the theme is the values and ideals that give meaning to their actions.
Empire is the most daring of the series to date. This is because historical figures, such as Patrick Henry, interact with the fictional characters. Cline is able to create a seamless integration between a plot based on a historical event, his fictional characters and the historical characters. This type of fiction strikes me as much harder to write, and more fun to read, than "counter-factual" history.
Cline does take some "artistic license" with the historical characters. By doing so he brings vividly to life the issues at stake at Empire’s climax, the debate in the House of Burgesses over the Virginia Resolves. He defines the dilemma of the House "moderates" from the perspective of Peyton Randolph:
Not a single truth in the resolves could be denied, thought Randolph. He was even willing to concede the truth contained in the fifth. But it was a dangerous truth, a truth which, if uttered to the Governor, or written in a formal protest, would directly challenge Parliamentary authority. It was a truth that contradicted the entire apparatus of the Empire. It was a truth that could bring war, if it were allowed to emerge from the House as a conviction...
This is no hyperbole on Cline’s/Randolph’s part. If Parliament had not repealed the Stamp Act in 1766 there was the real possibility that the American Revolution would have started ten years early. Cline has one of his fictional heroes answer the smarmy calls for accommodation on the House floor:
We who endorse these resolves are neither ignorant of the difference between foolishness and wisdom, nor oblivious to the virtues of those who have trod the earth before many of us came into it…In these circumstances, the virtue which that gentleman accuses us of lacking has become a vice. Call it moderation, or charity, it will not serve us now. We exercise the virtue of righteous certitude, for it alone has the efficacy that conciliation and accommodation have not…Moral certitude is a virtue itself, and in this instance is a glorious one, because it asserts and affirms, in all those charters and resolves, our natural liberty and the blessings it bestows upon us…!
There are actually two climaxes in Empire. There is the debate and passing of the resolves; there is the crisis of conscience of the above speaker as his price for colonial victory.
The book ends with Governor Fauquier dissolving the House of Burgesses and the Patriots making plans to further oppose the Stamp Act. Also, towards the end of Empire, Cline quotes from the poem "The Heroic Mind" by Thomas Browne, which is also the moral theme of the series:
…Where true fortitude dwells, loyalty, bounty, friendship, and fidelity may be found…. Small and creeping things are the product of petty souls…. Pitiful things are only to be found in the cottages of such breasts. But bright thoughts, clear deeds, constancy, fidelity, bounty, and generous honesty are the gems of noble minds….
Friday, June 13, 2008
The Development of the Fighter Plane Over the Western Front
At the beginning of World War I all the major belligerent powers had air forces of various strengths. Of the combatants only Britain, France, Germany and to a lesser extent Italy, had the industrial capacity to maintain large air forces at a competitive level of technological development. Russia, for example, was greatly hindered by the lack of aircraft engine manufacturing capability. Therefore, this paper will focus on the Western Front where the most advanced air forces were concentrated, where the greatest air battles were fought and where the most rapid fighter development occurred. This paper will discuss how, on the Western Front, there was a seesaw war for aerial dominance: the key to success was the maintenance of a technological advantage over the enemy. Fighters would be introduced, gain a measure of ascendancy and be obsolete in a matter of months. Prior to World War I, aircraft had been used in war. In 1911 Italy invaded Libya to wrest it from the Turks. The Italian army brought along nine aircraft and two dirigibles. The aircraft were used fro reconnaissance, including photo reconnaissance, and to bomb the Turk’s Arab allies. Aircraft were also of limited use for reconnaissance in the fighting during the Mexican Revolution. The first air combat was between two American mercenaries, fighting for different factions in 1916.
At the beginning of WWI the main purpose of aircraft was also reconnaissance. Even in this capacity aircraft were considered experimental and many generals preferred to rely on the traditional cavalry. Aircraft were not to be used beyond this role as an adjunct to cavalry reconnaissance:
This attitude is understandable, given the level of technological development at the time; it was still extremely hazardous just flying, much less fighting. Besides, the information carried by the aviators was too important to risk with derring-do.
There is still debate on the effectiveness of aerial reconnaissance during the Battle of the Marne: “Early accounts, the official history, and the Air Ministry’s official synopsis of the wartime aerial effort praised the RFC’s [Royal Flying Corps] regular, rapid, and accurate reconnaissance in the retreat.” However, “more recent historians David Devine and Malcolm Cooper have emphasized the RFC’s flaws in August and September 1914.”[2] Other historians disagree, “The Battle of the Marne finally validated the importance of aerial observation.”[3] At the end of August General von Kluck, commander of the First German Army, shifted his army east: “This change in direction was duly noted on September 2 by Louis Breguet, the aircraft designer, who volunteered his services and his latest prototype to the cause of defending the capital. His report of ‘von Kluck’s turn’ was reconfirmed by planes from Escadrilles REP 15 and MF 16.”[4]
The Supreme Commander of all French forces, General Joffre, believed the aviator’s reports and issued his famous order: “Gentlemen, we will fight on the Marne.” What was to be a quick war of movement, became after the Race to the Sea a war of position and attrition. In any event, the generals recognized the value of aircraft for reconnaissance and artillery observation: “Following the Battle of the Marne, Sir John French praised the British squadrons for ‘the most complete and accurate information which has been of incalculable value in the conduct of the operations.’”[5]
Trench warfare had made the cavalry obsolete on the Western Front; aircraft would replace it. Indeed, many a cavalryman became a flyer: “But when Ulanen-Reg Nr. 1 [Prussian Light Cavalry Regiment No. 1] was transferred from Belgium to Verdun, Richthofen saw the dissolution of an old order of battle and the emergence of a new one…Where was the glorious 19th century war for which Manfred and Lothar had trained?”[6] They would find it, in part, over the trenches.
The first year of the war was a time of experimentation and improvisation of military aviation. The impetus behind the creation of the first true fighter plane was the aviators at the front. They were not content with just observing the enemy; the issue became a matter of denying the enemy his ‘eyes.’ At this point of the war, from August 1914 thru the beginning of 1916, squadrons were equipped with heterogeneous collections of aircraft. A squadron would include single-seat tractor driven aircraft along with ‘pusher’ types carrying an observer. Lt. Louis Strange of No. 6 squadron RFC, begged for permission from his commanding officer to mount a machine gun to the upper wing of a Martinsyde single-seat scout to fire over the propeller. The Martinsyde was unsuited as a fighter plane: “It was slow, unstable, and yet lethargic in its response to the controls.”[7] The plane was so slow Strange could not even catch his intended victim. He also nearly killed himself trying to reload the Lewis machine gun mounted high above the cockpit on the upper wing. Clearly, this would not do.
It was the French who hit upon the solution of how to deny the air to the enemy. Roland Garros was a famous pre-war pilot; he was also the test pilot for the Morane-Saulnier aircraft company. He added a fixed machine gun to his Morane-Saulnier monoplane mounted on the engine cowling. About ten percent of the bullets fired from the machine gun hit the airscrew. He added metal plates to the propeller to deflect these bullets. He had invented the fighter plane: “In the spring [of 1915] he entered MS26 at Dunkirk, equipped with a Morane with the channeled deflectors. Within three weeks, from 1 to 18 April, he had shot down three German airplanes, an astounding feat fro the time.”[8] Garros was forced down behind German lines by ground fire. The Germans delivered his aircraft to an obscure Dutch aircraft designer with experience building small, single-seat aircraft.
Anthony Herman Gerard Fokker was born in 1890 in the Dutch East Indies where his father was a prosperous planter. The Flying Dutchman, as Fokker was nicknamed, was a true aviation pioneer. The Fokker family returned to Holland when Anthony reached school age. In 1910 Fokker designed, built and flew his first aircraft as a student at the automotive school at Zalbach, Germany. Fokker learned quickly and he, “requested permission from the German army in late 1913 to establish a flying school and manufacturing plant at Schwerin.”[9] At this time the military was the only real market for aircraft manufacturers. The Germans made the right decision in sending Garros’ aircraft to Fokker: “After 48 hours of diligent work, Fokker presented the Germans with a better mechanism – an interrupter gear that prevented the gun from firing when the propeller was in front of the gun muzzle.”[10] There is some controversy as to how original Fokker’s design war: “In light of later patent disputes over the gear, that the aviation authorities may have given Fokker the details of a Synchronizing gear patented by LVG engineer in Franz Schneider in 1913.”[11]
The plane itself was unexceptional; a small monoplane powered by a rotary 80hp engine. Its main virtue was its firepower. Which was enough. Produced in small numbers, and given the high rate of attrition or WWI combat aircraft, there were never more than fifty at the front at any time. Called the Fokker Eindekker E.1, the aircraft started arriving at the front in the summer of 1915. The E.1 was parceled out to the squadrons in ones or twos. Again it was the initiative of the pilots that pushed events forward. They were under strict orders not to fly over enemy territory: “Immelmann, Bolcke, and the others used the machines more offensively than instructions allowed, as they roamed over the front lines in search of prey. Immelmann had gained his first victory in a Fokker on 1 August, others followed.”[12] The German pilots Immelmann and Boelcke would become the first of a new kind of warrior: the fighter pilot. They led a rampage over allied aircraft that became known as the “Fokker Scourge.” Because of the Fokkers, flown by the best pilots in the German Air Service, were losing aircraft at a rate of four-to-one. Something had to be done or the allies would lose their “eyes” over the Western Front.
It would be months, or in the case of the British a year or more, before a reliable interrupter gear would be available for allied fighter planes. Nevertheless, by the beginning of 1916 air combat over the Western Front was starting to take recognizable shape. Two-seaters, with the observer in the rear seat, had become standard for artillery spotting, observation and ground attack. The single-seat tractor driven aircraft became the standard for both offensive and defensive air superiority roles. The French introduced in 1916 the excellent Nieuport Bebe, a light, tractor driven biplane that could easily out maneuver the Fokker:
Engine design was a constraint that all aircraft manufacturers would have to deal with throughout the war. The French were to possess, arguably after teething problems, the best aircraft engine of the war: the Hispano-Suiza V8: “Powerful, rigid, light, and durable, the Hispano-Suiza could certainly be enlarged to give 200 horsepower…Once perfected, it would become one of the war’s great fighter engines.”[15] By the end of the war the SPAD XIII would have 234 horsepower with a top speed of 138 mph. The Germans would have problems throughout the war acquiring proper lubricants for their rotary engines. For this reason most German fighter planes, the Fokker Triplane being a notable exception, would use the excellent Mercedes liquid cooled engine that developed 160-175 horsepower. The early British pusher fighters used French rotary engines. Fortunately for the British, by 1917 they were receiving enough Rolls-Royce Falcon and later Eagle engines to meet demand for the excellent Bristol Fighter two-seater coming off the assembly lines. The French Clerget rotary, providing 130 horsepower, powered the most famous fighter of the war, the Sopwith Camel. The S.E.5a, another top British fighter, used the Wolseley Viper of 200 horsepower.
At the beginning of 1916 the Germans with their Fokkers had a definite advantage. The Allies with marginally better aircraft in greater numbers had gained the upper hand by the summer of 1916. The Germans in late 1916 introduced yet another revolutionary fighter:
An important reason for the Albatros’ dominance was the manner in which they were deployed. The Germans decided to use their new fighter in newly formed hunting squadrons called Jasta. The already legendary Oswald Boelcke was given command of Jasta 2 in the summer of 1916. He had a free hand in the organization, training, and recruitment of his new command. Earlier in the war Boelcke had met Manfred von Richthofen, who at the time was a promising bomber pilot who had spent most of the war on the Eastern Front. Boelcke offered Richthofen a place in Jasta 2:
Boelcke was more than just a fighter pilot he had both an eye for talent and was a superlative teacher. The “lone eagle” hunting for enemy aircraft as the mood suited was going to become an endangered species: “Boelcke emphasized the importance of teamwork. He assigned fixed positions within the formation so that each man would get used to the same wingman and trust him.”[18]
The Allies suddenly found their air forces to be obsolete by the introduction of the Albatros equipped Jastas. Because of Hugh Trenchard’s doctrine of maintaining an aerial offensive over and behind the German lines, British pilots found themselves tangling with the superior Jastas over enemy territory. The British Arras Offensive in the spring of 1917 also called for an aggressive air campaign to cover the troops on the ground. The result was “Bloody April,” a slaughter of British air crew: “Indeed, the RFC lost more pilots (499) and aircraft (782) than the numbers available at the beginning of the offensive (410 pilots and 426 aircraft)…Trenchard’s policy was one of continued standing patrols maintained regardless of the tactical situation on the ground.”[19] The British were technologically behind the Germans, but they had several excellent fighter aircraft in the pipeline.
The only fighter the British had immediately available that was capable of dealing with the Albatros was the Sopwith triplane. Deployed in limited numbers to only six squadrons of the Royal Naval Air Service this aircraft had a huge impact on its German adversaries. Designed to give maximum lift or wing area to compensate for the low power engines of the period, this fighter could out-climb the Albatros. The Triplane used 130 hp Clerget, the same engine as the Sopwith Camel. The Germans, on Richthofen’s urging, immediately ordered aircraft manufacturers to produce a triplane. The Fokker design was the best of those offered and the only German triplane to be produced in any number. The irony is that by the time the Fokker triplanes were ready for combat, late summer 1917, the British were withdrawing their triplane from service for obsolescence. Despite its maneuvering ability the triplane was simply too slow for further combat roles. Unfortunately for German fighter pilots, the Fokker triplane would be the only new fighter available until the middle of 1918. The Germans had grown complacent with the success of the Albatros. Meanwhile, both the British and French had introduced new fighters that in turn made the Albatros instantly second rate.
The Allies introduced in 1917 three fighter planes that turned the tables on the Germans: the British S.E.5 and Sopwith Camel and the French SPAD VII. The British placed high hopes on the S.E.5a being able to wrest control of the skies over the Western Front from the “circuses.” A product of the Royal Aircraft Factory, the S.E.5a was powered by a liquid cooled in-line engine, early models with the Hispano-Suiza and later ones with the Wolseley Viper. It first flew on 20 November 1916 and showed such promise that Britain’s best fighter pilots were ordered back to England to form 56 Squadron with new aircraft:
On 7 April 1917, 56 Squadron took off for France. The results were immediate and dramatic: “Albert Ball, a flight leader in this new S.E. 5…began racking up at the rate of two a day with his new plane, until the night of May 7 when he met Lothar von Richthofen…It was another of Ball’s famous lone patrols at dusk after his day’s work was through.”[21] Britain’s leading ace at the time with forty-four victories, Ball was killed in the resulting crash and the era of the “lone hunter” was officially over.
The British had another ace up their sleeve courtesy of the genius of T.O.M. Sopwith. In 1916, Sopwith produced the delightful Pup a small, highly maneuverable biplane. Called “Pup” because of its diminutive size, it became an instant favorite of British pilots. The main problem with the Pup was the lack of a synchronized machine gun. The Pup was also produced in small numbers and was not the decisive fighter the British required. The Sopwith Camel was essentially an up powered and enlarged version of the Pup. The Camel was the first British aircraft to be armed with two Vickers machine guns firing through the propeller. Its main drawback was that it needed a highly skilled pilot to get the most out of its maneuverability. The Camel was powered by the same engine as the triplane, the Clerget, which by 1917 was being manufactured in England. The S.E. 5 and the Sopwith Camel would be the mainstay of the RAF until the war’s end.
The French SPAD, while an excellent aircraft, suffered through significant teething problems particularly regarding its power plant: “The French had planned to increase the engine power quickly, yet serious problems with the 200-220 geared Hispano-Suiza disrupted Spad production throughout 1917…The Nieuport with a 120-hp Clerget continued in service, though its speed and power were considered inadequate.”[22]
As if this was not enough of a predicament, the French also had problems with doctrine. This was related to Petain taking command after the disastrous mutinies of 1917. Many French observation aircraft were hopelessly obsolete, and the French tendency to group their best pilots in “elite” squadrons, sapped morale and the natural aggressive spirit of the fighter pilot. The French placed their hopes on the SPAD XIII being able to rescue the situation in 1918. This allowed the Germans to concentrate most of their fighter units in the north against the British where they were sorely needed.
In the British sector the Germans were taken by surprise by the introduction of the Camel and S.E. 5 and the resulting obsolescence of the Albatros without a replacement on the drawing boards. Manfred von Richthofen in a letter to a friend written on 18 July 1917 vividly describes the reversal of fortune:
The speed of the shift in ascendency is worth noting, in April the German Jastas had almost complete mastery of the air over the Western Front. By July, their greatest fighter pilot was lamenting how “inferior” the German Albatros was compared to the new British models. Due to Richthofen’s insistence, the Fokker triplane would be available to the German Air Service in late summer 1917. But as mentioned above, it was already obsolescent by that time. Only in the hands of a Richthofen or a Werner Voss was it able to deal with the new Allied fighters. While the Fokker’s cantilevered wing design was revolutionary in itself, which would make the high powered, fast monoplane practical, Fokker was experiencing serious quality control problems at his factory and he had lost favor with the German high command.
Shortly after Manfred von Richthofen’s death on 21 April 1918, the Germans introduced the Fokker D. VII, considered the best fighter plane of the war. Ironically, Richthofen had a hand in this fighter being accepted into service: “The plane was tested in January at the Type-D competition, arranged by Richthofen, at Adlershof … After four days of comparison tests, the frontline pilots unanimously judged the Fokker prototype the outright winner.”[24] The choice of making replacing the Albatros with the Fokker was made by the combat pilots themselves, a fact not lost to manufacturers:
By the time the Fokker D.VII was introduced, the German Army was on the defensive and American troops and airmen were making their presence felt. The Allies did not become complacent this time around. They had learned their lesson; continual innovation was required to keep from getting too far behind in aviation technology. The Sopwith Snipe was specifically designed to best the Fokker D.VII: “Even Sopwith’s successor to the Camel and Dolphin, the maneuverable Snipe that appeared in October, could not match the Fokker’s speed, ceiling or climb.”[27] Fortunately for the Allies, the Sopwith Camels, S.E. 5a’s and SPADs were good enough, and in sufficient numbers, that even the Fokker D.VII, the Germans could not regain control of the air. It is little wonder then, that as Fokker relates,
While the Sopwith Snipe was judged inferior to the Fokker D.VII, before the war’s end it demonstrated its mettle nonetheless. Almost all books on the air war over the Western Front end by describing Major William Barker’s epic, single combat with an entire circus. Baker was a Canadian who had flown combat with the RFC/RAF since 1915. 1918 found him post to 201 Squadron, which was equipped with Camels. On 27 October, Barker took off alone in a brand new Snipe. While attacking a Rumpler two-seater, Barker was jumped by Jagdgeschwader 3 that was comprised of Jastas 2, 26, 27 and 36. The Jagdgeschwader or fighter group was von Richthofen’s idea for a mobile unit that could be rushed to a critical sector in order to gain local air superiority. Barker was alone against sixty Fokkers! Badly wounded in the fray, Barker was forced to crash land behind British lines, but not before shooting down four to the Fokkers. Barker would remain unconscious for ten days, but would fully recover: “The combat, the most epic of all the war’s aerial encounters, won a riddled but alive Barker the Victoria Cross.”[29] Barker ended the war with 59 confirmed kills.
The experience of the First World War taught the military powers that an up to date air force had become a necessity. While many air forces concentrated on the bomber during the interwar years, the requirement for what is today called the “air superiority” fighters was ignored at a nation’s peril. The development of aircraft and submarines, tanks, artillery shells and motor transport would mean, as Stalin noted, that wars are now won in the factories. This is not exactly true, wars are won in the research and development departments of the factories. This is as true today as in 1918.
[1] Alan Clark, Aces High (New York: Ballantine Books, 1974), 11.
[2] John H. Morrow, Jr., The Great War in the Air (Washington D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1993), 76.
[3] Eric and Jane Lawson, The First Air Campaign (Conshohocken, PA: Combined Books, 1996), 40.
[4] Lawson, 40.
[5] Lawson, 41.
[6] Peter Kilduff, Richthofen: Beyond the Legend of the Red Baron (New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1993), 31.
[7] Clark, 31.
[8] Morrow, 92.
[9] G.V. Glines, “Fokker,” Aviation History. Vol. 9, No. 1 (1998), 38.
[10] Ibid
[11] John H. Morrow, Jr., German Air Power in World War I (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1982), 40-1.
[12] Morrow, German Air Power in World War I, 41.
[13] Clark, 55.
[14] Lawson, 73.
[15] Morrow, The Great War in the Air, 97.
[16] Lawson, 95.
[17] Manfred von Richthofen, The Red Air Fighter (London: Greenhill Books, 1990), 91.
[18] Kelly P. Poiencot, “The Father of Aerial Combat,” Aviation History: Century of Flight Edition. (2002), 29.
[19] Ian F.W. Beckett, The Great War (Harlow: Longman, 2001), 188.
[20] Clark, 142.
[21] Lawson, 125-6.
[22] Morrow, The Great War in the Air, 201.
[23] Morrow, German Air Power in World War I, 109.
[24] Morrow, The Great War in the Air, 300.
[25] Clark, 196.
[26] Lawson, 181.
[27] Morrow, The Great War in the Air, 316.
[28] Glines, “Fokker,” Aviation History. Vol. 9, No. 1 (1998)
[29] Morrow, The Great War in the Air, 316.
At the beginning of WWI the main purpose of aircraft was also reconnaissance. Even in this capacity aircraft were considered experimental and many generals preferred to rely on the traditional cavalry. Aircraft were not to be used beyond this role as an adjunct to cavalry reconnaissance:
Even the great German General Staff, a body less hostile to new ideas than its English and French counterparts, had reported in September of 1914 that: ‘Experience has shown that a real combat in the air such as journalist and romancers have described, should be considered a myth. The duty of the aviator is to see, not to fight.’[1]
This attitude is understandable, given the level of technological development at the time; it was still extremely hazardous just flying, much less fighting. Besides, the information carried by the aviators was too important to risk with derring-do.
There is still debate on the effectiveness of aerial reconnaissance during the Battle of the Marne: “Early accounts, the official history, and the Air Ministry’s official synopsis of the wartime aerial effort praised the RFC’s [Royal Flying Corps] regular, rapid, and accurate reconnaissance in the retreat.” However, “more recent historians David Devine and Malcolm Cooper have emphasized the RFC’s flaws in August and September 1914.”[2] Other historians disagree, “The Battle of the Marne finally validated the importance of aerial observation.”[3] At the end of August General von Kluck, commander of the First German Army, shifted his army east: “This change in direction was duly noted on September 2 by Louis Breguet, the aircraft designer, who volunteered his services and his latest prototype to the cause of defending the capital. His report of ‘von Kluck’s turn’ was reconfirmed by planes from Escadrilles REP 15 and MF 16.”[4]
The Supreme Commander of all French forces, General Joffre, believed the aviator’s reports and issued his famous order: “Gentlemen, we will fight on the Marne.” What was to be a quick war of movement, became after the Race to the Sea a war of position and attrition. In any event, the generals recognized the value of aircraft for reconnaissance and artillery observation: “Following the Battle of the Marne, Sir John French praised the British squadrons for ‘the most complete and accurate information which has been of incalculable value in the conduct of the operations.’”[5]
Trench warfare had made the cavalry obsolete on the Western Front; aircraft would replace it. Indeed, many a cavalryman became a flyer: “But when Ulanen-Reg Nr. 1 [Prussian Light Cavalry Regiment No. 1] was transferred from Belgium to Verdun, Richthofen saw the dissolution of an old order of battle and the emergence of a new one…Where was the glorious 19th century war for which Manfred and Lothar had trained?”[6] They would find it, in part, over the trenches.
The first year of the war was a time of experimentation and improvisation of military aviation. The impetus behind the creation of the first true fighter plane was the aviators at the front. They were not content with just observing the enemy; the issue became a matter of denying the enemy his ‘eyes.’ At this point of the war, from August 1914 thru the beginning of 1916, squadrons were equipped with heterogeneous collections of aircraft. A squadron would include single-seat tractor driven aircraft along with ‘pusher’ types carrying an observer. Lt. Louis Strange of No. 6 squadron RFC, begged for permission from his commanding officer to mount a machine gun to the upper wing of a Martinsyde single-seat scout to fire over the propeller. The Martinsyde was unsuited as a fighter plane: “It was slow, unstable, and yet lethargic in its response to the controls.”[7] The plane was so slow Strange could not even catch his intended victim. He also nearly killed himself trying to reload the Lewis machine gun mounted high above the cockpit on the upper wing. Clearly, this would not do.
It was the French who hit upon the solution of how to deny the air to the enemy. Roland Garros was a famous pre-war pilot; he was also the test pilot for the Morane-Saulnier aircraft company. He added a fixed machine gun to his Morane-Saulnier monoplane mounted on the engine cowling. About ten percent of the bullets fired from the machine gun hit the airscrew. He added metal plates to the propeller to deflect these bullets. He had invented the fighter plane: “In the spring [of 1915] he entered MS26 at Dunkirk, equipped with a Morane with the channeled deflectors. Within three weeks, from 1 to 18 April, he had shot down three German airplanes, an astounding feat fro the time.”[8] Garros was forced down behind German lines by ground fire. The Germans delivered his aircraft to an obscure Dutch aircraft designer with experience building small, single-seat aircraft.
Anthony Herman Gerard Fokker was born in 1890 in the Dutch East Indies where his father was a prosperous planter. The Flying Dutchman, as Fokker was nicknamed, was a true aviation pioneer. The Fokker family returned to Holland when Anthony reached school age. In 1910 Fokker designed, built and flew his first aircraft as a student at the automotive school at Zalbach, Germany. Fokker learned quickly and he, “requested permission from the German army in late 1913 to establish a flying school and manufacturing plant at Schwerin.”[9] At this time the military was the only real market for aircraft manufacturers. The Germans made the right decision in sending Garros’ aircraft to Fokker: “After 48 hours of diligent work, Fokker presented the Germans with a better mechanism – an interrupter gear that prevented the gun from firing when the propeller was in front of the gun muzzle.”[10] There is some controversy as to how original Fokker’s design war: “In light of later patent disputes over the gear, that the aviation authorities may have given Fokker the details of a Synchronizing gear patented by LVG engineer in Franz Schneider in 1913.”[11]
The plane itself was unexceptional; a small monoplane powered by a rotary 80hp engine. Its main virtue was its firepower. Which was enough. Produced in small numbers, and given the high rate of attrition or WWI combat aircraft, there were never more than fifty at the front at any time. Called the Fokker Eindekker E.1, the aircraft started arriving at the front in the summer of 1915. The E.1 was parceled out to the squadrons in ones or twos. Again it was the initiative of the pilots that pushed events forward. They were under strict orders not to fly over enemy territory: “Immelmann, Bolcke, and the others used the machines more offensively than instructions allowed, as they roamed over the front lines in search of prey. Immelmann had gained his first victory in a Fokker on 1 August, others followed.”[12] The German pilots Immelmann and Boelcke would become the first of a new kind of warrior: the fighter pilot. They led a rampage over allied aircraft that became known as the “Fokker Scourge.” Because of the Fokkers, flown by the best pilots in the German Air Service, were losing aircraft at a rate of four-to-one. Something had to be done or the allies would lose their “eyes” over the Western Front.
