Why Don't We Learn From History? (10 page)

Economic factors also helped. The custom of releasing prisoners in exchange for a ransom may have depended more on a profit motive than on a sense of chivalrous behavior, but was essentially good sense—it worked for good. At first it applied only to those who could afford to pay a ransom. But the habit grew, as habits do, and gave rise to a general custom of sparing the lives of the defeated. That was an immense step forward.

This increasing habit of limitation was aided by the spread of mercenary soldiers—that is, professional soldiers. First, these came to realize the mutual benefit of restraint in dealing with one another. Then their employers came to realize the mutual benefit of curbing their tendency to plunder the civilian population on either side.

Unhappily, a severe setback came from the Wars of Religion, which arose from the Reformation. The split in the Church broke up its moral authority, while turning it from a restraining influence into an impelling agent. It heated the fires of hatred and inflamed the passions of war. The climax of this period was the Thirty Years' War, when more than half the population of the German states perished, directly or indirectly, from the war.

Yet the savagery of such warfare was not so great as it had been in the Dark Ages. Moreover, this excess of violence produced a widespread revulsion—which, in turn, led to a great advance, greater than ever before. To proceed to extremes in war might be logical, but it was not reasonable.

Another important influence was the growth of more formal and courteous manners in social life. This code of manners spread into the field of international relations. These two factors, reason and manners, saved civilization when it was on the verge of collapse. Men came to feel that behavior mattered more than belief, and customs more than creeds, in making earthly life tolerable and human relations workable.

The improvement made during the eighteenth century in the customs of war, and in reducing its evils, forms one of the great achievements of civilization. It opened up a prospect that the progressive limitation of war, by formalization, might lead to its elimination. The improvement was helped by the fact that there was no radical change in the means of warfare during this period. For experience suggests that an increase of savagery in warfare is apt to follow new developments—technical or political—which unsettle the existing order.

The bad effect of a big political change was shown at the end of the eighteenth century, when the code of limitations on violence in war was broken down by the French Revolution. But the wars of the French Revolution never, at their worst, became so terrible as the religious wars of the seventeenth century. And the restoration of civilization was helped by the wise moderation of the peace terms imposed on France after the fall of Napoleon—thanks largely to England's influence, as represented by Wellington and Castlereagh. The best testimony to it was that half a century passed before there was another serious war in Europe.

The nineteenth century saw