It would be months, or in the case of the British a year or more, before a reliable interrupter gear would be available for allied fighter planes. Nevertheless, by the beginning of 1916 air combat over the Western Front was starting to take recognizable shape. Two-seaters, with the observer in the rear seat, had become standard for artillery spotting, observation and ground attack. The single-seat tractor driven aircraft became the standard for both offensive and defensive air superiority roles. The French introduced in 1916 the excellent Nieuport Bebe, a light, tractor driven biplane that could easily out maneuver the Fokker:
By the spring of 1916 the Fokker myth began to disintegrate. The first of the Nieuports (the Nieuport II, or Bebe) had made their appearance in the skies over Verdun and as their numbers rose so did the Fokkers become more and more charyBy the beginning of the Battle of Verdun, all the combatants had begun to group their fighters into separate squadrons: “The British sent Number 11 squadron equipped solely with the Vickers F.B5 Gunbus to the front as the first true fighter squadron. The Vickers two-seat pusher design gave the gunner a free field of fire forward.”[14] The British also introduced a single-seat pusher, the DeHavilland D.H. 2, which while slow and not very maneuverable, was tough and reliable enough to deal with the Fokkers. The “pusher” was the design model used in the original Wright Brothers Flyer. I had the engine mounted on the lower wing behind the pilot where the propeller “pushed” the plane through the air. The D.H.2 and other pushers were adequate for dealing with the Fokkers, but they were a stopgap that was quickly to become an anachronism. This is how matters stood in the summer of 1916. The Germans were losing their technological edge while also being outnumbered.
of battle. [13]
Engine design was a constraint that all aircraft manufacturers would have to deal with throughout the war. The French were to possess, arguably after teething problems, the best aircraft engine of the war: the Hispano-Suiza V8: “Powerful, rigid, light, and durable, the Hispano-Suiza could certainly be enlarged to give 200 horsepower…Once perfected, it would become one of the war’s great fighter engines.”[15] By the end of the war the SPAD XIII would have 234 horsepower with a top speed of 138 mph. The Germans would have problems throughout the war acquiring proper lubricants for their rotary engines. For this reason most German fighter planes, the Fokker Triplane being a notable exception, would use the excellent Mercedes liquid cooled engine that developed 160-175 horsepower. The early British pusher fighters used French rotary engines. Fortunately for the British, by 1917 they were receiving enough Rolls-Royce Falcon and later Eagle engines to meet demand for the excellent Bristol Fighter two-seater coming off the assembly lines. The French Clerget rotary, providing 130 horsepower, powered the most famous fighter of the war, the Sopwith Camel. The S.E.5a, another top British fighter, used the Wolseley Viper of 200 horsepower.
At the beginning of 1916 the Germans with their Fokkers had a definite advantage. The Allies with marginally better aircraft in greater numbers had gained the upper hand by the summer of 1916. The Germans in late 1916 introduced yet another revolutionary fighter:
The Albatros D.1’s were sturdy biplanes with plywood formed fuselages much like the monocoque design, powered by the inline 160 hp Mercedes engines, and could reach speeds of 108 mph and altitudes of 17,000 ft. This type of plane completely outclassed the D.H. 2 pushers, the single gun Nieuports, and all the slow two-seaters that the Allies flew. [16]The Albatros’ two Spandau machine guns had double to triple to firepower of Allied aircraft. The Albatros was the first of the “classic” WWI fighters. The result was a slaughter of Allied aircraft of all types.
An important reason for the Albatros’ dominance was the manner in which they were deployed. The Germans decided to use their new fighter in newly formed hunting squadrons called Jasta. The already legendary Oswald Boelcke was given command of Jasta 2 in the summer of 1916. He had a free hand in the organization, training, and recruitment of his new command. Earlier in the war Boelcke had met Manfred von Richthofen, who at the time was a promising bomber pilot who had spent most of the war on the Eastern Front. Boelcke offered Richthofen a place in Jasta 2:
I did not dare to ask him to be taken on. I did not feel bored by the fighting in Russia. On the contrary, we made extensive and interesting flights. We bombed the Russians at their stations. Still, the idea of fighting again on the Western Front attracted me. There is nothing finer for a young cavalry officer than the chase in the air … I knew him, as I previously mentioned, but still I had never imagined that he came to look me up in order to ask me to become his pupil. I almost fell on his neck when he inquired whether I cared to go with him to the Somme. [17]
Boelcke was more than just a fighter pilot he had both an eye for talent and was a superlative teacher. The “lone eagle” hunting for enemy aircraft as the mood suited was going to become an endangered species: “Boelcke emphasized the importance of teamwork. He assigned fixed positions within the formation so that each man would get used to the same wingman and trust him.”[18]
The Allies suddenly found their air forces to be obsolete by the introduction of the Albatros equipped Jastas. Because of Hugh Trenchard’s doctrine of maintaining an aerial offensive over and behind the German lines, British pilots found themselves tangling with the superior Jastas over enemy territory. The British Arras Offensive in the spring of 1917 also called for an aggressive air campaign to cover the troops on the ground. The result was “Bloody April,” a slaughter of British air crew: “Indeed, the RFC lost more pilots (499) and aircraft (782) than the numbers available at the beginning of the offensive (410 pilots and 426 aircraft)…Trenchard’s policy was one of continued standing patrols maintained regardless of the tactical situation on the ground.”[19] The British were technologically behind the Germans, but they had several excellent fighter aircraft in the pipeline.
The only fighter the British had immediately available that was capable of dealing with the Albatros was the Sopwith triplane. Deployed in limited numbers to only six squadrons of the Royal Naval Air Service this aircraft had a huge impact on its German adversaries. Designed to give maximum lift or wing area to compensate for the low power engines of the period, this fighter could out-climb the Albatros. The Triplane used 130 hp Clerget, the same engine as the Sopwith Camel. The Germans, on Richthofen’s urging, immediately ordered aircraft manufacturers to produce a triplane. The Fokker design was the best of those offered and the only German triplane to be produced in any number. The irony is that by the time the Fokker triplanes were ready for combat, late summer 1917, the British were withdrawing their triplane from service for obsolescence. Despite its maneuvering ability the triplane was simply too slow for further combat roles. Unfortunately for German fighter pilots, the Fokker triplane would be the only new fighter available until the middle of 1918. The Germans had grown complacent with the success of the Albatros. Meanwhile, both the British and French had introduced new fighters that in turn made the Albatros instantly second rate.
The Allies introduced in 1917 three fighter planes that turned the tables on the Germans: the British S.E.5 and Sopwith Camel and the French SPAD VII. The British placed high hopes on the S.E.5a being able to wrest control of the skies over the Western Front from the “circuses.” A product of the Royal Aircraft Factory, the S.E.5a was powered by a liquid cooled in-line engine, early models with the Hispano-Suiza and later ones with the Wolseley Viper. It first flew on 20 November 1916 and showed such promise that Britain’s best fighter pilots were ordered back to England to form 56 Squadron with new aircraft:
The maximum speed of the SE 5 was 120 m.p.h. at 15,000. The pilots found that the aircraft could climb to 6,500 feet in eight minutes and to 10,000 feet in under fifteen minutes (both these figures were superior to the Albatros although, naturally, this was not known at the time). Furthermore, the SE 5 had an endurance of two and a half hours – nearly one hour more than the Albatros, so that 56 Squadron would have time to wait at maximum altitude for their enemy to appear below them. They found, too, that the stability of the aeroplane had several advantages, particularly in these last critical seconds when the enemy was in your gunsight. Confidence spread and with it an impatience to return to France.[20]The S.E. 5a would be a workhorse for the RFC, later Royal Air Force (RAF), for the rest of the war. One anachronism with the aircraft was the mounting of a Lewis gun on the top wing firing over the propeller. A Vickers machine gun was also mounted on the engine cowling firing through the propeller.
On 7 April 1917, 56 Squadron took off for France. The results were immediate and dramatic: “Albert Ball, a flight leader in this new S.E. 5…began racking up at the rate of two a day with his new plane, until the night of May 7 when he met Lothar von Richthofen…It was another of Ball’s famous lone patrols at dusk after his day’s work was through.”[21] Britain’s leading ace at the time with forty-four victories, Ball was killed in the resulting crash and the era of the “lone hunter” was officially over.
The British had another ace up their sleeve courtesy of the genius of T.O.M. Sopwith. In 1916, Sopwith produced the delightful Pup a small, highly maneuverable biplane. Called “Pup” because of its diminutive size, it became an instant favorite of British pilots. The main problem with the Pup was the lack of a synchronized machine gun. The Pup was also produced in small numbers and was not the decisive fighter the British required. The Sopwith Camel was essentially an up powered and enlarged version of the Pup. The Camel was the first British aircraft to be armed with two Vickers machine guns firing through the propeller. Its main drawback was that it needed a highly skilled pilot to get the most out of its maneuverability. The Camel was powered by the same engine as the triplane, the Clerget, which by 1917 was being manufactured in England. The S.E. 5 and the Sopwith Camel would be the mainstay of the RAF until the war’s end.
The French SPAD, while an excellent aircraft, suffered through significant teething problems particularly regarding its power plant: “The French had planned to increase the engine power quickly, yet serious problems with the 200-220 geared Hispano-Suiza disrupted Spad production throughout 1917…The Nieuport with a 120-hp Clerget continued in service, though its speed and power were considered inadequate.”[22]
As if this was not enough of a predicament, the French also had problems with doctrine. This was related to Petain taking command after the disastrous mutinies of 1917. Many French observation aircraft were hopelessly obsolete, and the French tendency to group their best pilots in “elite” squadrons, sapped morale and the natural aggressive spirit of the fighter pilot. The French placed their hopes on the SPAD XIII being able to rescue the situation in 1918. This allowed the Germans to concentrate most of their fighter units in the north against the British where they were sorely needed.
In the British sector the Germans were taken by surprise by the introduction of the Camel and S.E. 5 and the resulting obsolescence of the Albatros without a replacement on the drawing boards. Manfred von Richthofen in a letter to a friend written on 18 July 1917 vividly describes the reversal of fortune:
I can assure you that it is no longer any fun being leader of a fighter unit at this [Sixth] army … For the last three days the English have done as they please … Our airplanes are inferior to the English in a downright ridiculous manner. The [Sopwith] triplane and the two-hundred horsepower Spad, like the Sopwith [Camel] single-seater, which play our [latest model of Albatros] D5s. Besides better quality aircraft they have quantity. Our fighter pilots, though quite good, are consequently lost! The D5 is so antiquated and laughably inferior that we can do nothing with it … The English single-seater is faster and climbs better than our planes, and the English have C-planes [the Bristol Fighter], thus two-seaters, that the Albatros is not capable of overtaking … [23]
The speed of the shift in ascendency is worth noting, in April the German Jastas had almost complete mastery of the air over the Western Front. By July, their greatest fighter pilot was lamenting how “inferior” the German Albatros was compared to the new British models. Due to Richthofen’s insistence, the Fokker triplane would be available to the German Air Service in late summer 1917. But as mentioned above, it was already obsolescent by that time. Only in the hands of a Richthofen or a Werner Voss was it able to deal with the new Allied fighters. While the Fokker’s cantilevered wing design was revolutionary in itself, which would make the high powered, fast monoplane practical, Fokker was experiencing serious quality control problems at his factory and he had lost favor with the German high command.
Shortly after Manfred von Richthofen’s death on 21 April 1918, the Germans introduced the Fokker D. VII, considered the best fighter plane of the war. Ironically, Richthofen had a hand in this fighter being accepted into service: “The plane was tested in January at the Type-D competition, arranged by Richthofen, at Adlershof … After four days of comparison tests, the frontline pilots unanimously judged the Fokker prototype the outright winner.”[24] The choice of making replacing the Albatros with the Fokker was made by the combat pilots themselves, a fact not lost to manufacturers:
Exquisite food sent by Anthony Fokker in a special train from Holland (the blockade was biting deeply in Germany at this time and basic foods were strictly rationed), quantities of champagne looted from Rheims and, of course, the company of all these ladies from the Opera House, were pressed on the pilots. But while they may have enjoyed these things, their decision seems to have been reached on strictly realistic grounds. [25]The Germans certainly needed a replacement quickly for their spring 1918 offensive. This last throw of the dice by Hindenburg and Ludendorff had as part of the plan the use of specialized ground support/attack aircraft. It was in this offensive that Richthofen was killed flying an obsolete fighter plane: “The Allied planes were not only greater in numbers, but by this point in the war were superior in quality. Highly maneuverable Sopwith Camels or fast S.E. 5a’s equipped nearly every British fighter squadron. The twin gunned 200 hp. SPAD XIII re-equipped most of the French escadrilles.”[26] The loss of air superiority by the Germans allowed British fighters to continually attack German troops and slow the German advance at a critical juncture.
By the time the Fokker D.VII was introduced, the German Army was on the defensive and American troops and airmen were making their presence felt. The Allies did not become complacent this time around. They had learned their lesson; continual innovation was required to keep from getting too far behind in aviation technology. The Sopwith Snipe was specifically designed to best the Fokker D.VII: “Even Sopwith’s successor to the Camel and Dolphin, the maneuverable Snipe that appeared in October, could not match the Fokker’s speed, ceiling or climb.”[27] Fortunately for the Allies, the Sopwith Camels, S.E. 5a’s and SPADs were good enough, and in sufficient numbers, that even the Fokker D.VII, the Germans could not regain control of the air. It is little wonder then, that as Fokker relates,
I came in for the doubtful honor of being the sole manufacturer to have his airplane specifically mentioned [in the Versailles Treaty]…Article IV, detailing things which must be turned over by Germany to the Allies, said: …’Especially all airplanes of the D-7 type.’ This was wonderful advertising for the worth of my plane, but the cost was high. It meant the loss of a huge investment, practically all located in Germany … [28]Fokker, of course, would continue in aviation after the war; his famous trimotor monoplane being his greatest contribution. The huge increase in aviation technology during the war would usher in the Golden Age of Aviation; and Fokker would play an important part in it. In 1926 Admiral Richard Byrd flew over the North Pole in a Fokker trimotor monoplane. Fokker gave Byrd the aircraft on the condition that “FOKKER” was painted across the bottom of the wing. In 1927 the first plane to fly from the North American mainland to Hawaii was a Fokker.
While the Sopwith Snipe was judged inferior to the Fokker D.VII, before the war’s end it demonstrated its mettle nonetheless. Almost all books on the air war over the Western Front end by describing Major William Barker’s epic, single combat with an entire circus. Baker was a Canadian who had flown combat with the RFC/RAF since 1915. 1918 found him post to 201 Squadron, which was equipped with Camels. On 27 October, Barker took off alone in a brand new Snipe. While attacking a Rumpler two-seater, Barker was jumped by Jagdgeschwader 3 that was comprised of Jastas 2, 26, 27 and 36. The Jagdgeschwader or fighter group was von Richthofen’s idea for a mobile unit that could be rushed to a critical sector in order to gain local air superiority. Barker was alone against sixty Fokkers! Badly wounded in the fray, Barker was forced to crash land behind British lines, but not before shooting down four to the Fokkers. Barker would remain unconscious for ten days, but would fully recover: “The combat, the most epic of all the war’s aerial encounters, won a riddled but alive Barker the Victoria Cross.”[29] Barker ended the war with 59 confirmed kills.
The experience of the First World War taught the military powers that an up to date air force had become a necessity. While many air forces concentrated on the bomber during the interwar years, the requirement for what is today called the “air superiority” fighters was ignored at a nation’s peril. The development of aircraft and submarines, tanks, artillery shells and motor transport would mean, as Stalin noted, that wars are now won in the factories. This is not exactly true, wars are won in the research and development departments of the factories. This is as true today as in 1918.
[1] Alan Clark, Aces High (New York: Ballantine Books, 1974), 11.
[2] John H. Morrow, Jr., The Great War in the Air (Washington D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1993), 76.
[3] Eric and Jane Lawson, The First Air Campaign (Conshohocken, PA: Combined Books, 1996), 40.
[4] Lawson, 40.
[5] Lawson, 41.
[6] Peter Kilduff, Richthofen: Beyond the Legend of the Red Baron (New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1993), 31.
[7] Clark, 31.
[8] Morrow, 92.
[9] G.V. Glines, “Fokker,” Aviation History. Vol. 9, No. 1 (1998), 38.
[10] Ibid
[11] John H. Morrow, Jr., German Air Power in World War I (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1982), 40-1.
[12] Morrow, German Air Power in World War I, 41.
[13] Clark, 55.
[14] Lawson, 73.
[15] Morrow, The Great War in the Air, 97.
[16] Lawson, 95.
[17] Manfred von Richthofen, The Red Air Fighter (London: Greenhill Books, 1990), 91.
[18] Kelly P. Poiencot, “The Father of Aerial Combat,” Aviation History: Century of Flight Edition. (2002), 29.
[19] Ian F.W. Beckett, The Great War (Harlow: Longman, 2001), 188.
[20] Clark, 142.
[21] Lawson, 125-6.
[22] Morrow, The Great War in the Air, 201.
[23] Morrow, German Air Power in World War I, 109.
[24] Morrow, The Great War in the Air, 300.
[25] Clark, 196.
[26] Lawson, 181.
[27] Morrow, The Great War in the Air, 316.
[28] Glines, “Fokker,” Aviation History. Vol. 9, No. 1 (1998)
[29] Morrow, The Great War in the Air, 316.
Monday, June 9, 2008
'Glittering Generalities' and Hawaii
Five years ago the United States Supreme Court ruled as unconstitutional the Office of Hawaiian Affairs (OHA) policy of only letting native Hawaiians vote in its elections. The Court declared that the policy of OHA, an agency of the state of Hawaii, was in violation of the 15th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. The ruling was 7-2 with John Paul Stevens and Ruth Bader Ginsburg dissenting. In his dissent Stevens wrote that the majority decision "rests largely on the repetition of glittering generalities that have little, if any, application to the compelling history of the state of Hawaii."
In response to this ruling some in Hawaii have voiced their support of defining native Hawaiians as a tribal group similar to that of American Indians. For example, the new Hawaiian Law Center at the University of Hawaii at Manoa (Oahu) is going to pursue this line of thought. One course to be offered by the Center next semester is “Principles of Federal Indian Law as Applied in the Native Hawaiian Context.” The Center’s director’s two research assistants will be working on “Native Americans and their cases and treaties with the United States government and how their findings can be applied to Native Hawaiian issues.”
There are some who believe that Hawaii is under an “illegal occupation” and is not a state of the federal Union. However, the more “mainstream” activists seem intent on creating a state within the state, a creature that will be neither fish nor fowl.
In part this debate rests on the meaning and definition of “sovereignty.” Black’s Law Dictionary gives, in part, the following definition “The power to do everything in a state without accountability, --to make laws, to execute and to apply them, to impose and collect taxes and levy contributions, to make war or peace, to form treaties of alliance or of commerce with foreign nations, and the like.” There have been many answers to the question of where “sovereignty” resides. The term in its medieval context meant the sovereign as monarch. Sovereignty has also been thought to lie with the collective, in this case the race or ethnic group which is “sovereign” over a geographic area in perpetuity. There is sovereign as the modern nation state, with supreme political power residing in the government. Finally, there is the liberal definition of the individual as sovereign and the protection of this sovereign’s rights to life, liberty and property as the only legitimate purpose of civil authority. All of these definitions imply that the sovereign has the power and ability to exercise its rights and obligations. This is one reason why applying the concept to the American Indian was/is a historic disaster.
The result of the American Indian’s ambiguous status was to insure that both individual Indians and their tribes would have no legal protection under the Constitution in the early period of the Republic. Politically it meant that the American Indian was an unperson without congressional representation or legal standing in the nation’s courts. It also meant that Indians were nobody’s constituency. Add to this an executive hostile or indifferent to their rights and the stage was set for crimes that would stain the honor of the United States.It is current practice for the liberal/left to blame the fate of the Cherokee on white racism and then leave it at that. What is ignored is that the system of treaties with the Indians employing the legal fiction of the tribes as “domestic dependant nations” was a major cause of the tragedy. Andrew Jackson stated in his second annual address to Congress on 6 December 1830, “Treaties have been made with them, which in due season will be submitted for consideration. In negotiating these treaties they were made to understand their true condition, and they have preferred maintaining their independence in the Western forests to submitting to the laws of the States in which they now reside.” Therefore the Indian Removal Act was implemented.
The only thing that would have saved the Cherokee from a terrible fate was the “glittering generalities” for which Justice Stevens has such manifest contempt. A lot of ink has been spilled over whether the Declaration of Independence means all men in Jefferson’s statement of “self-evident truths” including the inalienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. In a letter to Dr. Benjamin Rush of 16 January 1811, Jefferson wrote that Bacon, Newton and Locke were “the three greatest men the world had produced.” Newton’s Laws are statements of universal truth that apply everywhere in the universe and to all physical bodies. It is clear that as an Enlightenment thinker Jefferson also considered the political truths of Locke to be universal, applicable to all governments and the proper basis of civil authority.
Jefferson certainly viewed the American Indian as falling under the self-evident truths he affirmed in the Declaration. This is why Jefferson was in favor of Indians assimilating into the American nation. In a letter written in 1803 to the then governor of Indiana, William Henry Harrison, Jefferson wrote, “In this way our settlements will gradually circumscribe and approach the Indians, and they will in time either incorporate with us a citizens of the United States, or remove beyond the Mississippi. The former is certainly the termination of their history most happy for themselves …” The reason for Jefferson’s belief that full assimilation was possible and desirable was that the American Indian shared with the European a common identity as rational beings. He made this clear in his second Inaugural address by making the point that Indians were “Endowed with the faculties and rights of man” and therefore had the duty “to exercise their reason, follow its dictates, and change their pursuits with the change of circumstances …”
Jefferson has been thoroughly castigated for not applying his principles of Natural Law and Natural Rights to his own slaves and blacks in general. However, Jefferson’s inability to fully apply his principles should not be confused as invalidating those values. One who clearly understood this distinction was Abraham Lincoln.
In a letter to Henry L. Pierce written on 6 April 1859, Lincoln notes the curious inversion in that the two parties of his day, the Republicans and the Democrats, had nearly reversed their views on Thomas Jefferson. He notes that the party strongest in the south and most favorable towards slavery, the Democrats, was also the “anti-Jefferson” party. In this fascinating letter Lincoln also notes that his time also abounded with Justice Stevens type sophists “One dashingly calls them ‘glittering generalities’; another bluntly calls them ‘self evident lies’; and still others insidiously argue that they apply only to ‘superior races.’”
Lincoln understood that Jefferson’s “glittering generalities” were a dagger aimed at the heart of slavery: “All honor to Jefferson--to the man who, in the concrete pressure of a struggle for national independence by a single people, had the coolness, forecast, and capacity to introduce into a merely revolutionary document, an abstract truth, applicable to all men and all times, and so to embalm it there, that to-day, and in all coming days, it shall be a rebuke and a stumbling-block to the very harbingers of re-appearing tyranny and oppression.”
It would not be until 1879 that the American Indian would acquire legal standing in an American court. This was the result of the case Standing Bear v. Crook. While General George Crook was a mediocre Union Army cavalry general during the Civil War, he was a first rate Indian fighter. He was also a decent human being. Crook received orders in 1879 to remove Standing Bear and a small group of followers from their old Nebraska home to their new reservation in Oklahoma. Although, it was not known at the time Crook leaked the story to a local newspaper “the Standing Bear situation came to the attention of Thomas Henry Tibbles, the assistant editor of the Omaha Daily Herald. He was an ardent crusader who sympathized with the Indians.”
The court ruled that Standing Bear could sue in federal court and that he had the full protection of the Fourteenth Amendment. Judge Elmer Dundy also stated “That the Indians possess the inherent right of expatriation as well as the more fortunate white race, and have the inalienable right to 'life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,' so long as they obey the laws and do not trespass on forbidden ground.”
This ruling came during a period of policy change regarding American Indians. One of the main individuals responsible for that change was Ely Parker. Parker was a Seneca Indian from New York who managed to acquire an education both in law and engineering. In an interesting twist of history Parker, in 1857, became chief engineer of a project in Galena, Illinois. He struck up a friendship with the clerk of the town leathershop. The clerk’s name was Ulysses S. Grant. After serving in the Civil Was as Grant’s aide, Parker became the first Indian to be named Commissioner of Indian Affairs.
Because of Parker’s advocacy, in 1871 the U.S. Government changed its policy and declared that no further treaties would be made with the Indian tribes. In his first report as Commissioner in 1869, Parker explained his reasons:
Regarding the issue of sovereignty, either in Hawaii or anywhere else, it is only the concept of the individual as sovereign with the government’s task to defend his natural rights (glittering generalities) under a color blind justice system that is consistent with liberty and prosperity.
In response to this ruling some in Hawaii have voiced their support of defining native Hawaiians as a tribal group similar to that of American Indians. For example, the new Hawaiian Law Center at the University of Hawaii at Manoa (Oahu) is going to pursue this line of thought. One course to be offered by the Center next semester is “Principles of Federal Indian Law as Applied in the Native Hawaiian Context.” The Center’s director’s two research assistants will be working on “Native Americans and their cases and treaties with the United States government and how their findings can be applied to Native Hawaiian issues.”
There are some who believe that Hawaii is under an “illegal occupation” and is not a state of the federal Union. However, the more “mainstream” activists seem intent on creating a state within the state, a creature that will be neither fish nor fowl.
In part this debate rests on the meaning and definition of “sovereignty.” Black’s Law Dictionary gives, in part, the following definition “The power to do everything in a state without accountability, --to make laws, to execute and to apply them, to impose and collect taxes and levy contributions, to make war or peace, to form treaties of alliance or of commerce with foreign nations, and the like.” There have been many answers to the question of where “sovereignty” resides. The term in its medieval context meant the sovereign as monarch. Sovereignty has also been thought to lie with the collective, in this case the race or ethnic group which is “sovereign” over a geographic area in perpetuity. There is sovereign as the modern nation state, with supreme political power residing in the government. Finally, there is the liberal definition of the individual as sovereign and the protection of this sovereign’s rights to life, liberty and property as the only legitimate purpose of civil authority. All of these definitions imply that the sovereign has the power and ability to exercise its rights and obligations. This is one reason why applying the concept to the American Indian was/is a historic disaster.
The result of the American Indian’s ambiguous status was to insure that both individual Indians and their tribes would have no legal protection under the Constitution in the early period of the Republic. Politically it meant that the American Indian was an unperson without congressional representation or legal standing in the nation’s courts. It also meant that Indians were nobody’s constituency. Add to this an executive hostile or indifferent to their rights and the stage was set for crimes that would stain the honor of the United States.It is current practice for the liberal/left to blame the fate of the Cherokee on white racism and then leave it at that. What is ignored is that the system of treaties with the Indians employing the legal fiction of the tribes as “domestic dependant nations” was a major cause of the tragedy. Andrew Jackson stated in his second annual address to Congress on 6 December 1830, “Treaties have been made with them, which in due season will be submitted for consideration. In negotiating these treaties they were made to understand their true condition, and they have preferred maintaining their independence in the Western forests to submitting to the laws of the States in which they now reside.” Therefore the Indian Removal Act was implemented.
The only thing that would have saved the Cherokee from a terrible fate was the “glittering generalities” for which Justice Stevens has such manifest contempt. A lot of ink has been spilled over whether the Declaration of Independence means all men in Jefferson’s statement of “self-evident truths” including the inalienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. In a letter to Dr. Benjamin Rush of 16 January 1811, Jefferson wrote that Bacon, Newton and Locke were “the three greatest men the world had produced.” Newton’s Laws are statements of universal truth that apply everywhere in the universe and to all physical bodies. It is clear that as an Enlightenment thinker Jefferson also considered the political truths of Locke to be universal, applicable to all governments and the proper basis of civil authority.
Jefferson certainly viewed the American Indian as falling under the self-evident truths he affirmed in the Declaration. This is why Jefferson was in favor of Indians assimilating into the American nation. In a letter written in 1803 to the then governor of Indiana, William Henry Harrison, Jefferson wrote, “In this way our settlements will gradually circumscribe and approach the Indians, and they will in time either incorporate with us a citizens of the United States, or remove beyond the Mississippi. The former is certainly the termination of their history most happy for themselves …” The reason for Jefferson’s belief that full assimilation was possible and desirable was that the American Indian shared with the European a common identity as rational beings. He made this clear in his second Inaugural address by making the point that Indians were “Endowed with the faculties and rights of man” and therefore had the duty “to exercise their reason, follow its dictates, and change their pursuits with the change of circumstances …”
Jefferson has been thoroughly castigated for not applying his principles of Natural Law and Natural Rights to his own slaves and blacks in general. However, Jefferson’s inability to fully apply his principles should not be confused as invalidating those values. One who clearly understood this distinction was Abraham Lincoln.
In a letter to Henry L. Pierce written on 6 April 1859, Lincoln notes the curious inversion in that the two parties of his day, the Republicans and the Democrats, had nearly reversed their views on Thomas Jefferson. He notes that the party strongest in the south and most favorable towards slavery, the Democrats, was also the “anti-Jefferson” party. In this fascinating letter Lincoln also notes that his time also abounded with Justice Stevens type sophists “One dashingly calls them ‘glittering generalities’; another bluntly calls them ‘self evident lies’; and still others insidiously argue that they apply only to ‘superior races.’”
Lincoln understood that Jefferson’s “glittering generalities” were a dagger aimed at the heart of slavery: “All honor to Jefferson--to the man who, in the concrete pressure of a struggle for national independence by a single people, had the coolness, forecast, and capacity to introduce into a merely revolutionary document, an abstract truth, applicable to all men and all times, and so to embalm it there, that to-day, and in all coming days, it shall be a rebuke and a stumbling-block to the very harbingers of re-appearing tyranny and oppression.”
It would not be until 1879 that the American Indian would acquire legal standing in an American court. This was the result of the case Standing Bear v. Crook. While General George Crook was a mediocre Union Army cavalry general during the Civil War, he was a first rate Indian fighter. He was also a decent human being. Crook received orders in 1879 to remove Standing Bear and a small group of followers from their old Nebraska home to their new reservation in Oklahoma. Although, it was not known at the time Crook leaked the story to a local newspaper “the Standing Bear situation came to the attention of Thomas Henry Tibbles, the assistant editor of the Omaha Daily Herald. He was an ardent crusader who sympathized with the Indians.”
The court ruled that Standing Bear could sue in federal court and that he had the full protection of the Fourteenth Amendment. Judge Elmer Dundy also stated “That the Indians possess the inherent right of expatriation as well as the more fortunate white race, and have the inalienable right to 'life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,' so long as they obey the laws and do not trespass on forbidden ground.”
This ruling came during a period of policy change regarding American Indians. One of the main individuals responsible for that change was Ely Parker. Parker was a Seneca Indian from New York who managed to acquire an education both in law and engineering. In an interesting twist of history Parker, in 1857, became chief engineer of a project in Galena, Illinois. He struck up a friendship with the clerk of the town leathershop. The clerk’s name was Ulysses S. Grant. After serving in the Civil Was as Grant’s aide, Parker became the first Indian to be named Commissioner of Indian Affairs.
Because of Parker’s advocacy, in 1871 the U.S. Government changed its policy and declared that no further treaties would be made with the Indian tribes. In his first report as Commissioner in 1869, Parker explained his reasons:
It has become a matter of serious import whether the treaty system in use ought longer to be continued. In my judgement it should not. A treaty involves the idea of a compact between two or more sovereign powers, each possessing of sufficient authority and force to compel a compliance with the obligations incurred. The Indian tribes of the United States are not sovereign nations, capable of making treaties, as none of them have an organized government of such inherent strength as would secure a faithful obedience of its people in the observance of compacts of this character. They are held to be the wards of the government, and the only title to the law concedes to them to the lands they occupy or claim is a mere possessory one. But because treaties have been made with them generally for the extinguishment of their supposed absolute title to land inhabited by them, or over which they roam, they have become falsely impressed with the notion of national independence.
Regarding the issue of sovereignty, either in Hawaii or anywhere else, it is only the concept of the individual as sovereign with the government’s task to defend his natural rights (glittering generalities) under a color blind justice system that is consistent with liberty and prosperity.
Friday, June 6, 2008
Just War Theory and Practice
Introduction:
Just war theory or the just war tradition (JWT) has become the dominant ethical philosophy in the West for the proper conduct of warfare. A definition of just war would be the aspiration to subordinate the type of state-sponsored violence called war to a sort of moral constraint. Through a series of treaties, international conventions and executive decisions, JWT has become the policy of the United States.[1] The result of this (along with other factors) has been the United States government’s inability to create a coherent foreign policy and achieve decisive military victory over America’s enemies in the last 60 years.
The origin of the just war tradition has been traced back to the works of Augustine. In The City of God Augustine attempted to reconcile the pacific teachings of Christ with the need to take up arms in order to prevent the triumph of worldly evil. Augustine argued that, while a Christian should turn the other cheek when attacked, he should take action in defense of an innocent neighbor. A leading scholar on ethics and JWT, Jean Bethke Elshtain, states Augustine’s position:
Although many of its proponents hold that JWT is now a secular doctrine, its Christian roots are still very much in evidence.
Michael Walzer’s book Just and Unjust Wars is considered the leading text on the subject, and is written from a secular perspective. Walzer begins his contention by providing what he believes to be the three main moral theories on the conduct of war: JWT, realism, and pacifism or nonviolence. Walzer discounts pacifism as an antidote to aggression, for being naïve, which is doomed to result in greater injustice.[3]
Realism, on the other hand, is a viewpoint taken very seriously by Walzer and other advocates of JWT. According to JWT, “realism” is the attitude of “all’s fair in love and war” that is found in the behavior of an amoral real politick practitioner.[4] The historical example Walzer cites as realism is the Melian Dialogue from Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War. Melos was an island colony of Sparta. In the summer of 416 B.C. the Athenians sent an expedition to Melos demanding that the Melians yield to superior Athenian arms. The Melians refused to surrender, and the city was invested by the Athenian force. After a period of some months the Melians were compelled to capitulate, at which time the Athenians killed all the men and sold the women and children into slavery.[5]
Walzer presents the sad tale of the Melians as evidence that Thucydides was a promoter of such harsh measures:
Walzer is mischaracterizing Thucydides’ own outlook on the wisdom of the war and how it was conducted in order to create a “realist” strawman. More to the point, however, it is no accident that Walzer chose a representative of the Greco-Roman tradition to embody the “realist” or self-concerned standpoint. This is crucial in that Walzer accepts the Christian ethic as the basis of his theory whereas he dismisses what he conjectures as its two main rivals: the Greco-Roman rational self-interest and the materialism of Hobbes.
Walzer’s secularized Christian morality is the cornerstone of his thesis and JWT. He only briefly addresses the issue of meta-ethics in the preface of his book while other JWT supporters do not investigate it at all. Walzer shuns all moral philosophy that is not theocratic in theory or content, and he is openly insulting about it:
This, of course, is not an argument, but the evasion of one. In this sphere Walzer is consistent with all other JWT backers in attempting to circumvent the central issue of ethics: altruism versus egoism.
Anthony E. Hartle was a professor of English and chair of the department at West Point as well as the author of the well-regarded book on military ethics, Moral Issues in Military Decision Making. Although Hartle approaches his subject from the angle of professional ethics, he is in full accord with both JWT and its philosophical underpinnings. Point-blank, he asserts the following:
It is clear that all supporters of JWT share the view that the Christian ethic, however secularized, is Ethics as such. All moral philosophies based on self-interest are denigrated as “realist” or “nonmoral” opinions. This verdict represents the main theoretical shortcoming of JWT. Just war theorists, by not attempting to validate their moral code, have left their position without philosophical merit.
Another aspect regarding the confused moral thinking of JWT is its equation of pragmatism with rational self-interest. By definition, “expediency” can have no long-term agenda based on a rational calculation of costs and benefits. In general, this surmises that the long-term goals of pragmatists are determined by the current and unquestioned values of their culture. In the framework of educated Western leaders these beliefs are going to be altruistic in nature. Another question is whether short-range expediency could be the basis of long-term self-interested action. The end result of Henry Kissinger’s famous “realpolitik” indicates that this assumption bears close scrutiny.
The lack of a meta-ethical base is not the only theoretical dilemma with JWT. There is another fundamental flaw in JWT that will be relevant to the rest of this discussion. Carl von Clausewitz proposed that war is the “continuation of political intercourse, carried on with other means.” According to Clausewitz the purpose of war is deceptively simply the use “of force to compel our enemy to do our will.”[9] Clausewitz advocated the maximum use of force required to accomplish the state’s policy. The Clausewitzian trinity defines war as a combination of three basic elements that are so intertwined as to defy separation: enmity or emotion, chance or the unpredictable nature of war, and policy or reason applied to war’s purpose and conduct. Clausewitz stipulates that the conduct of war can never be severed from its purpose.
JWT attempts to cut all connection between the political ends of war and the means of military force. For JWT the determination on the justice of war is based on two separate standards. The first is jus ad bellum (justice of war), which is the basis for judging whether a state has gone to war for a just cause. The second category is jus in bello (justice in war), which determines if a war has been conducted in an ethical manner. Walzer explicitly confirms that there is no correlation between these two aspects of the theory: “The two sorts of judgment are logically independent…The dualism of jus ad bellum and jus in bello is at the heart of all that is most problematic in the moral reality of war.”[10]
It is more than “problematic”; philosophical dualisms generally establish unsolvable dichotomies. By upholding the conduct of war as unrelated to its rationale, including the question of who the aggressors are, JWT rewards the most callous with both strategic and tactical advantages, regardless of the justice of the issue being fought over. While Walzer rejects Clausewitz’s logic, the Prussian’s argument is still irrefutable:
The balance of this essay will address, in turn, both the content of jus ad bellum and jus in bello and some results of the United States attempting to abide by them while fighting a ruthless enemy who evidently exercises no restraint in war making.
Jus ad Bellum
Basically jus ad bellum maintains that nations can only ethically go to war in self-defense. JWT acknowledges that nation-states have an inherent right to exist, and therefore the right to use force in self-defense. It is also viewed that as sovereign entities, states should be free from outside interference when determining how to exercise their legitimate sovereign rights. The issue of foreign intervention in a sovereign state to prevent or stop human-rights abuses or to support insurgent forces is more problematical for just war theorists. The quandary is premised on both where the moral and legal authority for such intervention originates, and whether the intervening power has ulterior motives. Yet, it has been argued that in cases such as Rwanda, Darfur and Afghanistan, intervention is a positive obligation for large military powers. In respect to an American pull-out of Afghanistan, Elshtain comments: “To abandon beleaguered peoples is to give them less regard than they deserve as human beings.”[12]
Leaving aside the complex issue of humanitarian interventions, JWT has established six principles or standards to evaluate the justice of a nation going to war. First, the war must be for a just cause. A just cause must be in self-defense. Second, a war can only be started or conducted under a legitimate authority that has the legal right to wage war. Third, the nation must be motivated by right intention untainted by national self-interest. Right intention is the removal of the unjust situation as defined by the first principle, and a return to peace. Fourth, there must be a probability of triumph; if the cause has no chance of success, the lives lost resulting in a forlorn hope would be unjustifiable. Fifth, the costs and benefits of the war must be proportional; the good done by recourse to force must outweigh the harm caused by military action. Sixth, a nation can only go to war as a last resort; all other options short of war must be tried first.[13]
On 8 November 1942 Anglo-American forces invaded French North Africa, achieving complete surprise. The Allies landed on a broad front, stretching from Safi in Morocco to Algiers. For three days Allied land and naval forces met sporadic opposition from French Armed Forces stationed in their North African colonies. A case in point is, the American naval task force covering the landings at Casablanca fought a lively engagement with French naval units. Their sortie cost the French Navy five destroyers that were lost to the gunfire of U.S. Navy cruisers and destroyers. While French fatalities in personnel must have been heavy, the Americans only suffered 14 wounded on USS Wichita.[14] After the three days of hostilities between the French and Allied forces, a political accord was arrived at with Admiral Jean Darlan who was the French commander in North Africa.
Operation TORCH (as the North African invasion was designated) is relevant to this discussion for two reasons. The first point would be whether the initial TORCH invasion should be evaluated utilizing the canons of jus ad bellum or jus in bello. While the Allies were at war with Germany and Italy, the Vichy French government was technically neutral, although Great Britain could be said to have been in a state of hostilities with France that were short of war. One can claim that, by initiating the invasion upon Vichy territory, the standards of jus ad bellum apply to the Allies. However, the Allies can infer that, by its actions, the Vichy regime made itself a co-belligerent of Nazi Germany, and therefore, a state of hostilities already existed. The view that the tenets of jus ad bellum should apply in this case seems to be the stronger one. Operation TORCH does provide an example that, contrary to JWT, it is difficult, if not impossible, to draw a fine line between the basic elements of war. In the case of the Allied invasion of French North Africa, the issues of morality, politics, strategy and military were so interwoven as to be inseparable.
The second consideration regarding the TORCH invasion is whether it was justified under the ideology of jus ad bellum. By the stringent standards set forth by Michael Walzer one can make a case that the North African invasion was an unjustified violation of neutral rights. On 25 June 1940 the French government signed an armistice with Germany. Representing France was the new president Marshal Philippe Petain. There was no doubt that he had the legal authority to negotiate and surrender for France. Nevertheless, it can be conceded that the British did not recognize the Vichy government by supporting the Free French led by Charles de Gaulle and by their attacks upon French naval units in the Mediterranean.
The American government, on the other hand, recognized the Vichy government with both a diplomatic mission and the continuation of trade. It was Petain who broke off diplomatic relations with the United States on 8 November 1942 as a result of the Allied invasion.[15]
As aforementioned, after the French-surrender in June 1940 the British were compelled to take hostile action against the French. The Royal Navy attacked French naval units stationed in North Africa in order to prevent them from falling into German hands. However, the British did not molest French merchant shipping. In April 1941, the British government received word that the French were planning to move the damaged battleship Dunkerque from Oran, Algeria to Toulon for repairs. Prime Minister Winston Churchill was alarmed that this powerful warship might fall into German hands and appealed to President Franklin Roosevelt for assistance in this matter. On 11 April 1941 Roosevelt sent a cable to Churchill that read, in part:
Due to American pressure the French elected to keep the Dunkerque in Oran. What is interesting about this whole business is that, as far as I can determine, during the planning stages of TORCH there was no discussion among American leaders on the ethics of invading a neutral country’s territory for strategic purposes. The main reasons for the TORCH operation were these: to drive the Axis out of North Africa and clear the Mediterranean for Allied shipping; to ensure that American Army forces would be actively engaged against German ground forces in 1942 to demonstrate support for the Soviet Union; to push France (not just the Free French) back into the Allied camp.
Using the case study of Norwegian neutrality during the beginning of World War II, Michael Walzer intimates that the violation of neutral rights is not justified by military necessity. Germany acquired its iron ore from Sweden via the Norwegian port of Narvik during the winter months. The British government, under Churchill’s prodding, attempted to cut-off this vital resource from the German war machine by mining Norwegian national waters. Walzer assessed the British action as an illegitimate use of the “sliding scale” where the justice of the Allied cause was used to validate an act of aggression:
The only exception that Walzer is willing to concede to the just war standards he defends is what he calls the “supreme emergency.” England faced a supreme emergency in the summer of 1940 when threatened with imminent invasion by Nazi Germany. However, this extreme situation is the only emergency Walzer recognizes that would justify breaking just war doctrine. The predicament before the fall of France was not a “supreme emergency” according to Walzer and by extension neither was that of November 1942. By contemporary standards of “international law” and JWT the TORCH invasion would be judged as preemptive.
Walzer’s statement that the Allies had to wait for the “last minute” in order to act to stop the supply of iron ore to Germany is in reference to the jus ad bellum requirement of “last resort.” One of the greatest, most heartrending blunders in history was the appeasement of Nazi Germany. On 7 March 1936 German troops, in only token strength, entered the hitherto demilitarized Rhineland in direct violation of the Versailles Treaty. Germany had already repudiated the Versailles Treaty the previous year by beginning the process of rearmament. The deployment of a few battalions into the Rhineland was hardly a “supreme emergency” and both the British and French governments had no interest in a confrontation over it, although they could have easily crushed Germany at the time.
The hitch with the theory of “last resort” is patent; it quickly subsides into the cul-de-sac of “too late.” As two critics of JWT observe,
Current events in both Iran and North Korea are flagrant examples of the dangers involved in giving aggressive tyrannies time to prepare.
President George W. Bush gave his first State of the Union address after the 9/11 attacks on 29 January 2002. This was the speech in which he used the phrase “axis of evil.” Bush defined it as states that were “arming to threaten the peace of the world.” He singled out three countries in particular as comprising this axis due to their attempt to procure weapons of mass destruction: Iraq, Iran and North Korea. Some detractors of this speech understood it to mean that the policy of the U.S. was to launch “pre-emptive” attacks upon the axis of evil and other states supporting terrorism in contradiction with the principles of jus ad bellum, particularly the provision of “last resort.” What was to become called the Bush Doctrine of pre-emptive war was vouched by the President in his announcement:
Events have demonstrated that the disparagers had little to fear of the U.S. devolving into a “rogue nation” that would initiate war without the due considerations of just war doctrine. Vis-à -vis Iraq there was no rush to war. Operation Iraqi Freedom would not begin for over a year after Bush’s communiqué. Iran continues its endeavor to acquire nuclear weapons five years after the President’s declaration with apparently no efforts beyond the diplomatic to stop its nuclear program. North Korea has detonated a nuclear device, and the Bush administration is making accommodations to that regime without any attempts to deal with a peril not gathering but in actual existence. Of the three axes of evil singled out in his message, the President has only taken military action against one: Iraq.
On 11 September 2002 Bush gave an address before the General Assembly of the United Nations. In it, he made his case for removing Saddam Hussein from power. He did so by referencing Saddam’s attacks upon his neighbors, his brutal oppression of the Iraqi people and his continued quest for weapons of mass destruction. The President couched his speech with internationalist rhetoric. Saddam was a menace to world and regional peace and had defied numerous UN resolutions. This and his support of terrorism made his removal imperative. To legally justify the removal of Saddam Hussein from power, President Bush cited several UN Security Council resolutions.
Furthermore, while addressing the General Assembly President Bush introduced his “Forward Strategy of Freedom,” although he did not use that formulation:
In his mirror-imaging of the enemy the President seems sincere. In his 2002 State of the Union Address he articulated his belief that the vast majority of people in the Middle East yearned to obtain the social and political values and freedoms enjoyed in the West. He defined such ideals as the following: “the rule of law; limits on the power of the state; respect for women; private property; free speech; equal justice; religious tolerance.” As he had stressed, democracies that are based upon these principles do not initiate wars of aggression. While the President might be right that no people on earth wish to be oppressed, the converse is too tangibly not true: there are many millions who seek to oppress others in the name of Islamic hegemony or ethnic hostility.
By making the Forward Strategy of Freedom central to his approach in fighting terrorism Bush was abiding by the just war dictum of “right intention.” When discussing the JWT standard of “right intention” the fundamental moral grounds for the just war tradition should always be kept in mind. The moral pivot of JWT is that altruism defines ethical conduct and self-interested actions are, at best, nonmoral. The President undeniably shares this view of the just war theorists. This is why, in his justification of the Iraqi invasion, he emphasized the crimes of Saddam upon the Iraqi people and others in the region. Bush did hypothesize that bringing freedom to that benighted part of the world would, somehow, increase American national security. Then again, he did not, and given his moral premises, could not simply state that American security was of paramount concern, and he would do what was necessary to secure that end.[19] This is why in his 2002 State of the Union Address he called for doubling the size of the Peace Corps whose function was to “encourage development and education and opportunity in the Islamic world.” Given the nature of these regimes and cultures from Saudi Arabia to Pakistan, this was a call for America to strengthen her avowed enemies.[20]
Two prominent just war theorists have publicly stated their agreement with the view that the President exercised due discretion concerning Operation Iraqi Freedom that was in synchronization with jus ad bellum. Jean Bethke Elshtain concluded in the epilogue of her book Just War Against Terror that the Iraqi campaign met both jus ad bellum and jus in bello criteria. Elshtain reiterates that a momentous justification of Operation Iraqi Freedom was the liberation of the people of that nation from Saddam’s odious rule. She places the establishment of a functioning democracy in Iraq as being of equal, if not greater, importance to American security interests.[21]
Michael J. Uhlmann, in his essay that appeared in the Claremont Review of Books “The Use and Abuse of Just War Theory,” states,
The moral justification provided for American military action against Iraq is contained in the name of the operation.
Jus in Bello
Jus in Bello attempts to set the standards for military conduct in war. Unlike jus ad bellum, JWT utilizes only two principles in defining right action in warfare. These are the concepts of proportionality and discrimination, each of which will be dealt with in turn here. The principle of proportionality is similar to that of item five of the jus ad bellum standards. Proportionality means that the amount of force used must be appropriate (or proportional) to the military objectives sought. An example, given by Anthony Hartle, is that a B-52 air strike should not be called in to take out a sniper.[23] As Hartle is well aware, this example is fatuous. The concept of military economy of force would dictate that ordnance not be expended out of proportion to the tactical needs of soldiers on the battlefield.
It should be noted that proportionality as defined by JWT has nothing to do with the purpose of the war or which combatant is in the wrong, based on jus ad bellum standards. As aforesaid, the connection between the moral character of the antagonists and the manner in which war is fought is irrelevant to JWT. Michael Walzer makes the case for the complete disconnect between ends and means: “For the rules of encounter take no cognizance whatever of the relative guilt of governments and armies…The limits it imposes are imposed equally and indifferently on aggressors and their adversaries.”[24]
The treatment of prisoners of war and the rights of both combatants and non-combatants have been dealt with in international law by the various Hague and Geneva conventions. The Geneva conventions deal with the proper treatment of POWs and civilians caught in a war zone. The Hague conventions usually oversee how wars are fought, including, for instance, the use of poison gas and land mines.[25]
However, the concept of proportionality goes much further than the humane treatment of POWs and non-combatants. Anthony Hartle provides an example of how he would apply this principle in the most extreme of real world cases. Hartle posits the famous “ticking bomb” scenario of a terrorist who has been captured while plotting a nuclear attack upon an American city. The situation is that the captured terrorist knows where a nuclear bomb has been hidden in an American city and that the bomb is due to detonate at any moment. The question being whether the use of torture is justified in this situation, Hartle answers in the negative. As he explains,
Hartle determines that torturing the terrorist to save tens-of-thousands of innocent Americans would be the result of a “consequentialist calculation,” thus, morally unacceptable to him. One has to wonder how Hartle arrived at the conclusion that a terrorist who is attempting mass murder would be sacrificed “against his will” in an attempt to stop his evil enterprise. After all, the terrorist has only to do the right thing and inform authorities of the weapon’s location to avoid being put to the question. By this position Hartle has reached the reductio ad absurdum of JWT. This is of concern, since he was both a department chair at West Point and a member of the Executive Board of the Joint Services Conference on Professional Ethics. It is this ethical view that helps define the rules-of-engagement under which the American military is expected to fight, and win, wars.
On 25 July 1944, after a heavy aerial bombardment, four American infantry and two armored divisions attacked German positions in the area of St. Lo, France. In the previous six weeks Allied forces had been advancing slowly with heavy casualties through Normandy’s hedgerow country. Despite some American losses from the bombing attack, this offensive, Operation COBRA, was considered a huge success.[27] On 1 August 1944 General George Patton’s Third Army was activated and began its famous sweep across France. The commander of the COBRA operation was General Omar Bradley. According to Michael Walzer, General Bradley was guilty of a war crime for not exercising due diligence in the prevention of French civilian fatalities. Walzer quotes from Bradley’s memoirs on this issue: “The success of COBRA hung upon surprise, it was essential we have surprise even if it meant the slaughter of the innocents as well.” However, Walzer does not accept Bradley’s explanation:
General Bradley was following the example his nation’s commander-in-chief President Roosevelt has established some months earlier.
In the spring of 1944 the Allies engaged in a bombing campaign of military targets in France preparatory to the Normandy invasion. Besides German military targets, French transportation assets were attacked as well in order to slow down German reinforcements to the invasion site. During this period Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt exchanged a very interesting series of telegrams. On 11 April 1944 the latter sent one to Churchill stating this in part:
This dispatch substantiates that Roosevelt had rejected the just war doctrine that military utility and the reduction of one’s own casualties do not justify operations that would result in civilian deaths. Regarding the military necessity of the COBRA carpet bombing and the manner in which it was conducted this writer will accept the judgment of General Omar Bradley over that of Michael Walzer.
More recently, the principle of proportionality has required American forces to be put at undue risk in order to provide the enemy with the benefit of the doubt. A disturbing exemplar of this occurred during the Tanker War of 1988 in the Persian Gulf. The Iran-Iraq War of 1980-88 resulted in both adversaries attempting to cut-off each other’s export of oil that was their main source of foreign exchange. Iran with its location on the Gulf of Hormuz was in a geographically advantageous position to obstruct Iraqi tankers. The United States “tilted” towards Iraq in this conflict. With the seizure of the American embassy in Tehran on 4 November 1979, the ranting by Iranian leaders of their desire for the death of the “Great Satan,” and the murder of 241 Marines in Beirut by Iranian agents in 1983, a state of war had already existed between the two nations.
Ensuing the large number of Iranian mines found in the Persian Gulf in July 1987 President Ronald Reagan ordered the implementation of Operation EARNEST WILL. Paradoxically, this move took place only two months after the USS Stark had been hit by a cruise missile launched from an Iraqi warplane. Operation EARNEST WILL enabled the re-flagging of Iraqi and neutral tankers that were then escorted by US Navy warships. Although several tankers struck mines and their American escorts were attacked by Iranian speedboats, the effort was largely successful. During this period the US Navy also attacked several Iranian platforms in the Persian Gulf in retaliation for previous Iranian provocations.
Events in the Persian Gulf heated up when the USS Samuel B. Roberts was heavily damaged by a mine on 14 April 1988. A search of the area revealed more mines that were undoubtedly of Iranian origin. On 16 April President Reagan gave the order for Operation PRAYING MANTIS to be initiated. The plan called for the destruction of two Iranian platforms by two US Navy surface action groups (SAG) of three vessels each, composed of frigates and destroyers. A third SAG, code-named Charlie, was comprised of two frigates and the missile cruiser USS Wainwright. The commander of SAG Charlie was Captain James Chandler in Wainwright, and his mission was to provide close cover for the other two SAG. The aircraft carrier USS Enterprise operating in the Gulf of Oman furnished air support for the SAG. The mission was carried out on 18 April 1988.
The destruction of the two Iranian platforms was accomplished without difficulty and as planned. Still, the Iranian Navy elected to sortie three warships and challenge the U.S. Navy’s actions. The Iranian gunboat Joshan was 153 feet in length, and armed with Harpoon surface-to-surface missiles. Despite her small size, the ability to launch cruise missiles made the Joshan a dangerous threat. What’s more, the Iranians put to sea the frigates Sahand and Sabalan. Both of these vessels had been built in England by Vickers for the Iranian Navy in the late 1960s. They were 310-foot long, very fast, and capable of deploying surface-to-surface missiles.[30] In addition, the captain of the Sabalan had a reputation of being extremely aggressive and “nasty.”[31]
Apparently due to its already being in the area, the Joshan was the first to make contact and engage the American SAG Charlie. She steered a direct course towards the Wainwright. At this time Chandler’s intelligence team informed the captain that the Joshan was believed to have at least one operational Harpoon missile on board. According to Craig L. Symonds’ article, and by my own count, Captain Chandler radioed the defiant gunboat no less than seven times warning her to move off or be fired upon. She replied that she would “commit no provocative act and will stand clear,” but continued to move toward Wainwright at high speed. The Joshan ignored all warnings, and Captain Chandler finally radioed, “Iranian Patrol Ship, this is U.S. Navy warship. Stop and abandon ship. I intend to sink you.” Yet, at that instant, she fired her Harpoon missile at Wainwright. She missed by mere feet due to the immediate deployment of chaff counter-measures. Crewmen reported that they could feel the heat of the missile as it passed by the superstructure of Wainwright. Within seconds the Joshan was hit by four missiles fired by SAG Charlie warships, and was sent on her way to the bottom.[32]
Later during the same day, aircraft from the Enterprise located the Iranian frigates. The Sahand fired upon a Navy A-6 attack bomber which promptly bombed the Iranian warship. The Sahand was pummeled by missiles and laser-guided bombs, and was likewise torpedoed to the floor of the Persian Gulf. After this action, the Sabalan was spotted by a Navy A-6. It also foolishly fired upon the A-6 which attacked at once with a 500-lb bomb. The hit caused serious damage to the vessel which came to a full stop. Admiral William Crowe, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, had been monitoring events from Washington D. C. “By now, of course, the whole notion of ‘proportionality’ had been blown to bits….” Admiral Crowe gave the order to not finish off the Sabalan: “We’ve killed enough people,” he surmised.[33] The Sabalan managed to return to port where she was repaired and rejoined the Revolutionary Iranian Navy.[34]
Fallujah and “Sunni Triangle” Marine veteran Lt. Ilario Pantano wrote:
Pantano’s declaration indicates the close relationship between the principle of proportionality and that of discrimination. “Discrimination” tasks military units to distinguish between combatants and lawful non-combatants. Military forces are never to directly target civilians.[36] The difficulty with implementing discrimination is that, oftentimes, civilians are in the line of fire or, as in the case of the French civilians, are located near or at legitimate military targets. Walzer states the matter as one of noncombatant immunity to attack versus military necessity. He defines it as one of a “double effect” where civilians are not targeted for attack; but their proximity to an engagement or target makes them unintended war victims nonetheless.[37]
Even Walzer acknowledges that civilians will be killed in war, however unintentionally. The question is to what extent soldiers and militaries are morally obligated to insure that such people do not become casualties. In his discussion of the COBRA operation, Walzer indicates that his standards are higher than that of one of the most decent and humane of generals. Jean Bethke Elshtain judges that the care currently being taken in Iraq meets with JWT standards: “The demands of proportionality and discrimination are strenuous and cannot be alternatively satisfied or ignored, depending on whether they serve one’s war aim … The United States must do everything it can to minimize civilian deaths – and it is doing so.”[38] Elshtain’s ruling is in accordance with the JWT principle of indifference to the ends sought in war: if the U.S. loses in Iraq, then so be it. All that matters is fighting the “good” fight, not the defense of civilization, or that an American retreat would embolden this nation’s enemies.
A few examples of what discrimination represents to the troops fighting a war against a vicious and ruthless enemy illustrate the motivation behind such a stance. In the spring of 2004 there was no more dangerous place in Iraq than the city of Fallujah, and there was nowhere more perilous in Fallujah than the district of Jolan. Jolan was a neighborhood of twisting, narrow streets and alleyways and a hotbed of terrorist activity. On 25 April 2004 Echo Company, 2nd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment was ordered to send a patrol into Jolan. The result was a ferocious fire fight in which the Marines found themselves pinned downed, outnumbered and taking heavy casualties. Indirect fire support was ruled out: “Battalion had refused the request of mortar support, lacking precise targets in a district teeming with civilians.”[39] The fact that what civilians were still left in Fallujah by then were hostile was immaterial by JWT standards. As Walzer maintains,
What Walzer is insinuating here and what JWT demands vis-Ã -vis jus in bello ought to be explicitly delineated: in time of war the United States government is to hold the lives of its own soldiers as of lesser value than that of enemy civilians.
During the spring of 1945 Captain Francis Schommer served with the 83rd Infantry Division as it drove across northern Germany as part of the U.S. Ninth Army. After crossing the Rhine River, the 83rd Infantry was moving at such speed that it was keeping pace with the U.S. 2nd Armored Division. Captain Schommer had a method for keeping up the momentum that just required his .45 sidearm. Upon arriving at a German town Captain Schommer would find the burgomaster, put his .45 to the mayor’s head, and instruct him to call ahead to the next town. Schommer would tell his captive to inform the mayor further on that if he wanted his town to remain standing he had better start hanging out the white sheets then and there. This proceeding for wresting surrender worked “again and again.” As the American forces advanced further east their maps became useless, Captain Schommer repeatedly used the same direct methods to wring out accurate information of local terrain.[41]
In December of 2003 Lt. Col. Allen West was given an Article-32 hearing for using pressure to exact information in a plot to kill Col. West and some of his men. Col. West held his sidearm to the head of a detainee and fired off a round. The bullet did not hit the detainee; West’s intention was to frighten him into divulging vital intelligence. As with Captain Schommer, Col. West’s tactic proved successful and the ambush was thwarted. For saving his own life and those of his men the army fined Col. West $5,000. The army allowed Col. West to retire with his full pension. According to a news report, “Prosecutor Capt. Magdalena Pezytulska said West should be tried for assault and for communicating a threat. ‘This is a case about a man who lost his temper,’ she argued.”[42] Captain Pezytulska epitomizes JWT doctrine with her indifference to both victory and proportion. As Elshtain judges, “According to just war thinking, it is better to risk the lives of one’s own combatants than those of enemy noncombatants.”[43]
Concluding Remarks:
Lt. Ilario Pantano served as a platoon leader with the 2nd Battalion, 2nd Marine Regiment in the Sunni Triangle in 2004. He was charged with murdering two Iraqis who had been stopped at a checkpoint and had tried to escape by attacking him. He was cleared of all charges at his Article-32 hearing in 2005. His autobiography Warrior expounds his experiences in the Marine Corps and the fighting in Iraq. Pantano’s book features a catalog of horrors on what happens when a conventional force attempts to suppress a rebellion led by fanatics using the protocols of JWT.
The current and complete rules-of-engagement (ROE), and how they are arrived at, are classified. Pantano’s defense team was denied access to the ROE that their client was charged with violating in a capital case.[44] Pantano commented on two incidents that occurred in Iraq in June 2004:
It may be insane; but it is also in full accordance with JWT. As demonstrated at the onset of this essay the ethical foundation of JWT is altruism. Altruism is the sacrifice of one’s (or a nation’s) interests to others. “Interests” is a term that in a formal philosophical spectrum signifies values. What this connotes is that in fighting an altruistic war the lives of America’s soldiers and national security (an extremely high value) should be sacrificed to America’s enemies (a non or anti value). This is what is demanded by an ethic of sacrifice: giving up important principles in favor of less significant standards, non-values or naked evil.
Values are only achieved through the appropriate actions that the nature of reality imposes. Ends and means are inseparable. While the ends do not justify the means, they do determine them to a large degree. If one’s intention is to make a cup of coffee in the morning, then, there is a logical process to doing so, given the tools at hand. Equally, if a nation’s purpose is to defend its liberty and the lives of its citizens, there are necessary means to this end. Towards this end, as General Douglas MacArthur puts forth, “there is no substitute for victory.” Military victory requires killing the enemy and breaking their things. War is hell and cannot be refined. The “good” intentions of JWT have helped foster the current situation were Islamists have become as brazen as to kidnap sailors off Royal Navy vessels. The British government, instead of taking the bull by the horns in response to such an act of war, is negotiating with due restraint.
The complete severance of ends and means that JWT advocates has another ramification. Coupling the ethics of sacrifice with indifference to the ends actually achieved is Kantian. Certain actions are moral in themselves regardless of results; “consequentialist calculations” are unacceptable. What this implies is that sacrifice has become an end in itself. On the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan America’s best and brightest have become the sacrificial offerings to a theory that holds ethics and values to be of an intrinsic nature and that is indifferent to outcomes.
NOTES
[1] Anthony E. Hartle, Moral Issues in Military Decision Making (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 2004), 76, 106.
[2] Jean Bethke Elshtain, Just War Against Terror (New York: Basic Books, 2004), 57.
[3] Michael Walzer, Just and Unjust War (New York: Basic Books, 2000), 329-334.
[4] Walzer, 3-4.
[5] Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War, trans. M.I. Finley (New York: Penguin Classics, 1972), V: 84-116.
[6] Walzer, 4.
[7] Ibid., xx-xxi.
[8] Hartle, 104-5.
[9] Carl von Clausewitz, On War, ed. and trans. Michael Howard and Peter Paret (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989), 87, 75.
[10] Walzer, 21.
[11] Clausewitz, 75-6.
[12] Elshtain, 155.
[13] Michael Novak, “Was the War in Iraq Just?” (2 July 2004); available from http://www.michaelnovak.net/; Internet; accessed 24 February 2007.
[14] Samuel Eliot Morison, The Two-Ocean War (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1963), 229.
[15] William L. Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (New York: Touchstone Books, 1981), 923-4.
[16] Winston S. Churchill, The Grand Alliance (New York: Bantam Books, 1977), 112-3.
[17] Walzer, 246-8.
[18] Yaron Brook & Alex Epstein, “‘Just War Theory’ vs. American Self-Defense,” The Objective Standard Vol. I, No. 1 (spring 2006); available from http://www.theobjectivestandard.com/; Internet; accessed 24 February 2007.
[19] For more on this issue, see Yaron Brook and Elan Journo, “The Forward Strategy for Failure” The Objective Standard Vol. 2 No. 1 (spring 2007); available from http://www.theobjectivestandard.com/; Internet; accessed 24 February 2007.
[20] Both speeches by President George W. Bush are available from http://www.whitehouse.gov/; Internet; accessed 24 February 2007.
[21] Elshtain, 182-92
[22] Michael M. Uhlmann, “The Use and Abuse of Just War Theory,” Claremont Review of Books (summer
2003), available from http://www.claremont.org/; Internet; accessed 24 February 2007.
[23] Hartle, 97.
[24] Walzer, 123-4, emphasis added.
[25] Hartle, 106-10.
[26] Ibid., 175-6.
[27] John Keegan, The Second World War (New York: Penguin Books, 1990), 394.
[28] Walzer, 318.
[29] Winston S. Churchill, Closing the Ring (New York: Bantam Books, 1977), 453.
[30] Imperial Iranian Navy; available from http://www.iinavy.org/cicdeck.html; Internet; accessed 24 February 2007.
[31] Craig L. Symonds, “The Cop on the Beat,” Military Chronicles Vol. I, No. 2 (spring 2006), 20.
[32] Symonds, 25-6.
[33] Ibid., 28.
[34] Imperial Iranian Navy; available from http://www.iinavy.org/cicdeck.html; Internet; accessed 24 February 2007.
[35] Ilario Pantano, Warlord: No Better Friend, No Worse Enemy (New York: Threshold Editions, 2006), 315.
[36] Hartle, 97.
[37] Walzer, 151-4.
[38] Elshtain, 66, 69.
[39] Bing West, No True Glory (New York: Bantam Books, 2005), 201.
[40] Walzer, 157, 175.
[41] Cornelius Ryan, The Last Battle (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1966), 134, 291.
[42] CNN News, “U.S. Officer Fined for Harsh Interrogation Tactics” (13 December 2003); available from http://www.cnn.com/2003/US/12/12/sprj.nirq.west.ruling/; Internet; accessed 24 February 2007.
[43] Elshtain, 65.
[44] Pantano, 24-5.
[45] Ibid., 293.
Just war theory or the just war tradition (JWT) has become the dominant ethical philosophy in the West for the proper conduct of warfare. A definition of just war would be the aspiration to subordinate the type of state-sponsored violence called war to a sort of moral constraint. Through a series of treaties, international conventions and executive decisions, JWT has become the policy of the United States.[1] The result of this (along with other factors) has been the United States government’s inability to create a coherent foreign policy and achieve decisive military victory over America’s enemies in the last 60 years.
The origin of the just war tradition has been traced back to the works of Augustine. In The City of God Augustine attempted to reconcile the pacific teachings of Christ with the need to take up arms in order to prevent the triumph of worldly evil. Augustine argued that, while a Christian should turn the other cheek when attacked, he should take action in defense of an innocent neighbor. A leading scholar on ethics and JWT, Jean Bethke Elshtain, states Augustine’s position:
For early Christians like Augustine, killing to defend oneself alone was not enjoined: It is better to suffer harm than to inflict it. But the obligation of charity obliges one to move in another direction: To save the lives of others, it may be necessary to imperil and even take the lives of their tormenters.[2]
Although many of its proponents hold that JWT is now a secular doctrine, its Christian roots are still very much in evidence.
Michael Walzer’s book Just and Unjust Wars is considered the leading text on the subject, and is written from a secular perspective. Walzer begins his contention by providing what he believes to be the three main moral theories on the conduct of war: JWT, realism, and pacifism or nonviolence. Walzer discounts pacifism as an antidote to aggression, for being naïve, which is doomed to result in greater injustice.[3]
Realism, on the other hand, is a viewpoint taken very seriously by Walzer and other advocates of JWT. According to JWT, “realism” is the attitude of “all’s fair in love and war” that is found in the behavior of an amoral real politick practitioner.[4] The historical example Walzer cites as realism is the Melian Dialogue from Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War. Melos was an island colony of Sparta. In the summer of 416 B.C. the Athenians sent an expedition to Melos demanding that the Melians yield to superior Athenian arms. The Melians refused to surrender, and the city was invested by the Athenian force. After a period of some months the Melians were compelled to capitulate, at which time the Athenians killed all the men and sold the women and children into slavery.[5]
Walzer presents the sad tale of the Melians as evidence that Thucydides was a promoter of such harsh measures:
War strips away our civilized adornments and reveals our nakedness. They describe that nakedness for us, not without a certain relish: fearful, self-concerned, driven murderous…It is that general account that I have to challenge before I can begin my own work, and I want to challenge it at its source and in its most compelling form, as it is put forward by the historian Thucydides and the philosopher Thomas Hobbes.[6] [Emphasis added]
Walzer is mischaracterizing Thucydides’ own outlook on the wisdom of the war and how it was conducted in order to create a “realist” strawman. More to the point, however, it is no accident that Walzer chose a representative of the Greco-Roman tradition to embody the “realist” or self-concerned standpoint. This is crucial in that Walzer accepts the Christian ethic as the basis of his theory whereas he dismisses what he conjectures as its two main rivals: the Greco-Roman rational self-interest and the materialism of Hobbes.
Walzer’s secularized Christian morality is the cornerstone of his thesis and JWT. He only briefly addresses the issue of meta-ethics in the preface of his book while other JWT supporters do not investigate it at all. Walzer shuns all moral philosophy that is not theocratic in theory or content, and he is openly insulting about it:
The moral world of war is shared not because we arrive at the same conclusions as to whose fight is just and whose unjust, but because we acknowledge the same difficulties on the way to our conclusions, face the same problems, talk the same language. It’s not easy to opt out, and only the wicked and the simple make the attempt.[7] [Emphasis added]
This, of course, is not an argument, but the evasion of one. In this sphere Walzer is consistent with all other JWT backers in attempting to circumvent the central issue of ethics: altruism versus egoism.
Anthony E. Hartle was a professor of English and chair of the department at West Point as well as the author of the well-regarded book on military ethics, Moral Issues in Military Decision Making. Although Hartle approaches his subject from the angle of professional ethics, he is in full accord with both JWT and its philosophical underpinnings. Point-blank, he asserts the following:
We do find considerable expediency and self-interest, which is sometimes taken as sufficient evidence for establishing the nonmoral nature of customs and laws of war…Our codified laws of war can be traced to underlying moral principles, though nonmoral considerations are not to be ignored.[8] [Emphasis added]
It is clear that all supporters of JWT share the view that the Christian ethic, however secularized, is Ethics as such. All moral philosophies based on self-interest are denigrated as “realist” or “nonmoral” opinions. This verdict represents the main theoretical shortcoming of JWT. Just war theorists, by not attempting to validate their moral code, have left their position without philosophical merit.
Another aspect regarding the confused moral thinking of JWT is its equation of pragmatism with rational self-interest. By definition, “expediency” can have no long-term agenda based on a rational calculation of costs and benefits. In general, this surmises that the long-term goals of pragmatists are determined by the current and unquestioned values of their culture. In the framework of educated Western leaders these beliefs are going to be altruistic in nature. Another question is whether short-range expediency could be the basis of long-term self-interested action. The end result of Henry Kissinger’s famous “realpolitik” indicates that this assumption bears close scrutiny.
The lack of a meta-ethical base is not the only theoretical dilemma with JWT. There is another fundamental flaw in JWT that will be relevant to the rest of this discussion. Carl von Clausewitz proposed that war is the “continuation of political intercourse, carried on with other means.” According to Clausewitz the purpose of war is deceptively simply the use “of force to compel our enemy to do our will.”[9] Clausewitz advocated the maximum use of force required to accomplish the state’s policy. The Clausewitzian trinity defines war as a combination of three basic elements that are so intertwined as to defy separation: enmity or emotion, chance or the unpredictable nature of war, and policy or reason applied to war’s purpose and conduct. Clausewitz stipulates that the conduct of war can never be severed from its purpose.
JWT attempts to cut all connection between the political ends of war and the means of military force. For JWT the determination on the justice of war is based on two separate standards. The first is jus ad bellum (justice of war), which is the basis for judging whether a state has gone to war for a just cause. The second category is jus in bello (justice in war), which determines if a war has been conducted in an ethical manner. Walzer explicitly confirms that there is no correlation between these two aspects of the theory: “The two sorts of judgment are logically independent…The dualism of jus ad bellum and jus in bello is at the heart of all that is most problematic in the moral reality of war.”[10]
It is more than “problematic”; philosophical dualisms generally establish unsolvable dichotomies. By upholding the conduct of war as unrelated to its rationale, including the question of who the aggressors are, JWT rewards the most callous with both strategic and tactical advantages, regardless of the justice of the issue being fought over. While Walzer rejects Clausewitz’s logic, the Prussian’s argument is still irrefutable:
Kind-hearted people might of course think there was some ingenious way to disarm or defeat an enemy without too much bloodshed, and might imagine this is the true goal of the art of war. Pleasant as it sounds, it is a fallacy that must be exposed: war is such a dangerous business that the mistakes which come from kindness are the very worst…If one side uses force without compunction, undeterred by the bloodshed it involves, while the other side refrains, the first will gain the upper hand.[11]
The balance of this essay will address, in turn, both the content of jus ad bellum and jus in bello and some results of the United States attempting to abide by them while fighting a ruthless enemy who evidently exercises no restraint in war making.
Jus ad Bellum
Basically jus ad bellum maintains that nations can only ethically go to war in self-defense. JWT acknowledges that nation-states have an inherent right to exist, and therefore the right to use force in self-defense. It is also viewed that as sovereign entities, states should be free from outside interference when determining how to exercise their legitimate sovereign rights. The issue of foreign intervention in a sovereign state to prevent or stop human-rights abuses or to support insurgent forces is more problematical for just war theorists. The quandary is premised on both where the moral and legal authority for such intervention originates, and whether the intervening power has ulterior motives. Yet, it has been argued that in cases such as Rwanda, Darfur and Afghanistan, intervention is a positive obligation for large military powers. In respect to an American pull-out of Afghanistan, Elshtain comments: “To abandon beleaguered peoples is to give them less regard than they deserve as human beings.”[12]
Leaving aside the complex issue of humanitarian interventions, JWT has established six principles or standards to evaluate the justice of a nation going to war. First, the war must be for a just cause. A just cause must be in self-defense. Second, a war can only be started or conducted under a legitimate authority that has the legal right to wage war. Third, the nation must be motivated by right intention untainted by national self-interest. Right intention is the removal of the unjust situation as defined by the first principle, and a return to peace. Fourth, there must be a probability of triumph; if the cause has no chance of success, the lives lost resulting in a forlorn hope would be unjustifiable. Fifth, the costs and benefits of the war must be proportional; the good done by recourse to force must outweigh the harm caused by military action. Sixth, a nation can only go to war as a last resort; all other options short of war must be tried first.[13]
On 8 November 1942 Anglo-American forces invaded French North Africa, achieving complete surprise. The Allies landed on a broad front, stretching from Safi in Morocco to Algiers. For three days Allied land and naval forces met sporadic opposition from French Armed Forces stationed in their North African colonies. A case in point is, the American naval task force covering the landings at Casablanca fought a lively engagement with French naval units. Their sortie cost the French Navy five destroyers that were lost to the gunfire of U.S. Navy cruisers and destroyers. While French fatalities in personnel must have been heavy, the Americans only suffered 14 wounded on USS Wichita.[14] After the three days of hostilities between the French and Allied forces, a political accord was arrived at with Admiral Jean Darlan who was the French commander in North Africa.
Operation TORCH (as the North African invasion was designated) is relevant to this discussion for two reasons. The first point would be whether the initial TORCH invasion should be evaluated utilizing the canons of jus ad bellum or jus in bello. While the Allies were at war with Germany and Italy, the Vichy French government was technically neutral, although Great Britain could be said to have been in a state of hostilities with France that were short of war. One can claim that, by initiating the invasion upon Vichy territory, the standards of jus ad bellum apply to the Allies. However, the Allies can infer that, by its actions, the Vichy regime made itself a co-belligerent of Nazi Germany, and therefore, a state of hostilities already existed. The view that the tenets of jus ad bellum should apply in this case seems to be the stronger one. Operation TORCH does provide an example that, contrary to JWT, it is difficult, if not impossible, to draw a fine line between the basic elements of war. In the case of the Allied invasion of French North Africa, the issues of morality, politics, strategy and military were so interwoven as to be inseparable.
The second consideration regarding the TORCH invasion is whether it was justified under the ideology of jus ad bellum. By the stringent standards set forth by Michael Walzer one can make a case that the North African invasion was an unjustified violation of neutral rights. On 25 June 1940 the French government signed an armistice with Germany. Representing France was the new president Marshal Philippe Petain. There was no doubt that he had the legal authority to negotiate and surrender for France. Nevertheless, it can be conceded that the British did not recognize the Vichy government by supporting the Free French led by Charles de Gaulle and by their attacks upon French naval units in the Mediterranean.
The American government, on the other hand, recognized the Vichy government with both a diplomatic mission and the continuation of trade. It was Petain who broke off diplomatic relations with the United States on 8 November 1942 as a result of the Allied invasion.[15]
As aforementioned, after the French-surrender in June 1940 the British were compelled to take hostile action against the French. The Royal Navy attacked French naval units stationed in North Africa in order to prevent them from falling into German hands. However, the British did not molest French merchant shipping. In April 1941, the British government received word that the French were planning to move the damaged battleship Dunkerque from Oran, Algeria to Toulon for repairs. Prime Minister Winston Churchill was alarmed that this powerful warship might fall into German hands and appealed to President Franklin Roosevelt for assistance in this matter. On 11 April 1941 Roosevelt sent a cable to Churchill that read, in part:
I have received the following [note] from Vichy, dated April 8: “the American Charge d’Affaires called attention to a report according to which the French Government, ‘authorised by the Wiesbaden Armistice Commission,’ was preparing to transfer the Dunkerque from Oran to Toulon, at the very moment when the Government of the United States was expressing its interest in an opposite movement of naval forces. ‘Should such a transfer take place,’ adds the memorandum, ‘the Government of the United States could no longer envisage the continuation of the policy which it desired to pursue for the supplying, as far as possible, of its indispensable aid to unoccupied France, to say nothing of the other acts of co-operation envisaged.’”[16]
Due to American pressure the French elected to keep the Dunkerque in Oran. What is interesting about this whole business is that, as far as I can determine, during the planning stages of TORCH there was no discussion among American leaders on the ethics of invading a neutral country’s territory for strategic purposes. The main reasons for the TORCH operation were these: to drive the Axis out of North Africa and clear the Mediterranean for Allied shipping; to ensure that American Army forces would be actively engaged against German ground forces in 1942 to demonstrate support for the Soviet Union; to push France (not just the Free French) back into the Allied camp.
Using the case study of Norwegian neutrality during the beginning of World War II, Michael Walzer intimates that the violation of neutral rights is not justified by military necessity. Germany acquired its iron ore from Sweden via the Norwegian port of Narvik during the winter months. The British government, under Churchill’s prodding, attempted to cut-off this vital resource from the German war machine by mining Norwegian national waters. Walzer assessed the British action as an illegitimate use of the “sliding scale” where the justice of the Allied cause was used to validate an act of aggression:
He [Churchill] puts forward a version of what I have called the sliding scale argument: the greater the justice of one’s cause, the more rights one has in battle…They [Neutral nations] may be morally blind, or obtuse, or selfish, but these faults do not turn them into the resources of the righteous. This is, however, exactly the effect of Churchill’s argument: the sliding scale is a way of transferring the rights of third parties to the citizens and soldiers of a state whose war is, or is said to be, just…So the British move is another example of overriding at the first minute rather than the last.[17]
The only exception that Walzer is willing to concede to the just war standards he defends is what he calls the “supreme emergency.” England faced a supreme emergency in the summer of 1940 when threatened with imminent invasion by Nazi Germany. However, this extreme situation is the only emergency Walzer recognizes that would justify breaking just war doctrine. The predicament before the fall of France was not a “supreme emergency” according to Walzer and by extension neither was that of November 1942. By contemporary standards of “international law” and JWT the TORCH invasion would be judged as preemptive.
Walzer’s statement that the Allies had to wait for the “last minute” in order to act to stop the supply of iron ore to Germany is in reference to the jus ad bellum requirement of “last resort.” One of the greatest, most heartrending blunders in history was the appeasement of Nazi Germany. On 7 March 1936 German troops, in only token strength, entered the hitherto demilitarized Rhineland in direct violation of the Versailles Treaty. Germany had already repudiated the Versailles Treaty the previous year by beginning the process of rearmament. The deployment of a few battalions into the Rhineland was hardly a “supreme emergency” and both the British and French governments had no interest in a confrontation over it, although they could have easily crushed Germany at the time.
The hitch with the theory of “last resort” is patent; it quickly subsides into the cul-de-sac of “too late.” As two critics of JWT observe,
This restriction [of “last resort”] is often portrayed as a sensible policy that simply entails taking the act of going to war seriously, rather than going to war willy-nilly. But, in fact, war as a “last resort” goes far beyond forbidding wars of whim or aggression; it means that a nation cannot go to war immediately even when there is an objective threat – that is, when another nation has shown the willingness to initiate aggression against it.[18]
Current events in both Iran and North Korea are flagrant examples of the dangers involved in giving aggressive tyrannies time to prepare.
President George W. Bush gave his first State of the Union address after the 9/11 attacks on 29 January 2002. This was the speech in which he used the phrase “axis of evil.” Bush defined it as states that were “arming to threaten the peace of the world.” He singled out three countries in particular as comprising this axis due to their attempt to procure weapons of mass destruction: Iraq, Iran and North Korea. Some detractors of this speech understood it to mean that the policy of the U.S. was to launch “pre-emptive” attacks upon the axis of evil and other states supporting terrorism in contradiction with the principles of jus ad bellum, particularly the provision of “last resort.” What was to become called the Bush Doctrine of pre-emptive war was vouched by the President in his announcement:
And all nations should know: America will do what is necessary to ensure our nation's security. We'll be deliberate, yet time is not on our side. I will not wait on events, while dangers gather. I will not stand by, as peril draws closer and closer. The United States of America will not permit the world's most dangerous regimes to threaten us with the world's most destructive weapons. (Applause.)
Events have demonstrated that the disparagers had little to fear of the U.S. devolving into a “rogue nation” that would initiate war without the due considerations of just war doctrine. Vis-à -vis Iraq there was no rush to war. Operation Iraqi Freedom would not begin for over a year after Bush’s communiqué. Iran continues its endeavor to acquire nuclear weapons five years after the President’s declaration with apparently no efforts beyond the diplomatic to stop its nuclear program. North Korea has detonated a nuclear device, and the Bush administration is making accommodations to that regime without any attempts to deal with a peril not gathering but in actual existence. Of the three axes of evil singled out in his message, the President has only taken military action against one: Iraq.
On 11 September 2002 Bush gave an address before the General Assembly of the United Nations. In it, he made his case for removing Saddam Hussein from power. He did so by referencing Saddam’s attacks upon his neighbors, his brutal oppression of the Iraqi people and his continued quest for weapons of mass destruction. The President couched his speech with internationalist rhetoric. Saddam was a menace to world and regional peace and had defied numerous UN resolutions. This and his support of terrorism made his removal imperative. To legally justify the removal of Saddam Hussein from power, President Bush cited several UN Security Council resolutions.
Furthermore, while addressing the General Assembly President Bush introduced his “Forward Strategy of Freedom,” although he did not use that formulation:
The United States has no quarrel with the Iraqi people; they've suffered too long in silent captivity. Liberty for the Iraqi people is a great moral cause, and a great strategic goal. The people of Iraq deserve it; the security of all nations requires it. Free societies do not intimidate through cruelty and conquest, and open societies do not threaten the world with mass murder. The United States supports political and economic liberty in a unified Iraq.
In his mirror-imaging of the enemy the President seems sincere. In his 2002 State of the Union Address he articulated his belief that the vast majority of people in the Middle East yearned to obtain the social and political values and freedoms enjoyed in the West. He defined such ideals as the following: “the rule of law; limits on the power of the state; respect for women; private property; free speech; equal justice; religious tolerance.” As he had stressed, democracies that are based upon these principles do not initiate wars of aggression. While the President might be right that no people on earth wish to be oppressed, the converse is too tangibly not true: there are many millions who seek to oppress others in the name of Islamic hegemony or ethnic hostility.
By making the Forward Strategy of Freedom central to his approach in fighting terrorism Bush was abiding by the just war dictum of “right intention.” When discussing the JWT standard of “right intention” the fundamental moral grounds for the just war tradition should always be kept in mind. The moral pivot of JWT is that altruism defines ethical conduct and self-interested actions are, at best, nonmoral. The President undeniably shares this view of the just war theorists. This is why, in his justification of the Iraqi invasion, he emphasized the crimes of Saddam upon the Iraqi people and others in the region. Bush did hypothesize that bringing freedom to that benighted part of the world would, somehow, increase American national security. Then again, he did not, and given his moral premises, could not simply state that American security was of paramount concern, and he would do what was necessary to secure that end.[19] This is why in his 2002 State of the Union Address he called for doubling the size of the Peace Corps whose function was to “encourage development and education and opportunity in the Islamic world.” Given the nature of these regimes and cultures from Saudi Arabia to Pakistan, this was a call for America to strengthen her avowed enemies.[20]
Two prominent just war theorists have publicly stated their agreement with the view that the President exercised due discretion concerning Operation Iraqi Freedom that was in synchronization with jus ad bellum. Jean Bethke Elshtain concluded in the epilogue of her book Just War Against Terror that the Iraqi campaign met both jus ad bellum and jus in bello criteria. Elshtain reiterates that a momentous justification of Operation Iraqi Freedom was the liberation of the people of that nation from Saddam’s odious rule. She places the establishment of a functioning democracy in Iraq as being of equal, if not greater, importance to American security interests.[21]
Michael J. Uhlmann, in his essay that appeared in the Claremont Review of Books “The Use and Abuse of Just War Theory,” states,
In the run-up to Operation Iraqi Freedom, to have listened to President Bush, or to his principal civilian and military advisors, was to learn how profoundly just-war thinking has influenced the leadership of the world's most powerful nation. One may of course disagree with their conclusions, but one has to be impressed by the evident care they took to provide moral justification for their actions.[22]
The moral justification provided for American military action against Iraq is contained in the name of the operation.
Jus in Bello
Jus in Bello attempts to set the standards for military conduct in war. Unlike jus ad bellum, JWT utilizes only two principles in defining right action in warfare. These are the concepts of proportionality and discrimination, each of which will be dealt with in turn here. The principle of proportionality is similar to that of item five of the jus ad bellum standards. Proportionality means that the amount of force used must be appropriate (or proportional) to the military objectives sought. An example, given by Anthony Hartle, is that a B-52 air strike should not be called in to take out a sniper.[23] As Hartle is well aware, this example is fatuous. The concept of military economy of force would dictate that ordnance not be expended out of proportion to the tactical needs of soldiers on the battlefield.
It should be noted that proportionality as defined by JWT has nothing to do with the purpose of the war or which combatant is in the wrong, based on jus ad bellum standards. As aforesaid, the connection between the moral character of the antagonists and the manner in which war is fought is irrelevant to JWT. Michael Walzer makes the case for the complete disconnect between ends and means: “For the rules of encounter take no cognizance whatever of the relative guilt of governments and armies…The limits it imposes are imposed equally and indifferently on aggressors and their adversaries.”[24]
The treatment of prisoners of war and the rights of both combatants and non-combatants have been dealt with in international law by the various Hague and Geneva conventions. The Geneva conventions deal with the proper treatment of POWs and civilians caught in a war zone. The Hague conventions usually oversee how wars are fought, including, for instance, the use of poison gas and land mines.[25]
However, the concept of proportionality goes much further than the humane treatment of POWs and non-combatants. Anthony Hartle provides an example of how he would apply this principle in the most extreme of real world cases. Hartle posits the famous “ticking bomb” scenario of a terrorist who has been captured while plotting a nuclear attack upon an American city. The situation is that the captured terrorist knows where a nuclear bomb has been hidden in an American city and that the bomb is due to detonate at any moment. The question being whether the use of torture is justified in this situation, Hartle answers in the negative. As he explains,
The officer in our hypothetical case may decide to torture the prisoner, but he or she cannot claim moral justification in terms of the American value system [as defined by Hartle]…If it is morally wrong to sacrifice one person for another because of what it means to be a person, it must also be morally wrong to sacrifice one person against his or her will [?] for fifty thousand others.[26]
Hartle determines that torturing the terrorist to save tens-of-thousands of innocent Americans would be the result of a “consequentialist calculation,” thus, morally unacceptable to him. One has to wonder how Hartle arrived at the conclusion that a terrorist who is attempting mass murder would be sacrificed “against his will” in an attempt to stop his evil enterprise. After all, the terrorist has only to do the right thing and inform authorities of the weapon’s location to avoid being put to the question. By this position Hartle has reached the reductio ad absurdum of JWT. This is of concern, since he was both a department chair at West Point and a member of the Executive Board of the Joint Services Conference on Professional Ethics. It is this ethical view that helps define the rules-of-engagement under which the American military is expected to fight, and win, wars.
On 25 July 1944, after a heavy aerial bombardment, four American infantry and two armored divisions attacked German positions in the area of St. Lo, France. In the previous six weeks Allied forces had been advancing slowly with heavy casualties through Normandy’s hedgerow country. Despite some American losses from the bombing attack, this offensive, Operation COBRA, was considered a huge success.[27] On 1 August 1944 General George Patton’s Third Army was activated and began its famous sweep across France. The commander of the COBRA operation was General Omar Bradley. According to Michael Walzer, General Bradley was guilty of a war crime for not exercising due diligence in the prevention of French civilian fatalities. Walzer quotes from Bradley’s memoirs on this issue: “The success of COBRA hung upon surprise, it was essential we have surprise even if it meant the slaughter of the innocents as well.” However, Walzer does not accept Bradley’s explanation:
We still want to know what positive measures might have been taken to avoid “the slaughter of the innocents” or reduce the damage done. It is important to insist on such measures because, as this example clearly shows, the proportionality rule often has no inhibitory effects at all.[28]
General Bradley was following the example his nation’s commander-in-chief President Roosevelt has established some months earlier.
In the spring of 1944 the Allies engaged in a bombing campaign of military targets in France preparatory to the Normandy invasion. Besides German military targets, French transportation assets were attacked as well in order to slow down German reinforcements to the invasion site. During this period Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt exchanged a very interesting series of telegrams. On 11 April 1944 the latter sent one to Churchill stating this in part:
I share fully with you your distress at the loss of life among the French population incident to our air preparations for “Overlord.” I share also with you a satisfaction that every possible care is being and will be taken to minimise civilians casualties …However regrettable the attendant loss of civilians lives is, I am not prepared to impose from this distance any restriction on military action by the responsible commanders that in their opinion might militate against the success of “Overlord” or cause additional loss of life to Allied forces of invasion.[29]
This dispatch substantiates that Roosevelt had rejected the just war doctrine that military utility and the reduction of one’s own casualties do not justify operations that would result in civilian deaths. Regarding the military necessity of the COBRA carpet bombing and the manner in which it was conducted this writer will accept the judgment of General Omar Bradley over that of Michael Walzer.
More recently, the principle of proportionality has required American forces to be put at undue risk in order to provide the enemy with the benefit of the doubt. A disturbing exemplar of this occurred during the Tanker War of 1988 in the Persian Gulf. The Iran-Iraq War of 1980-88 resulted in both adversaries attempting to cut-off each other’s export of oil that was their main source of foreign exchange. Iran with its location on the Gulf of Hormuz was in a geographically advantageous position to obstruct Iraqi tankers. The United States “tilted” towards Iraq in this conflict. With the seizure of the American embassy in Tehran on 4 November 1979, the ranting by Iranian leaders of their desire for the death of the “Great Satan,” and the murder of 241 Marines in Beirut by Iranian agents in 1983, a state of war had already existed between the two nations.
Ensuing the large number of Iranian mines found in the Persian Gulf in July 1987 President Ronald Reagan ordered the implementation of Operation EARNEST WILL. Paradoxically, this move took place only two months after the USS Stark had been hit by a cruise missile launched from an Iraqi warplane. Operation EARNEST WILL enabled the re-flagging of Iraqi and neutral tankers that were then escorted by US Navy warships. Although several tankers struck mines and their American escorts were attacked by Iranian speedboats, the effort was largely successful. During this period the US Navy also attacked several Iranian platforms in the Persian Gulf in retaliation for previous Iranian provocations.
Events in the Persian Gulf heated up when the USS Samuel B. Roberts was heavily damaged by a mine on 14 April 1988. A search of the area revealed more mines that were undoubtedly of Iranian origin. On 16 April President Reagan gave the order for Operation PRAYING MANTIS to be initiated. The plan called for the destruction of two Iranian platforms by two US Navy surface action groups (SAG) of three vessels each, composed of frigates and destroyers. A third SAG, code-named Charlie, was comprised of two frigates and the missile cruiser USS Wainwright. The commander of SAG Charlie was Captain James Chandler in Wainwright, and his mission was to provide close cover for the other two SAG. The aircraft carrier USS Enterprise operating in the Gulf of Oman furnished air support for the SAG. The mission was carried out on 18 April 1988.
The destruction of the two Iranian platforms was accomplished without difficulty and as planned. Still, the Iranian Navy elected to sortie three warships and challenge the U.S. Navy’s actions. The Iranian gunboat Joshan was 153 feet in length, and armed with Harpoon surface-to-surface missiles. Despite her small size, the ability to launch cruise missiles made the Joshan a dangerous threat. What’s more, the Iranians put to sea the frigates Sahand and Sabalan. Both of these vessels had been built in England by Vickers for the Iranian Navy in the late 1960s. They were 310-foot long, very fast, and capable of deploying surface-to-surface missiles.[30] In addition, the captain of the Sabalan had a reputation of being extremely aggressive and “nasty.”[31]
Apparently due to its already being in the area, the Joshan was the first to make contact and engage the American SAG Charlie. She steered a direct course towards the Wainwright. At this time Chandler’s intelligence team informed the captain that the Joshan was believed to have at least one operational Harpoon missile on board. According to Craig L. Symonds’ article, and by my own count, Captain Chandler radioed the defiant gunboat no less than seven times warning her to move off or be fired upon. She replied that she would “commit no provocative act and will stand clear,” but continued to move toward Wainwright at high speed. The Joshan ignored all warnings, and Captain Chandler finally radioed, “Iranian Patrol Ship, this is U.S. Navy warship. Stop and abandon ship. I intend to sink you.” Yet, at that instant, she fired her Harpoon missile at Wainwright. She missed by mere feet due to the immediate deployment of chaff counter-measures. Crewmen reported that they could feel the heat of the missile as it passed by the superstructure of Wainwright. Within seconds the Joshan was hit by four missiles fired by SAG Charlie warships, and was sent on her way to the bottom.[32]
Later during the same day, aircraft from the Enterprise located the Iranian frigates. The Sahand fired upon a Navy A-6 attack bomber which promptly bombed the Iranian warship. The Sahand was pummeled by missiles and laser-guided bombs, and was likewise torpedoed to the floor of the Persian Gulf. After this action, the Sabalan was spotted by a Navy A-6. It also foolishly fired upon the A-6 which attacked at once with a 500-lb bomb. The hit caused serious damage to the vessel which came to a full stop. Admiral William Crowe, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, had been monitoring events from Washington D. C. “By now, of course, the whole notion of ‘proportionality’ had been blown to bits….” Admiral Crowe gave the order to not finish off the Sabalan: “We’ve killed enough people,” he surmised.[33] The Sabalan managed to return to port where she was repaired and rejoined the Revolutionary Iranian Navy.[34]
Fallujah and “Sunni Triangle” Marine veteran Lt. Ilario Pantano wrote:
They should have feared us. But instead, the Muj apparently thought they could overwhelm our bases. That came from the stupidity of the proportional response. The fact that the insurgents could even consider massed assaults meant that we had not been sufficiently brutal…we had become an “ineffective occupier” and not because of the number of troops, he argued [Paul Bremer] but because of our overly restrictive Rules-of-Engagement and our discomfort with killing the guys that needed to be killed.[35]
Pantano’s declaration indicates the close relationship between the principle of proportionality and that of discrimination. “Discrimination” tasks military units to distinguish between combatants and lawful non-combatants. Military forces are never to directly target civilians.[36] The difficulty with implementing discrimination is that, oftentimes, civilians are in the line of fire or, as in the case of the French civilians, are located near or at legitimate military targets. Walzer states the matter as one of noncombatant immunity to attack versus military necessity. He defines it as one of a “double effect” where civilians are not targeted for attack; but their proximity to an engagement or target makes them unintended war victims nonetheless.[37]
Even Walzer acknowledges that civilians will be killed in war, however unintentionally. The question is to what extent soldiers and militaries are morally obligated to insure that such people do not become casualties. In his discussion of the COBRA operation, Walzer indicates that his standards are higher than that of one of the most decent and humane of generals. Jean Bethke Elshtain judges that the care currently being taken in Iraq meets with JWT standards: “The demands of proportionality and discrimination are strenuous and cannot be alternatively satisfied or ignored, depending on whether they serve one’s war aim … The United States must do everything it can to minimize civilian deaths – and it is doing so.”[38] Elshtain’s ruling is in accordance with the JWT principle of indifference to the ends sought in war: if the U.S. loses in Iraq, then so be it. All that matters is fighting the “good” fight, not the defense of civilization, or that an American retreat would embolden this nation’s enemies.
A few examples of what discrimination represents to the troops fighting a war against a vicious and ruthless enemy illustrate the motivation behind such a stance. In the spring of 2004 there was no more dangerous place in Iraq than the city of Fallujah, and there was nowhere more perilous in Fallujah than the district of Jolan. Jolan was a neighborhood of twisting, narrow streets and alleyways and a hotbed of terrorist activity. On 25 April 2004 Echo Company, 2nd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment was ordered to send a patrol into Jolan. The result was a ferocious fire fight in which the Marines found themselves pinned downed, outnumbered and taking heavy casualties. Indirect fire support was ruled out: “Battalion had refused the request of mortar support, lacking precise targets in a district teeming with civilians.”[39] The fact that what civilians were still left in Fallujah by then were hostile was immaterial by JWT standards. As Walzer maintains,
But even if their target is very important, and the number of innocent people threatened relatively small, they [military commanders] must risk soldiers before they kill civilians…I have been arguing here that even enemy civilians, over whom sovereignty is not claimed, are the responsibility of attacking armies….[40]
What Walzer is insinuating here and what JWT demands vis-Ã -vis jus in bello ought to be explicitly delineated: in time of war the United States government is to hold the lives of its own soldiers as of lesser value than that of enemy civilians.
During the spring of 1945 Captain Francis Schommer served with the 83rd Infantry Division as it drove across northern Germany as part of the U.S. Ninth Army. After crossing the Rhine River, the 83rd Infantry was moving at such speed that it was keeping pace with the U.S. 2nd Armored Division. Captain Schommer had a method for keeping up the momentum that just required his .45 sidearm. Upon arriving at a German town Captain Schommer would find the burgomaster, put his .45 to the mayor’s head, and instruct him to call ahead to the next town. Schommer would tell his captive to inform the mayor further on that if he wanted his town to remain standing he had better start hanging out the white sheets then and there. This proceeding for wresting surrender worked “again and again.” As the American forces advanced further east their maps became useless, Captain Schommer repeatedly used the same direct methods to wring out accurate information of local terrain.[41]
In December of 2003 Lt. Col. Allen West was given an Article-32 hearing for using pressure to exact information in a plot to kill Col. West and some of his men. Col. West held his sidearm to the head of a detainee and fired off a round. The bullet did not hit the detainee; West’s intention was to frighten him into divulging vital intelligence. As with Captain Schommer, Col. West’s tactic proved successful and the ambush was thwarted. For saving his own life and those of his men the army fined Col. West $5,000. The army allowed Col. West to retire with his full pension. According to a news report, “Prosecutor Capt. Magdalena Pezytulska said West should be tried for assault and for communicating a threat. ‘This is a case about a man who lost his temper,’ she argued.”[42] Captain Pezytulska epitomizes JWT doctrine with her indifference to both victory and proportion. As Elshtain judges, “According to just war thinking, it is better to risk the lives of one’s own combatants than those of enemy noncombatants.”[43]
Concluding Remarks:
Lt. Ilario Pantano served as a platoon leader with the 2nd Battalion, 2nd Marine Regiment in the Sunni Triangle in 2004. He was charged with murdering two Iraqis who had been stopped at a checkpoint and had tried to escape by attacking him. He was cleared of all charges at his Article-32 hearing in 2005. His autobiography Warrior expounds his experiences in the Marine Corps and the fighting in Iraq. Pantano’s book features a catalog of horrors on what happens when a conventional force attempts to suppress a rebellion led by fanatics using the protocols of JWT.
The current and complete rules-of-engagement (ROE), and how they are arrived at, are classified. Pantano’s defense team was denied access to the ROE that their client was charged with violating in a capital case.[44] Pantano commented on two incidents that occurred in Iraq in June 2004:
Earlier in the week an Iraqi dressed in a crisp blue-and-white uniform had walked into a police station and detonated a suitcase full of explosives, nuts and bolts, killing four Iraqi police officers and wounding dozens. Meanwhile, Lieutenant James “Milky” Lindler was being investigated for shooting a motherfucker who’d run his checkpoint after an IED wounded five of Lindler’s Marines. This was insane. Five Marines were bleeding out. A Humvee’s armor was crushed, and a “civilian” vehicle made a U-turn and came racing back toward them. Of course, they fired.[45]
It may be insane; but it is also in full accordance with JWT. As demonstrated at the onset of this essay the ethical foundation of JWT is altruism. Altruism is the sacrifice of one’s (or a nation’s) interests to others. “Interests” is a term that in a formal philosophical spectrum signifies values. What this connotes is that in fighting an altruistic war the lives of America’s soldiers and national security (an extremely high value) should be sacrificed to America’s enemies (a non or anti value). This is what is demanded by an ethic of sacrifice: giving up important principles in favor of less significant standards, non-values or naked evil.
Values are only achieved through the appropriate actions that the nature of reality imposes. Ends and means are inseparable. While the ends do not justify the means, they do determine them to a large degree. If one’s intention is to make a cup of coffee in the morning, then, there is a logical process to doing so, given the tools at hand. Equally, if a nation’s purpose is to defend its liberty and the lives of its citizens, there are necessary means to this end. Towards this end, as General Douglas MacArthur puts forth, “there is no substitute for victory.” Military victory requires killing the enemy and breaking their things. War is hell and cannot be refined. The “good” intentions of JWT have helped foster the current situation were Islamists have become as brazen as to kidnap sailors off Royal Navy vessels. The British government, instead of taking the bull by the horns in response to such an act of war, is negotiating with due restraint.
The complete severance of ends and means that JWT advocates has another ramification. Coupling the ethics of sacrifice with indifference to the ends actually achieved is Kantian. Certain actions are moral in themselves regardless of results; “consequentialist calculations” are unacceptable. What this implies is that sacrifice has become an end in itself. On the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan America’s best and brightest have become the sacrificial offerings to a theory that holds ethics and values to be of an intrinsic nature and that is indifferent to outcomes.
NOTES
[1] Anthony E. Hartle, Moral Issues in Military Decision Making (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 2004), 76, 106.
[2] Jean Bethke Elshtain, Just War Against Terror (New York: Basic Books, 2004), 57.
[3] Michael Walzer, Just and Unjust War (New York: Basic Books, 2000), 329-334.
[4] Walzer, 3-4.
[5] Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War, trans. M.I. Finley (New York: Penguin Classics, 1972), V: 84-116.
[6] Walzer, 4.
[7] Ibid., xx-xxi.
[8] Hartle, 104-5.
[9] Carl von Clausewitz, On War, ed. and trans. Michael Howard and Peter Paret (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989), 87, 75.
[10] Walzer, 21.
[11] Clausewitz, 75-6.
[12] Elshtain, 155.
[13] Michael Novak, “Was the War in Iraq Just?” (2 July 2004); available from http://www.michaelnovak.net/; Internet; accessed 24 February 2007.
[14] Samuel Eliot Morison, The Two-Ocean War (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1963), 229.
[15] William L. Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (New York: Touchstone Books, 1981), 923-4.
[16] Winston S. Churchill, The Grand Alliance (New York: Bantam Books, 1977), 112-3.
[17] Walzer, 246-8.
[18] Yaron Brook & Alex Epstein, “‘Just War Theory’ vs. American Self-Defense,” The Objective Standard Vol. I, No. 1 (spring 2006); available from http://www.theobjectivestandard.com/; Internet; accessed 24 February 2007.
[19] For more on this issue, see Yaron Brook and Elan Journo, “The Forward Strategy for Failure” The Objective Standard Vol. 2 No. 1 (spring 2007); available from http://www.theobjectivestandard.com/; Internet; accessed 24 February 2007.
[20] Both speeches by President George W. Bush are available from http://www.whitehouse.gov/; Internet; accessed 24 February 2007.
[21] Elshtain, 182-92
[22] Michael M. Uhlmann, “The Use and Abuse of Just War Theory,” Claremont Review of Books (summer
2003), available from http://www.claremont.org/; Internet; accessed 24 February 2007.
[23] Hartle, 97.
[24] Walzer, 123-4, emphasis added.
[25] Hartle, 106-10.
[26] Ibid., 175-6.
[27] John Keegan, The Second World War (New York: Penguin Books, 1990), 394.
[28] Walzer, 318.
[29] Winston S. Churchill, Closing the Ring (New York: Bantam Books, 1977), 453.
[30] Imperial Iranian Navy; available from http://www.iinavy.org/cicdeck.html; Internet; accessed 24 February 2007.
[31] Craig L. Symonds, “The Cop on the Beat,” Military Chronicles Vol. I, No. 2 (spring 2006), 20.
[32] Symonds, 25-6.
[33] Ibid., 28.
[34] Imperial Iranian Navy; available from http://www.iinavy.org/cicdeck.html; Internet; accessed 24 February 2007.
[35] Ilario Pantano, Warlord: No Better Friend, No Worse Enemy (New York: Threshold Editions, 2006), 315.
[36] Hartle, 97.
[37] Walzer, 151-4.
[38] Elshtain, 66, 69.
[39] Bing West, No True Glory (New York: Bantam Books, 2005), 201.
[40] Walzer, 157, 175.
[41] Cornelius Ryan, The Last Battle (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1966), 134, 291.
[42] CNN News, “U.S. Officer Fined for Harsh Interrogation Tactics” (13 December 2003); available from http://www.cnn.com/2003/US/12/12/sprj.nirq.west.ruling/; Internet; accessed 24 February 2007.
[43] Elshtain, 65.
[44] Pantano, 24-5.
[45] Ibid., 293.
Saturday, May 31, 2008
Military Evolutions: East and West
Sun Tzu in Art of War places a great deal of emphasis on the army commander. According to Sun Tzu leadership is central to establishing the character of a Chinese army. With reference to the men in the ranks of a Chinese army the greatest importance is placed on their relationship to their general. In chapter X verse 20 of Art of War, Sun Tzu notes that a competent general should regard his soldiers as “infants.” If a general treats his men as “beloved sons” they will follow him anywhere and will fight along side the general until death. The commentary on this verse reinforces this line of thought. According to both Tu Mu and Chang Yu, a general should endure the same rigors as his men. However, in the very next verse Sun Tzu warns against generals overindulging their troops since this will lead to a “disorderly” army of “spoiled children.”
These two passages exhibit the interesting dualism in Chinese thought on warfare. The idea that a general should be benevolent, just, and share in his troops hardships is clearly Confucian. Confucianism held that rulers (and generals) should govern by providing a moral example to their subordinates. By this method a righteous ruler would not have to resort to force, and if the ruler did so it was evidence of failing to provide the proper example of correct conduct. The next passage in Sun Tzu, referenced above, is an example of the Legalist influence on both that writer and the Chinese military in general. The Legalists advocated a system of strict punishment and rules and was based on a rather cynical view of human nature.[1] The Legalist position also reinforces the Chinese view that a general should impress his troops with his “awesomeness.” “Awesomeness” here refers to a general’s ability to impress his men with both his power and sagacity. It has been compared to Frederick the Great’s famous quip that Prussian troops should fear their officers more than the enemy: “The general must be an exemplary figure: loved yet awesome, capable yet receptive, unquestioned in authority and free of doubt.”[2]
Chinese warfare in general and Sun Tzu in particular were credited with using and advocated the indirect approach whenever possible. Sun Tzu, for example, wrote that both sieges and protracted war should be avoided as “there has never been a protracted war from which a country has benefited.”[3] Sun Tzu stated that a skilled general should be able to achieve his goals by strategy and without fighting battles; this principle has obvious parallels with Confucian thought. In one passage the commentator Li Chuan makes clear that this principle was widely held. He explains that after a lengthy siege Tsang Kung was still unable to take the enemy stronghold. Tsang Kung was criticized by his king for not using proper strategy. The king of Tung Hai was quoted as saying:
This view is also consistent with Sun Tzu’s principle that a minimum amount of damage should be done to a territory during war. This line of thought seems to be based on the view that the purpose of Chinese war (at least against other Chinese) was the taking and controlling of territory and not the destruction of enemy forces. The peasants who made up the enemy army would become an asset after the war so they were not to be destroyed if avoidable.
The way Chinese generals were to motivate their soldiers was by the development of chi. Chi is not just the morale of an army but its way of achieving a high fighting spirit. John Lynn, in his recent book Battle, quotes from the Wei Liao-Tzu: “Now the means by which the general fights is the people; the means by which the people fight is their ch’i.”[5] Again, the emphasis for Chinese troops to acquire chi is the personal loyalty of the troops to their commander.
There are some preliminary questions that should be noted before plunging into the issue of whether there is an identifiable “Western Way of War” to be compared to a comparable “Asian Way of War.” One point that should be noted is that there is not a single “Asian Way of War.” As John Lynn observed, there are identifiable differences on how warfare was conducted in East Asia and South Asia. There is a marked difference in attitudes between the Chinese and Japanese classics, at least in the ones I have already read. The Chinese military writers were most influenced by Confucianism and Legalism. The Japanese writers Miyamoto Musashi and Yagyu Munenori were most influenced by Zen Buddhism. Zen Buddhism does not seem to have been influential in military affairs outside of Japan. Even within China there are two very different military traditions based on who the enemy was. When fighting the Steppe horse archers to the north the Chinese had to utilize an army that was as mobile as possible. On the other hand, when Chinese armies were fighting amongst themselves, the Japanese in Korea, or the pirates in the south they had to adopt disciplined infantry armies. However, even when these factors are taken into consideration there are elements of East Asia warfare that are different to those of the West.
Regarding Western warfare there are at least two different theories on the “Western Way of War.” The most well known has been presented by Victor Davis Hanson in such works as The Western Way of War originally published in 1989 and Carnage and Culture that came out in 2001. Hanson stated that Western culture was founded by the classical Greeks and that their type of warfare has influenced all succeeding Western militaries. Hanson further argued that the Greek and therefore Western method of war was/is based upon fundamental cultural values. As John Keegan explains:
While Hanson focuses on cultural values to explain the development of Western warfare, Geoffrey Parker maintains that the Western military tradition (and its superiority) is based on having the best technology. In his essay on this topic William R. Thompson ignores both Hanson and Keegan but does ably defines Parker’s position: “The West was able to conquer the rest of the world thanks primarily to its edge in military technology.”[7] Another difference between these two viewpoints is that while Hanson maintains that there is continuity in Western warfare dating from ancient Greece, Parker’s focus is entirely on the post medieval period.[8]
Between these two, Hanson’s thesis is stronger. Parker himself notes the numerous occasions where non-Western powers quickly adopted weapons based on Western technology that they then used effectively against both Western and non-Western powers. For example, by the middle of the sixteenth century Acheh had fought the Portuguese to a stand-off and acquired trading concessions.[9] Another case is that of the Chinese “pirate” Cheng Ch’eng-Kung otherwise known as Coxinga. After the fall of the Ming Dynasty, Coxinga by using Fujian as a base was able to control the South China Sea by the middle Seventeenth century. As Parker relates:
Coxinga’s empire (ruled by his son after his death) was only brought to an end when the new rulers of the Ching Dynasty deprived it of its naval bases on the Chinese mainland.
Hanson, on the other hand, focuses on the cultural differences between Western and non-Western civilizations and how these differences impacted military performance. One key concept to Hanson’s thesis is what he calls “civic militarism.” In his discussion of the battle of Cannae Hanson states that the reason Rome was able to recover from this disaster was its ability to quickly replace the lost legions. This ability stemmed from Roman (Western) concepts of citizenship:
Of course, legionaries could and did develop personal loyalty to their commanders as in the case of Julius Caesar. However, at least in theory they were supposed to be loyal to both Rome and the idea of Rome. As noted above, the focus of Chinese armies was for their soldiers’ to both fear and worship their leaders. Whether this differing emphasis on troop motivation had a detrimental effect upon the operational efficiency of Chinese armies is a different question.
Hanson only deals briefly with the case of China in Carnage and Culture. Hanson states that although the Chinese invented printing and gunpowder they did not have in place the social institutions that were required for their further development. These conditions, Hanson implies, are of an economic nature the rigid Imperial system discouraged entrepreneurs from improving on technology in an open market place.[12]
Hanson most sustained presentation of his thesis is the book Carnage and Culture. While he very briefly discusses China in it, there is a chapter devoted to the battle of Midway. This battle is an excellent case study for Hanson’s thesis because both combatants’ military equipment was very similar. In this case it was the non-Western power that had a technological edge by virtue of Japan’s superior carrier aircraft. Despite being outnumbered and outgunned the U.S. Navy emerged victorious from the battle due to certain cultural values that gave the Americans an advantage over their opponents who did not possess such values. Hanson identifies the most important of these cultural values with the chapter title: “Individualism.” The ability of military nonconformists to break the Japanese naval code and give the Americans fore warning of the attack was not the only example Hanson cites. Another key reason for victory at Midway was the ability of American officers, both senior and junior, to improvise and innovate strategy and tactics in the confusion of battle.
As a leading historian of the Pacific war has noted, the Japanese were at their worst when forced to improvise when their plans went awry. After Japan’s string of early victories through May 1942, American counter-attacks based on what they had learned in a few short months would force the Japanese to do what they were not psychologically equipped for. H. P. Willmott noted that this situation had also occurred in the Coral Sea:
However, as Hanson makes clear there is nothing that “curious” about the calcified nature of the Japanese military. It was an extension of the hierarchal and authoritarian nature of Japanese society, particularly during the 1930s which witnessed the regimentation of Japanese society that made obedience to authority the primary virtue.
The Second World War in the Pacific provides numerous examples of the very different approaches to war between the Americans and Japanese. In the Southwest Pacific Theater there was even a role reversal in doctrine. The Japanese Army fighting in New Guinea and the Solomons was modeled on the Prussian Army’s method of direct assault. However, their antagonist General Douglas MacArthur preferred the indirect approach in order to minimize his casualties, the very strategy of Sun Tzu![14] This illustrates that while the Japanese found it impossible to adapt to the unprecedented war in Melanesia their American enemy was quickly able to implement the method of their downfall.
At root Hanson’s thesis is correct. In the last five hundred years (Hanson would argue for the last 2500 years) the West has been able to establish its long-term military superiority against all comers. This military hegemony has its foundation not in guns, germs or steel but in certain cultural values that has led to more successful military organization. In the present day every nation’s military is, at least to some extent, based upon Western examples that date back to Rome.
[1] David A. Graff. Medieval Chinese Warfare: 300-900. (New York: Routledge, 2002 ) pp. 20-1
[2] David A. Graff and Robin Higham. A Military History of China. (Cambridge, MA.: Westview Press, 2002) p. 107
[3] Sun Tzu, II: 7
[4] Sun Tzu, III: 10
[5] Lynn, p. 45
[6] John Keegan. A History of Warfare. (New York: Vintage Books, 1993) pp. 73-4
[7] William R. Thompson “The Military Superiority Thesis and the Ascendancy of Western Eurasia in the World System” Journal of World History 10, 1 (Spring 1999) p. 143
[8] Geoffrey Parker. The Military Revolution: Military Innovation and the Rise of the West, 1500-1800. (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1988)
[9] Parker, p. 105
[10] Parker, p. 112
[11] Victor Davis Hanson. Carnage and Culture (New York: Anchor Books, 2002) p. 122
[12] Hanson, p. 16
[13] H. P. Willmott. The Barrier and the Javelin. (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1983) pp. 223-4
[14] Douglas MacArthur. Reminiscences (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1964) p. 167
These two passages exhibit the interesting dualism in Chinese thought on warfare. The idea that a general should be benevolent, just, and share in his troops hardships is clearly Confucian. Confucianism held that rulers (and generals) should govern by providing a moral example to their subordinates. By this method a righteous ruler would not have to resort to force, and if the ruler did so it was evidence of failing to provide the proper example of correct conduct. The next passage in Sun Tzu, referenced above, is an example of the Legalist influence on both that writer and the Chinese military in general. The Legalists advocated a system of strict punishment and rules and was based on a rather cynical view of human nature.[1] The Legalist position also reinforces the Chinese view that a general should impress his troops with his “awesomeness.” “Awesomeness” here refers to a general’s ability to impress his men with both his power and sagacity. It has been compared to Frederick the Great’s famous quip that Prussian troops should fear their officers more than the enemy: “The general must be an exemplary figure: loved yet awesome, capable yet receptive, unquestioned in authority and free of doubt.”[2]
Chinese warfare in general and Sun Tzu in particular were credited with using and advocated the indirect approach whenever possible. Sun Tzu, for example, wrote that both sieges and protracted war should be avoided as “there has never been a protracted war from which a country has benefited.”[3] Sun Tzu stated that a skilled general should be able to achieve his goals by strategy and without fighting battles; this principle has obvious parallels with Confucian thought. In one passage the commentator Li Chuan makes clear that this principle was widely held. He explains that after a lengthy siege Tsang Kung was still unable to take the enemy stronghold. Tsang Kung was criticized by his king for not using proper strategy. The king of Tung Hai was quoted as saying:
Now you have massed troops and encircled the enemy, who is determined to fight to the death. This is no strategy! You should lift the siege. Let them know that an escape route is open and they will flee and disperse. Then any village constable will be able to capture them![4]
This view is also consistent with Sun Tzu’s principle that a minimum amount of damage should be done to a territory during war. This line of thought seems to be based on the view that the purpose of Chinese war (at least against other Chinese) was the taking and controlling of territory and not the destruction of enemy forces. The peasants who made up the enemy army would become an asset after the war so they were not to be destroyed if avoidable.
The way Chinese generals were to motivate their soldiers was by the development of chi. Chi is not just the morale of an army but its way of achieving a high fighting spirit. John Lynn, in his recent book Battle, quotes from the Wei Liao-Tzu: “Now the means by which the general fights is the people; the means by which the people fight is their ch’i.”[5] Again, the emphasis for Chinese troops to acquire chi is the personal loyalty of the troops to their commander.
There are some preliminary questions that should be noted before plunging into the issue of whether there is an identifiable “Western Way of War” to be compared to a comparable “Asian Way of War.” One point that should be noted is that there is not a single “Asian Way of War.” As John Lynn observed, there are identifiable differences on how warfare was conducted in East Asia and South Asia. There is a marked difference in attitudes between the Chinese and Japanese classics, at least in the ones I have already read. The Chinese military writers were most influenced by Confucianism and Legalism. The Japanese writers Miyamoto Musashi and Yagyu Munenori were most influenced by Zen Buddhism. Zen Buddhism does not seem to have been influential in military affairs outside of Japan. Even within China there are two very different military traditions based on who the enemy was. When fighting the Steppe horse archers to the north the Chinese had to utilize an army that was as mobile as possible. On the other hand, when Chinese armies were fighting amongst themselves, the Japanese in Korea, or the pirates in the south they had to adopt disciplined infantry armies. However, even when these factors are taken into consideration there are elements of East Asia warfare that are different to those of the West.
Regarding Western warfare there are at least two different theories on the “Western Way of War.” The most well known has been presented by Victor Davis Hanson in such works as The Western Way of War originally published in 1989 and Carnage and Culture that came out in 2001. Hanson stated that Western culture was founded by the classical Greeks and that their type of warfare has influenced all succeeding Western militaries. Hanson further argued that the Greek and therefore Western method of war was/is based upon fundamental cultural values. As John Keegan explains:
Victor Davis Hanson, in his breathtakingly original study of warmaking in classical Greece, is persuasive that it was the small landholders of the Greek city states who invented the idea of the ‘decisive battle’ as Westerners have practiced it ever since.[6]
While Hanson focuses on cultural values to explain the development of Western warfare, Geoffrey Parker maintains that the Western military tradition (and its superiority) is based on having the best technology. In his essay on this topic William R. Thompson ignores both Hanson and Keegan but does ably defines Parker’s position: “The West was able to conquer the rest of the world thanks primarily to its edge in military technology.”[7] Another difference between these two viewpoints is that while Hanson maintains that there is continuity in Western warfare dating from ancient Greece, Parker’s focus is entirely on the post medieval period.[8]
Between these two, Hanson’s thesis is stronger. Parker himself notes the numerous occasions where non-Western powers quickly adopted weapons based on Western technology that they then used effectively against both Western and non-Western powers. For example, by the middle of the sixteenth century Acheh had fought the Portuguese to a stand-off and acquired trading concessions.[9] Another case is that of the Chinese “pirate” Cheng Ch’eng-Kung otherwise known as Coxinga. After the fall of the Ming Dynasty, Coxinga by using Fujian as a base was able to control the South China Sea by the middle Seventeenth century. As Parker relates:
By 1655, Coxinga commanded some 2,000 warships and well over 100,000 troops, making admirable use of European weaponry (whether imitated, captured or purchased) that he had originally encountered as a boy at Hirado, where his father had for a time served as chief interpreter to the Dutch factory.[10]
Coxinga’s empire (ruled by his son after his death) was only brought to an end when the new rulers of the Ching Dynasty deprived it of its naval bases on the Chinese mainland.
Hanson, on the other hand, focuses on the cultural differences between Western and non-Western civilizations and how these differences impacted military performance. One key concept to Hanson’s thesis is what he calls “civic militarism.” In his discussion of the battle of Cannae Hanson states that the reason Rome was able to recover from this disaster was its ability to quickly replace the lost legions. This ability stemmed from Roman (Western) concepts of citizenship:
This revolutionary idea of Western citizenship – replete with ever more rights and responsibilities – would provide superb manpower for the growing legions and a legal framework that would guarantee that the men who fought felt that they themselves in a formal and contractual sense had ratified the conditions of their own battle service.[11]
Of course, legionaries could and did develop personal loyalty to their commanders as in the case of Julius Caesar. However, at least in theory they were supposed to be loyal to both Rome and the idea of Rome. As noted above, the focus of Chinese armies was for their soldiers’ to both fear and worship their leaders. Whether this differing emphasis on troop motivation had a detrimental effect upon the operational efficiency of Chinese armies is a different question.
Hanson only deals briefly with the case of China in Carnage and Culture. Hanson states that although the Chinese invented printing and gunpowder they did not have in place the social institutions that were required for their further development. These conditions, Hanson implies, are of an economic nature the rigid Imperial system discouraged entrepreneurs from improving on technology in an open market place.[12]
Hanson most sustained presentation of his thesis is the book Carnage and Culture. While he very briefly discusses China in it, there is a chapter devoted to the battle of Midway. This battle is an excellent case study for Hanson’s thesis because both combatants’ military equipment was very similar. In this case it was the non-Western power that had a technological edge by virtue of Japan’s superior carrier aircraft. Despite being outnumbered and outgunned the U.S. Navy emerged victorious from the battle due to certain cultural values that gave the Americans an advantage over their opponents who did not possess such values. Hanson identifies the most important of these cultural values with the chapter title: “Individualism.” The ability of military nonconformists to break the Japanese naval code and give the Americans fore warning of the attack was not the only example Hanson cites. Another key reason for victory at Midway was the ability of American officers, both senior and junior, to improvise and innovate strategy and tactics in the confusion of battle.
As a leading historian of the Pacific war has noted, the Japanese were at their worst when forced to improvise when their plans went awry. After Japan’s string of early victories through May 1942, American counter-attacks based on what they had learned in a few short months would force the Japanese to do what they were not psychologically equipped for. H. P. Willmott noted that this situation had also occurred in the Coral Sea:
The way the Japanese shaped up to battle after Tulagi indicates a curious inability to readjust to a changing situation. Of course, this was not directly the fault of the local commanders, who had been given a task and inadequate means to see it through to successful completion. But they reacted to events with a wooden orthodoxy, passing current orders down the chain of command without regard to the dictates of the existing situation.[13]
However, as Hanson makes clear there is nothing that “curious” about the calcified nature of the Japanese military. It was an extension of the hierarchal and authoritarian nature of Japanese society, particularly during the 1930s which witnessed the regimentation of Japanese society that made obedience to authority the primary virtue.
The Second World War in the Pacific provides numerous examples of the very different approaches to war between the Americans and Japanese. In the Southwest Pacific Theater there was even a role reversal in doctrine. The Japanese Army fighting in New Guinea and the Solomons was modeled on the Prussian Army’s method of direct assault. However, their antagonist General Douglas MacArthur preferred the indirect approach in order to minimize his casualties, the very strategy of Sun Tzu![14] This illustrates that while the Japanese found it impossible to adapt to the unprecedented war in Melanesia their American enemy was quickly able to implement the method of their downfall.
At root Hanson’s thesis is correct. In the last five hundred years (Hanson would argue for the last 2500 years) the West has been able to establish its long-term military superiority against all comers. This military hegemony has its foundation not in guns, germs or steel but in certain cultural values that has led to more successful military organization. In the present day every nation’s military is, at least to some extent, based upon Western examples that date back to Rome.
[1] David A. Graff. Medieval Chinese Warfare: 300-900. (New York: Routledge, 2002 ) pp. 20-1
[2] David A. Graff and Robin Higham. A Military History of China. (Cambridge, MA.: Westview Press, 2002) p. 107
[3] Sun Tzu, II: 7
[4] Sun Tzu, III: 10
[5] Lynn, p. 45
[6] John Keegan. A History of Warfare. (New York: Vintage Books, 1993) pp. 73-4
[7] William R. Thompson “The Military Superiority Thesis and the Ascendancy of Western Eurasia in the World System” Journal of World History 10, 1 (Spring 1999) p. 143
[8] Geoffrey Parker. The Military Revolution: Military Innovation and the Rise of the West, 1500-1800. (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1988)
[9] Parker, p. 105
[10] Parker, p. 112
[11] Victor Davis Hanson. Carnage and Culture (New York: Anchor Books, 2002) p. 122
[12] Hanson, p. 16
[13] H. P. Willmott. The Barrier and the Javelin. (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1983) pp. 223-4
[14] Douglas MacArthur. Reminiscences (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1964) p. 167
300: "The World’s Last Hope for Reason and Justice”
The theme of 300 is encapsulated in two statements at the beginning and the end of the film that act as thematic bookends. The first statement, quoted above, is spoken by the narrator in a summation during the opening scene describing the situation faced by the Greek city states. At the movies closing a Spartan hoplite exhorts his fellows just before the battle of Plataea by saying: “Today we rescue the world from mysticism and tyranny.”
It is truly amazing that a modern action movie would have as part of its theme such a philosophical issue. The connection between reason and liberty and conversely mysticism and tyranny is lost upon most people today. The critics of 300 are clearly clueless. They either describe 300 as an action/war movie featuring buff guys fighting half naked or as an example of retrograde Western attitudes toward the “Other.”
Upon viewing Leonidas’ (the Spartan king) contempt for the mystic ephors who still had power over the Spartan state and other examples of the movie’s theme I was reminded of a passage from Ayn Rand’s seminal essay “Faith and Force: the Destroyers of the Modern World” that was written in 1960:
There has been much commentary on the movie’s portrayal of some of the Persian warriors as monsters. Certainly, the Greek classics are filled with stories of Greek warriors fighting various monsters. Who can forget the lurid depiction of Odysseus blinding Polyphemus with a red hot poker in the eye? Clearly, these monsters, such as the Cyclops, represent archetypes of certain human attributes that Greek mythology chose to illustrate. In some of 300’s battle scenes the purpose of the film makers was to dramatize the conflict between the conscious and unconscious, between thinking warriors who chose to fight for their freedom and mindless slave soldiers driven by the lash.
The historian of the Persian Wars Herodotus stated explicitly that the war was over Greek freedom versus Persian tyranny. Now it would be an absurd anachronism to apply Lockean standards of natural rights to 5th century BC Greeks. Greece at this time was made up of 1000 independent city-states. By “freedom” it was meant that these separate states could choose their own form of government and be free of outside interference upon their sovereignty. “Freedom” also referred to the status of free men to a certain autonomy including in the economic sphere.
Herodotus recounts one famous exchange between a Spartan and a Persian lord who had asked him why he would not submit to Persia:
Besides the content of 300, the style of the film as also generated a great deal of comment. One aspect of this is the film makers’ decision to portray the Greek hoplites as nearly nude. This has provoked a large amount of comments about bulging abs and pecs. These observations have motivated the most ignorant, and frankly stupid, criticism directed at the movie’s style. The films alleged depiction of the Persians as “Arabs” has also been commented on. The cover of my Penguin Classics edition of Herodotus has a very interesting picture of a Greek vase on the cover:
The famous bronze “Riace Warrior” from the 5th century BC could have been the movie’s model for King Leonidas. Looking at this stunning piece, one can imagine him stepping off the pedestal and exclaiming that Greek freedom is worth fighting and dying for:
The Riace Warrior was the standard for male beauty in the Greek world. It should be no surprise that modern movie critics are as blind to the Greek standard of human beauty as they are to the Greek values of reason, justice, freedom
It is truly amazing that a modern action movie would have as part of its theme such a philosophical issue. The connection between reason and liberty and conversely mysticism and tyranny is lost upon most people today. The critics of 300 are clearly clueless. They either describe 300 as an action/war movie featuring buff guys fighting half naked or as an example of retrograde Western attitudes toward the “Other.”
Upon viewing Leonidas’ (the Spartan king) contempt for the mystic ephors who still had power over the Spartan state and other examples of the movie’s theme I was reminded of a passage from Ayn Rand’s seminal essay “Faith and Force: the Destroyers of the Modern World” that was written in 1960:
Western civilization was the child and product of reason – via ancient Greece. In all other civilizations, reason has always been the menial servant – the handmaiden – of mysticism. You may observe the results. It is only Western culture that has ever been dominated – imperfectly, incompletely, precariously and at rare intervals – but still dominated by reason. You may observe the results of that.
The conflict of reason versus mysticism is the issue of life or death – of freedom or slavery – of progress or stagnant brutality. Or, to put it another way, it is the conflict of consciousness versus unconsciousness.
There has been much commentary on the movie’s portrayal of some of the Persian warriors as monsters. Certainly, the Greek classics are filled with stories of Greek warriors fighting various monsters. Who can forget the lurid depiction of Odysseus blinding Polyphemus with a red hot poker in the eye? Clearly, these monsters, such as the Cyclops, represent archetypes of certain human attributes that Greek mythology chose to illustrate. In some of 300’s battle scenes the purpose of the film makers was to dramatize the conflict between the conscious and unconscious, between thinking warriors who chose to fight for their freedom and mindless slave soldiers driven by the lash.
The historian of the Persian Wars Herodotus stated explicitly that the war was over Greek freedom versus Persian tyranny. Now it would be an absurd anachronism to apply Lockean standards of natural rights to 5th century BC Greeks. Greece at this time was made up of 1000 independent city-states. By “freedom” it was meant that these separate states could choose their own form of government and be free of outside interference upon their sovereignty. “Freedom” also referred to the status of free men to a certain autonomy including in the economic sphere.
Herodotus recounts one famous exchange between a Spartan and a Persian lord who had asked him why he would not submit to Persia:
Hydarnes the advice you give us does not spring from a full knowledge of the situation. You know one half of what is involved, but not the other half. You understand well enough what slavery is, but freedom you have never experienced, so you do not know if it tastes sweet or bitter. If you ever did come to experience it, you would advise us to fight for it not with spears only, but with axes too. (Herodotus, VII: 133)
Besides the content of 300, the style of the film as also generated a great deal of comment. One aspect of this is the film makers’ decision to portray the Greek hoplites as nearly nude. This has provoked a large amount of comments about bulging abs and pecs. These observations have motivated the most ignorant, and frankly stupid, criticism directed at the movie’s style. The films alleged depiction of the Persians as “Arabs” has also been commented on. The cover of my Penguin Classics edition of Herodotus has a very interesting picture of a Greek vase on the cover:
This contemporaneous vase could be a still from 300. The Persian warrior is wearing an “Arab” turban and the hoplite is naked except for helmet and greaves. That Greek hoplites were depicted in Greek classical art nude should not be news to anyone who didn’t sleep through Art History 100. This also includes illustrations of Greek fighting Greek:
The famous bronze “Riace Warrior” from the 5th century BC could have been the movie’s model for King Leonidas. Looking at this stunning piece, one can imagine him stepping off the pedestal and exclaiming that Greek freedom is worth fighting and dying for:
The Riace Warrior was the standard for male beauty in the Greek world. It should be no surprise that modern movie critics are as blind to the Greek standard of human beauty as they are to the Greek values of reason, justice, freedom
Slings, Stones and Hand-Cuffs
Central to Thomas X. Hammes’ thesis on Fourth Generation Warfare (4GF) presented in “The Sling and the Stone” is Mao Tse-Tung’s successful guerrilla campaign. The title to chapter five in Hammes’ work is “Mao and the Birth of Fourth-Generation War.” In the preceding chapters of the book Hammes defines the first three generations of warfare in modern times.
According to the 4GW thesis the first modern generation of warfare reached its climax with the Napoleonic wars. The main characteristics of Napoleonic armies were, “mass production of the reliable, smoothbore musket, development of lightweight artillery,” along with advancements in communications and logistics that allowed European powers the ability to field armies of up to 200,000 men. Hammes states that this process had begun during the period of the Hundred-Years War (Hammes, pp. 17-8). Hammes asserting that a period of four-hundred years (1415-1815) as representing a single “generation” of warfare and providing only two pages of text to supporting this claim is quite a job of compression.
One odd aspect of Hammes’ short discussion on “first generation warfare” is that the thesis of Michael Roberts is omitted. It was Roberts, of course, who presented the thesis that there was a military revolution in Western Europe during the century of 1560-1660. Roberts based his thesis on the changes in European armies that resulted in the increasing use of firearms. The need for well-trained, long service troops resulted in the creation of national armies and the decline of the mercenary forces that were purchased “off the shelf” by those who required military services. Some historians, such as Geoffrey Parker, would push back the date of this military revolution to earlier in the sixteenth-century. This is to include the developments in the Spanish army during this period, particular regarding the developments in northern Italy. Parker argues that during this period musketeers gained an advantage over pikemen, especially when the musketeers were fighting on the defensive from prepared positions.
Jeremy Black, on the other hand, argues that the more fundamental change occurred later during the late seventeenth century. Of basic importance was the increasing size and professionalism of European armies. This period witness the ascendance of siege-craft and a war of position. The view that the best general during the ancien regime was the one who never fought battles may have been based more on economic and political factors than the military realities of limited logistical support. The numerous “generations” of warfare during the period of 1415-1815 would fill volumes including: the advent of firearms and artillery, the increasing marginalization of cavalry, developments in fortification, increasing professionalism of armies, increasing costs, the increase in army size and reach, to name but a few. This does not include spectacular changes in naval power by European powers that led to the West’s absolute control of the world’s oceans.
The obvious problem with Hammes’ thesis as it stands is that he doesn’t seriously address the vast complexity of many concurrent religious, economic, political, social and military revolutions that swept through Europe during these tumultuous four hundred years. One could provide similar criticism of Hammes’ characterizations of each succeeding military revolution that he defines. The term “generation” implies an abrupt change from one type of warfare to another. Antulio J. Echevarria II in his essay “Fourth-Generation War and Other Myths” is also critical of 4GW advocates' thesis that attempts to categorize Western warfare into neat generations: “the generational model is an ineffective way to depict changes in warfare. Simple displacement rarely takes place, significant developments typically occur in parallel."
In the case of Mao and 4GW, Hammes seems to be making just that argument. Mao’s successors did modify his concept of Guerrilla war. However, Hammes’ thesis argues for a rapid change from the maneuver warfare of Blitzkrieg to the sophisticated guerrilla warfare that he argues will dominate twenty-first century war. This focus on guerrilla, or revolutionary, war may skew the analysis on modern warfare. There has been any number of conventional wars between sovereign states since 1945. And it is a sad truth that there is no reason to believe that there won’t be more wars between states; the roots of these potential conflicts are deep throughout the world.
The heart of Hammes’ work is analyzing, and attempting to understand, the ongoing Iraqi campaign in particular and the Jihad War in general. At the beginning of chapter twelve “Iraq: High-Tech versus Fourth-Generation” Hammes quotes Clausewitz on the importance of understanding the nature of the war one is involved with. There is no denying the host of blunders committed by the Bush administration that Hammes cites in chapter twelve. He views the most important mistake in not recognizing the rapidly accelerating insurgency in Iraq that started in the spring of 2003. However, Hammes is as guilty as Bush in a more fundamental mistake: refusing to properly identify the enemy. This enemy is not the terrorist group al-Qaeda, it is the ideology of Islamic hegemony that they represent and which has widespread support and sympathy from hundreds of millions of Moslems around the world.
Whatever Bush’s reasons for toppling Saddam Hussein, he was off target. The center of militant Islam’s power does reside in several nation states. Those power centers are, all too obviously, Iran and the Saudi Entity. Hammes needs to think outside of the box. If the United States took off the gloves and decided to end these two loathsome regimes, their lifespan could be counted in days. We could utilize the British model and simply install “our sonofabitch” after the rubble settles. In this context a study of British Imperial methods of suppressing insurgents would be very helpful. The problem that Hammes doesn’t discuss is that the United States, and the West in general, has elected to fight the enemy on his own terms due to an altruism of purpose and a refusal to do whatever is necessary to defend our nation and way of life (A big part of the problem is that punitive operations are off the table thanks to Just War Theory). The reasons for the cultural and far-reaching moral decay of the West since World War II are not the doing of militant Islam, however Hammes is correct that a major part of their strategy involves using the West’s degeneration: “The ACF [Anti-Coalition Forces] exhibit a keen sense for projecting their message through the media” (Hammes pp. 178).
Hammes has not made his case that the United States is facing a new type of warfare or that winning against our adversary requires a complete new way of thinking about war. Guerrilla wars are long and hard, although this is not always the case. The problem is not that the US military hasn’t adapted. The problem is far more serious, deeply rooted and difficult to address: a lack of political will and moral certitude that the West is worth defending by large numbers of influential people. For example, today (2/12/07) the Reuters news service had a story beginning with the headline: “Bush tries to convince world no plans for Iran war.” The story opens with the following paragraph: “President George W. Bush is trying to convince the world he has no intention of invading Iran, but is running into skeptics who see U.S. charges that Iran is shipping bombs into Iraq as a step towards conflict.” Iran has been in a state of war against the United States since 4 November 1979. The government of Iran is responsible for the deaths of hundreds, if not thousands, of Americans including both military personal and civilians. Iran has issued death threats against those who exercise their right to free speech in Western nations for "blaspheming" Islam. Iran is now actively supporting the terrorists inside of Iraq. It is the West’s appeasement of Islamic nations for the last fifty years that has got us into the present mess. The problem is not military. Hammes is not addressing the root causes of the terrorist success; it is not their access to cell phones or C-4.
The reason we are doing badly in a seemingly unending campaign against Jihad is our leaders’ refusal to identify the enemy and then to destroy his morale along with his ability and desire to continue the struggle. This aspect of war never changes.
Update: 4GW, The Inspector is not buying.
According to the 4GW thesis the first modern generation of warfare reached its climax with the Napoleonic wars. The main characteristics of Napoleonic armies were, “mass production of the reliable, smoothbore musket, development of lightweight artillery,” along with advancements in communications and logistics that allowed European powers the ability to field armies of up to 200,000 men. Hammes states that this process had begun during the period of the Hundred-Years War (Hammes, pp. 17-8). Hammes asserting that a period of four-hundred years (1415-1815) as representing a single “generation” of warfare and providing only two pages of text to supporting this claim is quite a job of compression.
One odd aspect of Hammes’ short discussion on “first generation warfare” is that the thesis of Michael Roberts is omitted. It was Roberts, of course, who presented the thesis that there was a military revolution in Western Europe during the century of 1560-1660. Roberts based his thesis on the changes in European armies that resulted in the increasing use of firearms. The need for well-trained, long service troops resulted in the creation of national armies and the decline of the mercenary forces that were purchased “off the shelf” by those who required military services. Some historians, such as Geoffrey Parker, would push back the date of this military revolution to earlier in the sixteenth-century. This is to include the developments in the Spanish army during this period, particular regarding the developments in northern Italy. Parker argues that during this period musketeers gained an advantage over pikemen, especially when the musketeers were fighting on the defensive from prepared positions.
Jeremy Black, on the other hand, argues that the more fundamental change occurred later during the late seventeenth century. Of basic importance was the increasing size and professionalism of European armies. This period witness the ascendance of siege-craft and a war of position. The view that the best general during the ancien regime was the one who never fought battles may have been based more on economic and political factors than the military realities of limited logistical support. The numerous “generations” of warfare during the period of 1415-1815 would fill volumes including: the advent of firearms and artillery, the increasing marginalization of cavalry, developments in fortification, increasing professionalism of armies, increasing costs, the increase in army size and reach, to name but a few. This does not include spectacular changes in naval power by European powers that led to the West’s absolute control of the world’s oceans.
The obvious problem with Hammes’ thesis as it stands is that he doesn’t seriously address the vast complexity of many concurrent religious, economic, political, social and military revolutions that swept through Europe during these tumultuous four hundred years. One could provide similar criticism of Hammes’ characterizations of each succeeding military revolution that he defines. The term “generation” implies an abrupt change from one type of warfare to another. Antulio J. Echevarria II in his essay “Fourth-Generation War and Other Myths” is also critical of 4GW advocates' thesis that attempts to categorize Western warfare into neat generations: “the generational model is an ineffective way to depict changes in warfare. Simple displacement rarely takes place, significant developments typically occur in parallel."
In the case of Mao and 4GW, Hammes seems to be making just that argument. Mao’s successors did modify his concept of Guerrilla war. However, Hammes’ thesis argues for a rapid change from the maneuver warfare of Blitzkrieg to the sophisticated guerrilla warfare that he argues will dominate twenty-first century war. This focus on guerrilla, or revolutionary, war may skew the analysis on modern warfare. There has been any number of conventional wars between sovereign states since 1945. And it is a sad truth that there is no reason to believe that there won’t be more wars between states; the roots of these potential conflicts are deep throughout the world.
The heart of Hammes’ work is analyzing, and attempting to understand, the ongoing Iraqi campaign in particular and the Jihad War in general. At the beginning of chapter twelve “Iraq: High-Tech versus Fourth-Generation” Hammes quotes Clausewitz on the importance of understanding the nature of the war one is involved with. There is no denying the host of blunders committed by the Bush administration that Hammes cites in chapter twelve. He views the most important mistake in not recognizing the rapidly accelerating insurgency in Iraq that started in the spring of 2003. However, Hammes is as guilty as Bush in a more fundamental mistake: refusing to properly identify the enemy. This enemy is not the terrorist group al-Qaeda, it is the ideology of Islamic hegemony that they represent and which has widespread support and sympathy from hundreds of millions of Moslems around the world.
Whatever Bush’s reasons for toppling Saddam Hussein, he was off target. The center of militant Islam’s power does reside in several nation states. Those power centers are, all too obviously, Iran and the Saudi Entity. Hammes needs to think outside of the box. If the United States took off the gloves and decided to end these two loathsome regimes, their lifespan could be counted in days. We could utilize the British model and simply install “our sonofabitch” after the rubble settles. In this context a study of British Imperial methods of suppressing insurgents would be very helpful. The problem that Hammes doesn’t discuss is that the United States, and the West in general, has elected to fight the enemy on his own terms due to an altruism of purpose and a refusal to do whatever is necessary to defend our nation and way of life (A big part of the problem is that punitive operations are off the table thanks to Just War Theory). The reasons for the cultural and far-reaching moral decay of the West since World War II are not the doing of militant Islam, however Hammes is correct that a major part of their strategy involves using the West’s degeneration: “The ACF [Anti-Coalition Forces] exhibit a keen sense for projecting their message through the media” (Hammes pp. 178).
Hammes has not made his case that the United States is facing a new type of warfare or that winning against our adversary requires a complete new way of thinking about war. Guerrilla wars are long and hard, although this is not always the case. The problem is not that the US military hasn’t adapted. The problem is far more serious, deeply rooted and difficult to address: a lack of political will and moral certitude that the West is worth defending by large numbers of influential people. For example, today (2/12/07) the Reuters news service had a story beginning with the headline: “Bush tries to convince world no plans for Iran war.” The story opens with the following paragraph: “President George W. Bush is trying to convince the world he has no intention of invading Iran, but is running into skeptics who see U.S. charges that Iran is shipping bombs into Iraq as a step towards conflict.” Iran has been in a state of war against the United States since 4 November 1979. The government of Iran is responsible for the deaths of hundreds, if not thousands, of Americans including both military personal and civilians. Iran has issued death threats against those who exercise their right to free speech in Western nations for "blaspheming" Islam. Iran is now actively supporting the terrorists inside of Iraq. It is the West’s appeasement of Islamic nations for the last fifty years that has got us into the present mess. The problem is not military. Hammes is not addressing the root causes of the terrorist success; it is not their access to cell phones or C-4.
The reason we are doing badly in a seemingly unending campaign against Jihad is our leaders’ refusal to identify the enemy and then to destroy his morale along with his ability and desire to continue the struggle. This aspect of war never changes.
Update: 4GW, The Inspector is not buying.
U.S. Grant, Clausewitz and Just War Theory
One of the leading texts, if not the leading one, on Just War Theory is Just and Unjust Wars by Michael Walzer. In the first chapter Walzer uses Carl von Clausewitz as a strawman (along with Thucydides and William T. Sherman) in order to establish a false dichotomy between just war and “realism.” Walzer presents his cartoon version of Clausewitz thus:
Walzer is here committing the blunder of not distinguishing between what Clausewitz understood to be unlimited war in a Napoleonic sense and the later development of total war as conducted during World War II. Walzer also evades the fact that Clausewitz witnessed the Cossacks’ type of “unlimited war” during Napoleon’s retreat from Moscow. Clausewitz judged the Cossacks as nothing but uncivilized barbarians and their actions to be no better than murder.
In Just War Tradition and the Restraint of War, James Turner Johnson provides an interesting discussion on the differences between Civil War generals. For example, there is Johnson’s contention that General Henry Halleck wanted to fight the war using Jominian principles while his subordinate (in the early Western campaigns) U.S. Grant adopted a Clausewitzian approach. Turner is clearly sympathetic to Halleck’s limited approach to war in his description of the Corinth campaign of the spring and summer of 1862. It took Halleck a month to move his army the twenty miles from Shiloh to Corinth. After arriving at the city, a vital rail juncture, Halleck proceeded to lay siege to Beauregard’s Confederate forces defending the city. However, Halleck left open a “golden bridge” for the Confederates to retreat and they did just that. As Johnson states:
This is the only positive review of Halleck’s Corinth campaign ever encountered by this Civil War student. It is difficult to know where to begin with this sort of thing. Perhaps the subsequent battle of Corinth fought on 3-4 October 1862 illustrates the problems of allowing an army to escape and fight another day. If Halleck had pounced upon Beauregard’s battered army and destroyed it after Shiloh he could have then moved immediately upon Vicksburg, perhaps shortening the war.
By misunderstanding Clausewitz, and Grant’s strategy, Turner gets the entire Civil War completely wrong. The war had begun with limited political objectives, to return to the Union “as it was.” However, there developed a synergy between the battlefield, the increasing costs of the war and the upping of the political stakes. It was the political purpose of the Union war effort as defined by Lincoln that led to the type of war that was fought. In order to win the Union had to conquer the South and destroy both its armies and will to resist. When the war become a “Second America Revolution,” a crusade to end slavery the very basis of the South’s social system, the political ante was raised to a level not considered before the guns began firing.
Turner also misunderstands Grant, Lee and their strategy. Turner states: “The emphasis that underlies the strategic approach of Halleck, Lee, Jomini and Frederick the Great is that of counting the costs of war – not just overall, but at every step” [Turner, p. 291]. It is difficult to imagine two military leaders as different as Halleck and Lee. Lee sought decisive battle in order to achieve the destruction of Union forces. His victories were anything but bloodless. Malvern Hill, the Wilderness, Chancellorsville and Gettysburg are examples of Lee’s pursuit of a battle of annihilation. Lee did not seek a war of attrition; it was forced upon him by Grant.
Grant’s strategy for victory was Clausewitzian, although there is no evidence that Grant had studied either Clausewitz or Jomini prior to his being made commander-in-chief of the Union armies. Grant chose his strategy for the simple reason that the previous three years of “limited” warfare in the East had accomplished little besides carnage. In the last few decades Grant’s abilities have been reevaluated by historians:
Clausewitz was no more an advocate of total war than U.S. Grant. It was the political nature of the war and the Union’s adversary that dictated the military nature of the fighting.
Update, 1/15/07: Cubed from Sixth Column as had an excellent article on Just War Theory posted at IBA. Cubed provides the basics on a theory that has helped insure that America will no longer win any war that is in the national interest.
The idea of war carries with it for him [Clausewitz] the idea of limitlessness, whatever actual restraints are observed in this or that society…And there can be no imaginable act of violence, however treacherous or cruel, that falls outside of war, that falls outside of war, that is not war, for the logic of war simply is a steady thrust toward moral extremity [Walzer, p. 23].
Walzer is here committing the blunder of not distinguishing between what Clausewitz understood to be unlimited war in a Napoleonic sense and the later development of total war as conducted during World War II. Walzer also evades the fact that Clausewitz witnessed the Cossacks’ type of “unlimited war” during Napoleon’s retreat from Moscow. Clausewitz judged the Cossacks as nothing but uncivilized barbarians and their actions to be no better than murder.
In Just War Tradition and the Restraint of War, James Turner Johnson provides an interesting discussion on the differences between Civil War generals. For example, there is Johnson’s contention that General Henry Halleck wanted to fight the war using Jominian principles while his subordinate (in the early Western campaigns) U.S. Grant adopted a Clausewitzian approach. Turner is clearly sympathetic to Halleck’s limited approach to war in his description of the Corinth campaign of the spring and summer of 1862. It took Halleck a month to move his army the twenty miles from Shiloh to Corinth. After arriving at the city, a vital rail juncture, Halleck proceeded to lay siege to Beauregard’s Confederate forces defending the city. However, Halleck left open a “golden bridge” for the Confederates to retreat and they did just that. As Johnson states:
Halleck’s principle for limiting war was thus Jomini’s: to outmaneuver the enemy, to outmanage him…The aim of the siege had been achieved: the North now controlled a major railroad junction whose occupation led directly to the fall of Memphis and opened the way to further Union drives farther south, against Vicksburg and New Orleans and eventually against Atlanta and the sea [Johnson, p. 288].
This is the only positive review of Halleck’s Corinth campaign ever encountered by this Civil War student. It is difficult to know where to begin with this sort of thing. Perhaps the subsequent battle of Corinth fought on 3-4 October 1862 illustrates the problems of allowing an army to escape and fight another day. If Halleck had pounced upon Beauregard’s battered army and destroyed it after Shiloh he could have then moved immediately upon Vicksburg, perhaps shortening the war.
By misunderstanding Clausewitz, and Grant’s strategy, Turner gets the entire Civil War completely wrong. The war had begun with limited political objectives, to return to the Union “as it was.” However, there developed a synergy between the battlefield, the increasing costs of the war and the upping of the political stakes. It was the political purpose of the Union war effort as defined by Lincoln that led to the type of war that was fought. In order to win the Union had to conquer the South and destroy both its armies and will to resist. When the war become a “Second America Revolution,” a crusade to end slavery the very basis of the South’s social system, the political ante was raised to a level not considered before the guns began firing.
Turner also misunderstands Grant, Lee and their strategy. Turner states: “The emphasis that underlies the strategic approach of Halleck, Lee, Jomini and Frederick the Great is that of counting the costs of war – not just overall, but at every step” [Turner, p. 291]. It is difficult to imagine two military leaders as different as Halleck and Lee. Lee sought decisive battle in order to achieve the destruction of Union forces. His victories were anything but bloodless. Malvern Hill, the Wilderness, Chancellorsville and Gettysburg are examples of Lee’s pursuit of a battle of annihilation. Lee did not seek a war of attrition; it was forced upon him by Grant.
Grant’s strategy for victory was Clausewitzian, although there is no evidence that Grant had studied either Clausewitz or Jomini prior to his being made commander-in-chief of the Union armies. Grant chose his strategy for the simple reason that the previous three years of “limited” warfare in the East had accomplished little besides carnage. In the last few decades Grant’s abilities have been reevaluated by historians:
Grant’s strength was unwavering adherence to his strategic objective. He treated reverses…as tactical setbacks, not as defeats. And he demonstrated impressive flexibility that belied his popular image as a general who eschewed maneuver in favor of pointless attacks against impregnable earthworks. Mistakes were made, but the overall pattern of Grant’s campaign was that of an innovative general employing thoughtful combinations of maneuver and force to bring a difficult adversary to bay [Gordon Rhea, North and South, Nov. 2000, p. 55]
Clausewitz was no more an advocate of total war than U.S. Grant. It was the political nature of the war and the Union’s adversary that dictated the military nature of the fighting.
Update, 1/15/07: Cubed from Sixth Column as had an excellent article on Just War Theory posted at IBA. Cubed provides the basics on a theory that has helped insure that America will no longer win any war that is in the national interest.
Oda Was No Yoda
Oda Nobunaga was ready for his showdown battle with his arch-rivals the Takeda clan from the province of Kai. Takeda Shingen (the Mountain) had been a brilliant and dangerous opponent, but now he was dead and his grandson Katsuyori, young and inexperienced, had made a mistake his grandfather would have never committed: “The old retainers of the family had no confidence in his ability, and the ruin of the house looked imminent.” However, as loyal samurai the Takeda family retainers followed Katsuyori despite their foreboding. Their foreboding was will justified. Katsuyori elected to lead his army out of the Takeda family mountain stronghold and attack Nobunaga’s castle of Nagashino in the late spring of 1575. This attack played directly into Nobunaga whose power was on the rise.
Nagashino was located Mikawa province. Mikawa was located in a strategic location between Mikawa and Totomi provinces and had been taken by from the Takeda by Nobunaga’s ally Tokugawa Ieyasu in 1574. By attacking Nagashino Katsuyori was placing himself in an unenviable position between to military geniuses. The castle itself was placed on a strong location on the heights commanding the confluence of the Takigawa and Onogawa rivers. Katsuyori had already taken the castles of Akechi in Mino province and Takatenjin in Totomi. By his attack on Nagashino he became overextended and left himself open to the predictable counterattacked launched by the powerful alliance he had placed his forces between. Katsuyori opened the campaign by placing Nagashino castle under siege on 19 June 1575 with an army of 15,000 men.
Unfortunately for the Takeda cause the castle was under the command of a young, twenty-four year old, samurai by the name of Okudaira Sadamsa. Okudaira knew his business and despite the best efforts of Katsuyori’s forces held out in the surrounded castle. Katsuyori used every technique in the Japanese book to take the castle. This included mining, the building of siege towers and floating rafts to allow his samurai an approach to the stronghold. All of this was to no avail. The failure of the siege towers was particularly interesting: “the defenders gleefully blasted away at them with heavy caliber muskets.” This was a grim omen for the Takeda: their enemies made better use of gunpowder weapons. And to make the Takeda situation worse the master at the new style of warfare was on his way with an army of relief.
Both Nobunaga and Tokugawa recognized the threat and opportunity posed by Katsuyori’s offensive and quickly moved to relieve Okudaira. When the forces of Nobunaga and Tokugawa combined they had a strength of approximately 30,000 men. The Takeda were not only outnumbered but also still had the castle behind them when they marched to join battle with Nobunaga’s army while leaving a small force to maintain the siege of Nagashino castle. Katsuyori had to cross two rivers to approach his enemies. For his part Nobunaga went onto the tactical defensive in order to allow the superb Takeda cavalry the opportunity to launch a frontal attack upon his position. Included in Nobunaga' army were 3,000 men armed with matchlock muskets. Since this type of firearm took one minute to load, Nobunaga had them fire in volleys. The result on 29 June 1575 was the slaughter of the Takeda attacking force as dramatically depicted in Akira Kurasawa’s masterpiece Kagamusha.
By the time of the battle Nobunaga already understood that the use of muskets was best conducted from prepared positions using the tactical defensive. That firearms gave the tactical defense the advantage (other things being equal) would carry over into the modern era until the advent of armor and airpower. For example, at Gettysburg, and throughout the American Civil War, Confederate general James Longstreet always opposed costly frontal assaults upon Union positions. The debacle of “Pickett’s Charge” bears out this fact that Nobunaga would use to his advantage in the sixteenth century.
Nobunaga chose and prepared his position carefully. He placed his musketeers behind a stream on high ground. Directly in front of his musketeers Nobunaga had a palisade build out of wood. More a rough fence than a barricade its purpose was to slow the attacking Takeda forces down and give the musketeers more time to reload and fire upon the charging enemy. Nobunaga also baited what was to all intents and purposes a clever trap. To the left of the musketeers Nobunaga placed the forces of Sakuma Nobumori as the bait. On both flanks of the palisade Nobunaga placed forces prepared to launch counterattacks. The force on the left was led by Toyotomi Hideyoshi who, of course, learned well the art of war from his master. The trap was set and ready to be sprung; all that was required was an obliging Katsuyori.
Katsuyori took the bait and attacked Nobunaga’s musketeers due to his overconfidence in his offensive arm. One third of Katsuyori’s army was made up of the formidable Takeda cavalry. At the battle of Mikata in 1572 Shingen ordered his cavalry to charge Tokugawa’s center. The result was a devastating defeat for the ally of Nobunaga. On this occasion Tokugawa’s outnumbered musketeers could not stop the Takeda cavalry. After this great victory it appeared that the house of Takeda would triumph against the forces of Nobunaga. The death of Shingen the following year was the best news possible for Nobunaga. Trying to repeat his father’s crowning victory would lead to Takeda downfall and in 1582 to Nobunaga’s acquisition of Katsuyori’s head.
Key to Nobunaga’s success on 29 June was that he had his musketeers deployed in three ranks for volley fire. With three ranks of one thousand musketeers each, Nobunaga’s force could fire a thousands rounds downrange every twenty seconds. Takeda cavalry would never reach their tormentors; instead the flower of Katsuyori’s samurai’s would be killed. Unlike at the battle of Mikata the Takeda cavalry was facing a much better disciplined force. Another problem the Takeda cavalry had was that the wet, marshy ground of the battlefield could not have been worse for a cavalry charge which relies on speed to close with the enemy. This left the cavalry in the open for a lengthy period and sealed their fate. With this signal victory, Nobunaga had secured his eastern flank and could continue consolidated his rule over Japan. Nobunaga would be assassinated on 21 June 1582. However, without missing a beat his best general Toyotomi Hideyoshi would take control of Nobunaga’s realm and complete the unification of a Japan that had been divided for over a hundred years.
Oda Nobunaga was not the most likely candidate to become shogun of Japan. Upon his father’s death in 1551 Nobunaga inherited his domains. The Oda family holdings were in the province of Owari. Of the eight districts that made up Owari province the Oda clan controlled four. Even within these four districts Nobunaga had to fight rival claimants to the family leadership. Therefore, Nobunaga spent the decade of the 1550s consolidating his control over Owari. Nobunaga’s main assets were his own abilities and ruthlessness. Another important factor in Nobunaga’s rise to power was the geographical proximity of Owari province to the capital of Kyoto.
Fortunately for Nobunaga by the end of the decade he had full control over Owari. This was just in time to meet an invasion by the huge army of Imagawa Yoshimoto. Imagawa was the daimyo of Suruga, Totomi, and Mikawa provinces. Imagawa’s purpose was to march through Nobunaga’s domain to Kyoto and have himself declared the new Shogun. Imagawa’s army is estimated to have been around 25,000 men, again illustrating the growth in army size during the Warring States period. Nobunaga as the daimyo of only one district could muster a force of 3,000 warriors. The Oda cause seemed hopeless and some of Nobunaga’s samurai’s recommended surrender or retreat. Nobunaga resolved to fight. The resulting battle of Okehazama would be decided by cunning, deception and a fortuitous rain storm. The overconfident Imagawa was camped in a narrow divide that was a prefect spot for a surprise ambush and Nobunaga accommodated him.
Nobunaga’s victory over his much more powerful neighbor and enemy made him a prominent and important daimyo; prior to the battle Nobunaga had been just another obscure warlord, now he was a rising star to be reckoned with. The battle of Okehazama also had two important and interrelated results both of which greatly favored Nobunaga’s rise to power. The battle provided Nobunaga with some relative security to his east. In part this was related to another result of the battle that was Nobunaga’s alliance with Tokugawa. For most of his childhood Ieyasu Tokugawa had been held hostage by the Imagawa. With Nobunaga’s victory Tokugawa was released from his dependence and he began his concurrent rise with Nobunaga.
Update: Sources:
Mary Elizabeth Berry. Hideyoshi. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1982)
Delmar M. Brown “The Impact of Firearms on Japanese Warfare, 1543-98” in The Far Eastern Quarterly, Vol. 7, No. 3 (May, 1948)
Jeroen P. Lamers. Japonius Tyrannus. (Leiden: Hotei Publishing, 2000)
Stephen Turnbull. The Samurai: A Military History. (London, Routledge, 2002)
Stephen Turnbull. Samurai Invasion: Japan’s Korean War, 1592-1598. (London: Cassell & Co., 2002)
Nagashino was located Mikawa province. Mikawa was located in a strategic location between Mikawa and Totomi provinces and had been taken by from the Takeda by Nobunaga’s ally Tokugawa Ieyasu in 1574. By attacking Nagashino Katsuyori was placing himself in an unenviable position between to military geniuses. The castle itself was placed on a strong location on the heights commanding the confluence of the Takigawa and Onogawa rivers. Katsuyori had already taken the castles of Akechi in Mino province and Takatenjin in Totomi. By his attack on Nagashino he became overextended and left himself open to the predictable counterattacked launched by the powerful alliance he had placed his forces between. Katsuyori opened the campaign by placing Nagashino castle under siege on 19 June 1575 with an army of 15,000 men.
Unfortunately for the Takeda cause the castle was under the command of a young, twenty-four year old, samurai by the name of Okudaira Sadamsa. Okudaira knew his business and despite the best efforts of Katsuyori’s forces held out in the surrounded castle. Katsuyori used every technique in the Japanese book to take the castle. This included mining, the building of siege towers and floating rafts to allow his samurai an approach to the stronghold. All of this was to no avail. The failure of the siege towers was particularly interesting: “the defenders gleefully blasted away at them with heavy caliber muskets.” This was a grim omen for the Takeda: their enemies made better use of gunpowder weapons. And to make the Takeda situation worse the master at the new style of warfare was on his way with an army of relief.
Both Nobunaga and Tokugawa recognized the threat and opportunity posed by Katsuyori’s offensive and quickly moved to relieve Okudaira. When the forces of Nobunaga and Tokugawa combined they had a strength of approximately 30,000 men. The Takeda were not only outnumbered but also still had the castle behind them when they marched to join battle with Nobunaga’s army while leaving a small force to maintain the siege of Nagashino castle. Katsuyori had to cross two rivers to approach his enemies. For his part Nobunaga went onto the tactical defensive in order to allow the superb Takeda cavalry the opportunity to launch a frontal attack upon his position. Included in Nobunaga' army were 3,000 men armed with matchlock muskets. Since this type of firearm took one minute to load, Nobunaga had them fire in volleys. The result on 29 June 1575 was the slaughter of the Takeda attacking force as dramatically depicted in Akira Kurasawa’s masterpiece Kagamusha.
By the time of the battle Nobunaga already understood that the use of muskets was best conducted from prepared positions using the tactical defensive. That firearms gave the tactical defense the advantage (other things being equal) would carry over into the modern era until the advent of armor and airpower. For example, at Gettysburg, and throughout the American Civil War, Confederate general James Longstreet always opposed costly frontal assaults upon Union positions. The debacle of “Pickett’s Charge” bears out this fact that Nobunaga would use to his advantage in the sixteenth century.
Nobunaga chose and prepared his position carefully. He placed his musketeers behind a stream on high ground. Directly in front of his musketeers Nobunaga had a palisade build out of wood. More a rough fence than a barricade its purpose was to slow the attacking Takeda forces down and give the musketeers more time to reload and fire upon the charging enemy. Nobunaga also baited what was to all intents and purposes a clever trap. To the left of the musketeers Nobunaga placed the forces of Sakuma Nobumori as the bait. On both flanks of the palisade Nobunaga placed forces prepared to launch counterattacks. The force on the left was led by Toyotomi Hideyoshi who, of course, learned well the art of war from his master. The trap was set and ready to be sprung; all that was required was an obliging Katsuyori.
Katsuyori took the bait and attacked Nobunaga’s musketeers due to his overconfidence in his offensive arm. One third of Katsuyori’s army was made up of the formidable Takeda cavalry. At the battle of Mikata in 1572 Shingen ordered his cavalry to charge Tokugawa’s center. The result was a devastating defeat for the ally of Nobunaga. On this occasion Tokugawa’s outnumbered musketeers could not stop the Takeda cavalry. After this great victory it appeared that the house of Takeda would triumph against the forces of Nobunaga. The death of Shingen the following year was the best news possible for Nobunaga. Trying to repeat his father’s crowning victory would lead to Takeda downfall and in 1582 to Nobunaga’s acquisition of Katsuyori’s head.
Key to Nobunaga’s success on 29 June was that he had his musketeers deployed in three ranks for volley fire. With three ranks of one thousand musketeers each, Nobunaga’s force could fire a thousands rounds downrange every twenty seconds. Takeda cavalry would never reach their tormentors; instead the flower of Katsuyori’s samurai’s would be killed. Unlike at the battle of Mikata the Takeda cavalry was facing a much better disciplined force. Another problem the Takeda cavalry had was that the wet, marshy ground of the battlefield could not have been worse for a cavalry charge which relies on speed to close with the enemy. This left the cavalry in the open for a lengthy period and sealed their fate. With this signal victory, Nobunaga had secured his eastern flank and could continue consolidated his rule over Japan. Nobunaga would be assassinated on 21 June 1582. However, without missing a beat his best general Toyotomi Hideyoshi would take control of Nobunaga’s realm and complete the unification of a Japan that had been divided for over a hundred years.
Oda Nobunaga was not the most likely candidate to become shogun of Japan. Upon his father’s death in 1551 Nobunaga inherited his domains. The Oda family holdings were in the province of Owari. Of the eight districts that made up Owari province the Oda clan controlled four. Even within these four districts Nobunaga had to fight rival claimants to the family leadership. Therefore, Nobunaga spent the decade of the 1550s consolidating his control over Owari. Nobunaga’s main assets were his own abilities and ruthlessness. Another important factor in Nobunaga’s rise to power was the geographical proximity of Owari province to the capital of Kyoto.
Fortunately for Nobunaga by the end of the decade he had full control over Owari. This was just in time to meet an invasion by the huge army of Imagawa Yoshimoto. Imagawa was the daimyo of Suruga, Totomi, and Mikawa provinces. Imagawa’s purpose was to march through Nobunaga’s domain to Kyoto and have himself declared the new Shogun. Imagawa’s army is estimated to have been around 25,000 men, again illustrating the growth in army size during the Warring States period. Nobunaga as the daimyo of only one district could muster a force of 3,000 warriors. The Oda cause seemed hopeless and some of Nobunaga’s samurai’s recommended surrender or retreat. Nobunaga resolved to fight. The resulting battle of Okehazama would be decided by cunning, deception and a fortuitous rain storm. The overconfident Imagawa was camped in a narrow divide that was a prefect spot for a surprise ambush and Nobunaga accommodated him.
Nobunaga’s victory over his much more powerful neighbor and enemy made him a prominent and important daimyo; prior to the battle Nobunaga had been just another obscure warlord, now he was a rising star to be reckoned with. The battle of Okehazama also had two important and interrelated results both of which greatly favored Nobunaga’s rise to power. The battle provided Nobunaga with some relative security to his east. In part this was related to another result of the battle that was Nobunaga’s alliance with Tokugawa. For most of his childhood Ieyasu Tokugawa had been held hostage by the Imagawa. With Nobunaga’s victory Tokugawa was released from his dependence and he began his concurrent rise with Nobunaga.
Update: Sources:
Mary Elizabeth Berry. Hideyoshi. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1982)
Delmar M. Brown “The Impact of Firearms on Japanese Warfare, 1543-98” in The Far Eastern Quarterly, Vol. 7, No. 3 (May, 1948)
Jeroen P. Lamers. Japonius Tyrannus. (Leiden: Hotei Publishing, 2000)
Stephen Turnbull. The Samurai: A Military History. (London, Routledge, 2002)
Stephen Turnbull. Samurai Invasion: Japan’s Korean War, 1592-1598. (London: Cassell & Co., 2002)
300 Spartans versus 10,000 Academics
The motion picture 300 demonstrates the split between Western intellectuals and the public. Released last March, 300 depicts the battle of Thermopylae fought between the Persian host and a handful of Greek hoplites in 480 B.C. The title refers to the 300 Spartans who led the Greeks in this battle and of which all but one were killed. Based on the graphic novel by Frank Miller the movie was immensely popular. According to Variety’s online report (May 2, “Ripple effect of '300' hits Cannes”) 300 was a “runaway success” that is “an extremely good omen” due to its box office success. Worldwide the receipts for 300 are approaching half a billion dollars.
While both movie goers and makers have “nothing but love” for the action epic, the same is not true for many reviewers and intellectuals. For example, Variety’s review of March 9 by Todd McCarthy compares the film to gay porn and to Gerald Butler’s Leonidas as a “blowhard.” Dana Stevens writing for Slate online compared 300 to the notorious Nazi propaganda piece The Eternal Jew. Stevens described the movie as a “race-baiting fantasy and nationalist myth” that was an “incitement to total war.”
It is the theme of 300 that has the critics hostile not its style. In the opening voice-over that sets the stage for the movie’s action, the narrator states that Greece was the “world’s last hope for reason and justice.” 300’s epilogue dramatizes the battle of Plataea where the combined hoplites of the Greek city states defeated the remnants of the Persian army. Before the battle a Spartan hoplite steps forward and declares: “today we rescue the world from mysticism and tyranny.” For a popular action movie to base its theme on the connection between mysticism and tyranny and that reason is the source of justice and freedom is truly amazing. It is for 300’s unapologetic view that Greek (Western) culture was/is superior to Persian (middle-Eastern) culture that has the intellectuals angered.
One of 300’s most interesting reviews was penned by Mustafa Akyol for the Turkish Daily News: “300: Orientalism for Beginners.” Akyol characterizes the film as “a crude Orientalism and a thinly veiled fascism.” By “Orientalism” Akyol makes clear his agreement with the thesis of Edward Said’s hugely influential book of that title. According to Akyol, and Said, it is this Western portrayal of the Islamic world as “irrational, absurd and stagnant” that is responsible for the hostility between East and West. Said stated the problem as the unenlightened Western masses refusal to follow their academic superiors:
The important point, however, is that a largely unexamined but serious rift has opened in the public consciousness between the old ideas of Western hegemony (of which the system of Orientalism was a part) on the one hand, and newer ideas that have taken hold among subaltern and disadvantaged communities and among a wide sector of intellectuals, academics, and artist, on the other. (p. 348)
The “intellectual affairs” writer for Inside Higher Education, Scott McLemee, although admitting to never having viewed the film, described those who did as “young, impressionable, historically clueless viewers.” McLemee chose to title his non-review "A Fresh Triumph of the Will" indicating his opinion of those who made 300 a huge box office hit. There is a rift between the public and professional intellectuals particularly in the United States. The fault, however, is with the intellectuals who long ago abandoned the Western values of reason and justice for those of mysticism and tyranny.
In 1983 Prof. Leonard Peikoff gave a lecture at the Ford Hall Forum on “Assault from the Ivory Tower: the Professors’ War Against America.” In his opening statement Prof. Peikoff notes that upon his first arriving in the United States in the 1950s to attend New York University he was struck by his American professors’ hostility to their own country. “I do not know another country in which anti-patriotism has ever been the symbol of an ideology on such a scale.” Prof. Peikoff states his belief that this is caused by the fact that America is an ideology. The Founding Fathers' Enlightenment ideals, based largely on classical Greece and Rome, are “anathema to today’s intellectuals.”
In his discussion of postmodernism the historian Mark T. Gilderhus states that, “as the theory holds, Enlightenment ideas about reason, objectivity, and possibilities of progress have no validity….” (History and Historians, pp. 133-4) It is post modern nihilism that explains why in a conflict between east and west, whether 2500 years ago or today, so many Western intellectuals side with the Other. On a positive note, the fissure between the nation and its intellectuals has become apparent to growing numbers of Americans, hopefully new intellectuals will arise to again enshrine reason and justice as America’s, and the West's, basic values.
The Wrong War?
Review of The Wrong War by Jeffrey Record:
The title of Jeffrey Record’s book comes from a quote by General Omar Bradley in reference to General MacArthur’s view that the Korean War should have been escalated. A general war to remove Mao from power was judged by Bradley as: “The wrong war, at the wrong place, at the wrong time, and with the wrong enemy.” [1] Whether the Chinese would have directly intervened in Vietnam if the United States had fought the war in a more aggressive manner is a very debatable matter. Record notes this himself by reminding his readers that China had pressured the Viet Minh to accept the Geneva settlement of 1954. Record also observes that in 1965 Lin Piao warned Hanoi not to expect direct intervention by Red China in the war. [2] Despite this difference between Korea and Vietnam, Record still considers the latter to be “The Wrong War” for America’s Cold War strategy of containment.
Record’s thesis is strongest at the geopolitical level. He argues that the security of the Republic of Vietnam was not of vital importance to either American security or the strategy of containment. Record convincingly argues that American leaders did not understand the political dynamic between the Soviet Union, Red China and Hanoi. Instead of viewing the Communists powers as a monolith, American leaders should have sought to “detach” the Communist powers from one another. [3] Indeed, this strategy became the rational for President Nixon’s famous trip to Red China. Although it should be added, that Nixon did not have to sell-out a long time ally of the United States in pursuit of this strategy. It is a fair criticism made by Record, and many others, that the United States over-invested in a peripheral area during the Cold War causing itself a great deal of harm. However, it should also be noted that every president from Eisenhower to Ford of either party judged the Republic of Vietnam’s (RVN) security as a vital matter for the United States. Of course, these leaders had various views on the level of commitment to Vietnam that was merited.
Where Record’s book falls short is on the issue of whether victory was possible for America and her allies in Indo-China once the decision to commit military forces had been made. The worst blunder by American political leaders was not using ground forces to close the Ho Chi Minh Trail. This network of infiltration routes from North Vietnam, through Laos and Cambodia, and into the RVN was established in 1960. “Trail” is a misnomer. In fact, the Trail was an extensive road network capable of moving and supplying modern armor divisions complete with heavy artillery along with oil and gas pipelines. By 1973 the Trail had moved and was supporting sixteen NVA regular and six NVA reserve divisions along the border of Laos and Cambodia. “General Dung [Senior General Van Tien Dung, NVA] described the newly completed roads, trails, and pipelines as ‘endless lengths of sturdy hemp ropes being daily and hourly slipped around the neck and limps of the monster who would be strangled with one sharp yank when the order was given.’” [4] Record claims that it would have not been possible to close the Trail with ground forces. [5] However, since it was never attempted there is no real way of knowing that for a fact. On the other hand, Record does allude that the bombing of the Trail did have an effect of slowing down infiltration. [6] Again, the problem here was the politically inspired “rules-of-engagement” that made victory virtually impossible. It was Washington’s decision to fight an entirely defensive war in the RVN that set the stage for the final debacle.
Record admits that pacification in the South was ultimately successful. However, Record states that the victory against the Viet Cong was largely irrelevant: “The supreme irony is that control of South Vietnam’s rural population made no difference in the war’s outcome. Even a complete elimination of the communist political base in the country would not have deprived Hanoi of a capacity to launch – or afforded the GVN a capacity to resist – the decisive communist conventional invasion of 1975.” [7] Indeed, only the closing of the Trail would have made the RVN defensible. At least Record has the grace to admit that the final defeat of the RVN was not the result of Maoist third-stage guerrilla operations. The final Communist victory was a completely conventional attack predicated on breaking numerous agreements and international law.
Record judges the war unwinnable due to the nature and determination of the Communist enemy in Hanoi. As an example of Communist stamina Record quotes a Viet Minh officer who at Dien Bien Phu stated that to get into position to attack the French his men should: “walk across the bodies of our men.” [8] This quote could just as easily demonstrate Communist contempt for human life. Given the great loss of life sustained during Hanoi’s twenty years of unprovoked aggression (1955-1975 and beyond) the Vietnamese Communist leadership could be more accurately judged as pathological in its power lust than merely “tenacious.” The enormity of Communist crimes against the people of Vietnam has been documented. [9] Record characterized RVN president Ngo Dinh Diem as: “Frenchified, dictatorial, mandarin-era-nostalgic, Catholic celibate….” [10] Record’s attacks upon the RVN leadership while ignoring the far greater crimes of the Hanoi Stalinists is disturbing. Record seems almost to admire the leadership of Hanoi whose only demonstrable talents were militarizing an entire society and murdering millions of people.
Record’s chapter “Hollow Client” is an attack upon a strawman. Record quotes Stuart Herrington on the rampant corruption found in the GVN and its armed forces in 1974. [11] However, Herrington notes that the growth of corruption was the result of the severe worldwide economic downturn in 1973 coupled with the drastic decrease in American aid. The result was ARNV soldiers and officers unable to support their families on their pay. In the summer of 1974 a Defense Attache Office (DAO) report found that: “More than 90 percent of the men polled indicated that their pay and allowances were insufficient to meet their family needs for food, clothing, and shelter.” [12] There were cultural differences between the north and the south of Vietnam, but they should not be overemphasized. However, Record develops the theme based on the old slander of: “If a Vietnamese isn’t Red, then he’s yellow.” [13]
The numbers do not bear out the view that the ARVN would not or could not fight. As Herrington noted the ARVN enjoyed many successes in 1973. During the year following the Paris “peace” agreement ARVN suffered 12,000 KIA while inflicting 45,000 KIA on the Communists. During one period in 1974 the RVN was reporting more than 400 combat deaths per week. [14] General Lewis Walt documented the casualties sustained by the armed forces of the RVN as: prior to 1965, 30,000 KIA; 1966, 11,000 KIA; 1967, 12,000 KIA; 1968, 17,000 KIA; 1969, 22,000 KIA. [14]
Shame on Jeffrey Record for calling into question the valor of these men in order to make a political point. As I judge it, ultimately Record’s book is an attempt to justify Congress’s pulling American support from the GVN. Record states his thesis and purpose: “Congressional actions, however, simply registered the collapse of public willingness to have anything to do with the Vietnamese tar baby.” [16] Record is selling the American people short on this. National honor is important to most of the electorate. In 1972 the RVN was able to stop the Communist attack with the help of American air power. Lacking both this air power and even the ability to resupply and rebuild their depleted units made the military situation of the RVN by 1975 hopeless, and the Vietnamese were well aware of this fact.
Stuart Herrington, who was in the RVN during the last two years of its existence repeatedly notes the importance of American support for both material and psychological reasons: “In Saigon, I sensed that this insecurity had escalated since my departure [in 1972]. It was as if the Saigonese needed to hear someone say, ‘You aren’t alone in this thing. We are with you…’ a disturbing edginess permeated South Vietnamese in all walks of life – an attitude that reflected an acute case of insecurity in the wake of our withdrawal.” [17] RVN leaders understood that their country was on the receiving end of one of the most ignominious betrayals in history. Upon signing the Foreign Assistance Act of 1974, President Ford stated:
As Ambassador Bui Diem stated at the time:
The title of Lewis Sorley’s book “A Better War” is from a quote by New Yorker columnist Robert Shaplen: “You know, it’s too bad. Abrams is very good. He deserves a better war.” Many years after the war someone reminded Abrams’ son who was an active duty officer and instructor at the Command and General Staff College of Shaplen’s quote. Creighton Abrams immediately responded: “He didn’t see it that way. He thought the Vietnamese were worth it.” [20]
While the war may not have been in America’s strategic interests, the casting of aspersions upon the South Vietnamese can not justify the American betrayal of an ally and its reneging on agreed upon obligations.
1. Jeffrey Record. The Wrong War (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1998) 184
2. Record, 13-14
3. Record, 15-16
4. Stuart A. Herrington. Peace with Honor? (Novato: Presidio Press, 1983) 109
5. Record, 176-7
6. Record, 110-111
7. Record, 95
8. Record, 29
9. Jean-Louis Margolin “Vietnam and Laos: The Impasse of War Communism” in The Black Book of Communism, ed. Stephane Courtois (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001) 565-576
10. Record, 124
11. Record, 132-133
12. Herrington, 42; 103-105
13. Record, 133
14. Herrington, 100;114
15. Lewis Walt. Strange War, Strange Strategy (New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 1970) 91
16. Record, 56
17. Herrington, 13; 24-25
18. http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/print.php?pid=4660
19. Lewis Sorley. A Better War (New York: Harcourt Brace & Co., 1999) 368
20. Sorley, 388
The title of Jeffrey Record’s book comes from a quote by General Omar Bradley in reference to General MacArthur’s view that the Korean War should have been escalated. A general war to remove Mao from power was judged by Bradley as: “The wrong war, at the wrong place, at the wrong time, and with the wrong enemy.” [1] Whether the Chinese would have directly intervened in Vietnam if the United States had fought the war in a more aggressive manner is a very debatable matter. Record notes this himself by reminding his readers that China had pressured the Viet Minh to accept the Geneva settlement of 1954. Record also observes that in 1965 Lin Piao warned Hanoi not to expect direct intervention by Red China in the war. [2] Despite this difference between Korea and Vietnam, Record still considers the latter to be “The Wrong War” for America’s Cold War strategy of containment.
Record’s thesis is strongest at the geopolitical level. He argues that the security of the Republic of Vietnam was not of vital importance to either American security or the strategy of containment. Record convincingly argues that American leaders did not understand the political dynamic between the Soviet Union, Red China and Hanoi. Instead of viewing the Communists powers as a monolith, American leaders should have sought to “detach” the Communist powers from one another. [3] Indeed, this strategy became the rational for President Nixon’s famous trip to Red China. Although it should be added, that Nixon did not have to sell-out a long time ally of the United States in pursuit of this strategy. It is a fair criticism made by Record, and many others, that the United States over-invested in a peripheral area during the Cold War causing itself a great deal of harm. However, it should also be noted that every president from Eisenhower to Ford of either party judged the Republic of Vietnam’s (RVN) security as a vital matter for the United States. Of course, these leaders had various views on the level of commitment to Vietnam that was merited.
Where Record’s book falls short is on the issue of whether victory was possible for America and her allies in Indo-China once the decision to commit military forces had been made. The worst blunder by American political leaders was not using ground forces to close the Ho Chi Minh Trail. This network of infiltration routes from North Vietnam, through Laos and Cambodia, and into the RVN was established in 1960. “Trail” is a misnomer. In fact, the Trail was an extensive road network capable of moving and supplying modern armor divisions complete with heavy artillery along with oil and gas pipelines. By 1973 the Trail had moved and was supporting sixteen NVA regular and six NVA reserve divisions along the border of Laos and Cambodia. “General Dung [Senior General Van Tien Dung, NVA] described the newly completed roads, trails, and pipelines as ‘endless lengths of sturdy hemp ropes being daily and hourly slipped around the neck and limps of the monster who would be strangled with one sharp yank when the order was given.’” [4] Record claims that it would have not been possible to close the Trail with ground forces. [5] However, since it was never attempted there is no real way of knowing that for a fact. On the other hand, Record does allude that the bombing of the Trail did have an effect of slowing down infiltration. [6] Again, the problem here was the politically inspired “rules-of-engagement” that made victory virtually impossible. It was Washington’s decision to fight an entirely defensive war in the RVN that set the stage for the final debacle.
Record admits that pacification in the South was ultimately successful. However, Record states that the victory against the Viet Cong was largely irrelevant: “The supreme irony is that control of South Vietnam’s rural population made no difference in the war’s outcome. Even a complete elimination of the communist political base in the country would not have deprived Hanoi of a capacity to launch – or afforded the GVN a capacity to resist – the decisive communist conventional invasion of 1975.” [7] Indeed, only the closing of the Trail would have made the RVN defensible. At least Record has the grace to admit that the final defeat of the RVN was not the result of Maoist third-stage guerrilla operations. The final Communist victory was a completely conventional attack predicated on breaking numerous agreements and international law.
Record judges the war unwinnable due to the nature and determination of the Communist enemy in Hanoi. As an example of Communist stamina Record quotes a Viet Minh officer who at Dien Bien Phu stated that to get into position to attack the French his men should: “walk across the bodies of our men.” [8] This quote could just as easily demonstrate Communist contempt for human life. Given the great loss of life sustained during Hanoi’s twenty years of unprovoked aggression (1955-1975 and beyond) the Vietnamese Communist leadership could be more accurately judged as pathological in its power lust than merely “tenacious.” The enormity of Communist crimes against the people of Vietnam has been documented. [9] Record characterized RVN president Ngo Dinh Diem as: “Frenchified, dictatorial, mandarin-era-nostalgic, Catholic celibate….” [10] Record’s attacks upon the RVN leadership while ignoring the far greater crimes of the Hanoi Stalinists is disturbing. Record seems almost to admire the leadership of Hanoi whose only demonstrable talents were militarizing an entire society and murdering millions of people.
Record’s chapter “Hollow Client” is an attack upon a strawman. Record quotes Stuart Herrington on the rampant corruption found in the GVN and its armed forces in 1974. [11] However, Herrington notes that the growth of corruption was the result of the severe worldwide economic downturn in 1973 coupled with the drastic decrease in American aid. The result was ARNV soldiers and officers unable to support their families on their pay. In the summer of 1974 a Defense Attache Office (DAO) report found that: “More than 90 percent of the men polled indicated that their pay and allowances were insufficient to meet their family needs for food, clothing, and shelter.” [12] There were cultural differences between the north and the south of Vietnam, but they should not be overemphasized. However, Record develops the theme based on the old slander of: “If a Vietnamese isn’t Red, then he’s yellow.” [13]
The numbers do not bear out the view that the ARVN would not or could not fight. As Herrington noted the ARVN enjoyed many successes in 1973. During the year following the Paris “peace” agreement ARVN suffered 12,000 KIA while inflicting 45,000 KIA on the Communists. During one period in 1974 the RVN was reporting more than 400 combat deaths per week. [14] General Lewis Walt documented the casualties sustained by the armed forces of the RVN as: prior to 1965, 30,000 KIA; 1966, 11,000 KIA; 1967, 12,000 KIA; 1968, 17,000 KIA; 1969, 22,000 KIA. [14]
Shame on Jeffrey Record for calling into question the valor of these men in order to make a political point. As I judge it, ultimately Record’s book is an attempt to justify Congress’s pulling American support from the GVN. Record states his thesis and purpose: “Congressional actions, however, simply registered the collapse of public willingness to have anything to do with the Vietnamese tar baby.” [16] Record is selling the American people short on this. National honor is important to most of the electorate. In 1972 the RVN was able to stop the Communist attack with the help of American air power. Lacking both this air power and even the ability to resupply and rebuild their depleted units made the military situation of the RVN by 1975 hopeless, and the Vietnamese were well aware of this fact.
Stuart Herrington, who was in the RVN during the last two years of its existence repeatedly notes the importance of American support for both material and psychological reasons: “In Saigon, I sensed that this insecurity had escalated since my departure [in 1972]. It was as if the Saigonese needed to hear someone say, ‘You aren’t alone in this thing. We are with you…’ a disturbing edginess permeated South Vietnamese in all walks of life – an attitude that reflected an acute case of insecurity in the wake of our withdrawal.” [17] RVN leaders understood that their country was on the receiving end of one of the most ignominious betrayals in history. Upon signing the Foreign Assistance Act of 1974, President Ford stated:
“In South Vietnam, we have consistently sought to assure the right of the Vietnamese people to determine their own futures free from enemy interference. It would be tragic indeed if we endangered, or even lost, the progress we have achieved by failing to provide the relatively modest but crucial aid which is so badly needed there.” [18]
As Ambassador Bui Diem stated at the time:
“The manner in which the United States took its leave was more than a mistake. It was an act unworthy of a great power…The United States fought long and hard in Vietnam, and if in the end circumstances required that it withdrawal, it may be considered a tragedy but hardly an act of shame. The same can not be said, however, for the manipulation and callous manner with which the American administration and the American Congress dealt with South Vietnam during the last years of the war.” [19]
The title of Lewis Sorley’s book “A Better War” is from a quote by New Yorker columnist Robert Shaplen: “You know, it’s too bad. Abrams is very good. He deserves a better war.” Many years after the war someone reminded Abrams’ son who was an active duty officer and instructor at the Command and General Staff College of Shaplen’s quote. Creighton Abrams immediately responded: “He didn’t see it that way. He thought the Vietnamese were worth it.” [20]
While the war may not have been in America’s strategic interests, the casting of aspersions upon the South Vietnamese can not justify the American betrayal of an ally and its reneging on agreed upon obligations.
1. Jeffrey Record. The Wrong War (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1998) 184
2. Record, 13-14
3. Record, 15-16
4. Stuart A. Herrington. Peace with Honor? (Novato: Presidio Press, 1983) 109
5. Record, 176-7
6. Record, 110-111
7. Record, 95
8. Record, 29
9. Jean-Louis Margolin “Vietnam and Laos: The Impasse of War Communism” in The Black Book of Communism, ed. Stephane Courtois (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001) 565-576
10. Record, 124
11. Record, 132-133
12. Herrington, 42; 103-105
13. Record, 133
14. Herrington, 100;114
15. Lewis Walt. Strange War, Strange Strategy (New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 1970) 91
16. Record, 56
17. Herrington, 13; 24-25
18. http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/print.php?pid=4660
19. Lewis Sorley. A Better War (New York: Harcourt Brace & Co., 1999) 368
20. Sorley, 388
John Dower's War
Two days after the surrender, twenty truck-loads of flour, rolled oats, canned goods, and rice arrived at the Yokosuka municipal office as relief supplies for the local people. The next day eleven more trucks appeared with medical supplies, blankets, tea, and other goods. Mayor Umezu, completely overwhelmed by this unexpected generosity, expressed his deep appreciation. Simultaneously, American soldiers on patrol or sightseeing in trucks and jeeps circulated throughout the occupied areas. Amused by the Japanese children, they handed out chocolate bars, hard tack, chewing gum, and candy drops. [1]Thus began the most benevolent, enlightened and successful occupations and exercises in state building in history. One problem that Americans have is their focus on what people say and to ignore what people do. This is particularly true when what people say differs from their actions. John Dower in his article “Race, Language, and War in Two Cultures: World War II in Asia,” documents the racist rhetoric directed at the Japanese utilized by both the American media and American combat soldiers. For example, he notes the American Marines who landed on Iwo Jima with “’Rodent Exterminator’” stenciled on their helmets,” and the extensive use of the hunting metaphor for battle by American soldiers. [2] Dower also notes that in the movies Bataan and Guadalcanal Diary, American soldiers and Marines refer to the enemy as “monkeys.” [3] Dower also documents Japanese racism in the article, but he oozes moral equivalence, particularly in the conclusion; both sides were racist and had much room to improve.
In his study of American and Japanese racism, Dower does not present a case on how these attitudes affected the behavior and military policies of the belligerents; nor does he provide the type of analysis that would be required to demonstrate whether these views were representative of the entire culture. Not far from Yokosuka the Ofuna prisoner of war camp had been liberated a few days before the relief trucks rolled into Mayor Umezu’s town. The commander of Task Force 30.6, Commodore Rodger W. Simspon, radioed Admiral William Halsey the following message on 30 August 1945:
There has never been a blacker hellhole than the POW hospital we are now evacuating one-half mile north of mooring. Approximately 500 have now (30 August) been processed to Benevolence [hospital ship] including fracture, open wounds, concussion, burns and in general the worst malnutrition imaginable. Bestial beatings were common especially at Ofuna, inquisitorial den of brutism. [4]
A comparison of the treatment of POWs by Japan and the United States illustrates not so much racial hostility as very different cultures and the value those cultures placed on human life. John Lynn notes this vast difference in his description of events at Marpi Point on Saipan where Japanese civilians were forced to commit suicide by Japanese soldiers. [5] The Japanese military leadership preferred that Japanese civilians die rather than surrender to American troops. On Okinawa and on the home islands the Japanese leadership had no compunction about integrating civilians into the military defense establishment. This and the fact that the Japanese military "encouraged" Okinawian civilians to commit suicide is still an emotional issue both there and in Japan. [6] Despite the fire bombings and the A-bomb attacks, one can make the case that the American enemy had a higher regard for the lives of Japanese civilians than the Japanese government.
As noted above, Dower mentions the example of Marines having racial graffiti on their helmets as an example of the racist motivations of American military personal. According to John Dower in the Battle of Iwo Jima the United States suffered approximately 6800 hundred killed and around 20000 wounded. The Japanese garrison of 22000 was almost completely wiped out. However, Dower takes exception with the contemporary journalist who headlined a story in reference to the Japanese fanatical zeal to die for the Emperor as “These Nips are Nuts.” Dower does not mention whether he thinks Japanese behavior was something other than “nuts.” [7] He deplores the harsh rhetoric of Americans and concludes that it was the cause of American total war strategy; Japanese death worship is written off as a cultural affectation that had no bearing on the American military response.
Even on the issue of how deeply rooted or representative was American racial hostility towards the Japanese is something Dower generally ignores. Not long after the war ended the same Hollywood that produced Bataan and Guadalcanal Diary, whose message of hating the enemy in time of total war Dower so deplores, was producing Go For Broke (1951, starring Van Johnson) and Bad Day at Black Rock (1955, director John Sturges; starring Spencer Tracy). The interesting thing is not so much the racial animosity that occured in time of total war that the Japanese chose to fight with no quarter, but the speed with which the racial hostility dissipated. On this issue, Dower reminds me of a criticism that was leveled at the authors of the history standards of the Goals 2000 education initiative: “The authors seem surprised by all that was commonplace, and take for granted all that was rare.” [8]
One inmate of Ofuna was well known both during the war and after. Colonel Gregory Boyington in his autobiography, “Baa Baa Black Sheep,” described in detail his experiences as a POW from the time he was shot down over Rabaul on 3 January 1944. Boyington, whatever his other personal faults, never harbored any hatred, much less racial animosity towards the Japanese:
“Whenever people ask me today about the Japanese, I rather suppose I am expected to hate them, all of them, and largely because of what was done to us captives there in the camp of Ofuna.” [9]
Boyington notes that he owed his life to an older Japanese lady who treated him well and looked the other way when he pilfered and smuggled food.
Another veteran whose experiences and actions are not consistent with Dower’s thesis, and who therefore must be forgotten, is Jacob DeShazer. Cpl. DeShazer was the bombardier of the sixteenth and last B-25 to take off the USS Hornet on 18 April 1942. DeShazer and the rest of the aircraft’s crew bailed out over what they hoped was Chinese held territory. They were wrong. They were captured and two of the five crewmen, Lt. William Farrow and Sgt. Harold Spatz, were executed by the Japanese. Although he suffered greatly while a guest of the Emperor, Cpl. DeShazer experienced a religious conversion while a POW. After the war he received his degree at Seattle Pacific University and returned to Japan to pursue missionary work. As DeShazer stated long after the war and years living in Japan: “’My love for the Japanese people was deep and sincere,’ says DeShazer. ‘I know that it came from God.’ And it was mutual.” [10]
In the opening paragraph of his article, John Dower wrote: “The hypocrisy of fighting a war with a segregated army and navy under the banner of freedom, democracy, and justice never was frankly acknowledged and now is all but forgotten.” [11] To make such a statement in 1996 requires a special animus towards the United States. As with his concluding remarks in the opening paragraph, Dower attempts to draw a moral equivalence between American racist rhetoric and Japan’s murderous actions that were responsible not only for the war but also its ferocity.
1. Reports of General MacArthur: MacArthur in Japan: The Occupation: Military Phase, Volume I, Supplement. (Washington D.C.: Office of the Chief of Military History, 1994). 49
2. John Dower “Race, Language, and War in Two Cultures” in The War in American Culture, Lewis A. Erenberg and Susan E. Hirsch. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996). 175, 173
3. Dower, 176
4. Reports of General MacArthur, 100; http://www.history.navy.mil/photos/events/wwii-pac/japansur/js-6f2.htm; http://www.ussyorktown.com/yorktown/pow.htm
5. John Lynn. Battle: A History of Combat and Culture. (Boulder: Westview Press, 2004). 279-80
6. Justin McCurry, "Told to commit suicide, survivors now face elimination from history" BBC. 6 July 2007. http://education.guardian.co.uk/schoolsworldwide/story/0,,2120220,00.html
7. John Dower, “Lessons from Iwo Jima,” in Perspectives (September, 2007) http://www.historians.org/Perspectives/issues/2007/0709/0709med2.cfm
8. Walter A. McDougall “Whose History? Whose Standard?” Commentary (May, 1995) 41
9. Gregory Boyington. Baa Baa Black Sheep. (New York: Bantam Books, 1977) 270-1
10. Clint Kelly “Flight Into Eternity,” Response Vol. 26, No. 6 (Spring 2004) http://www.spu.edu/depts/uc/response/spring2k4/eternity.html
Also, http://www.doolittleraider.com/raiders/deshazer.htm
11. Dower, 169
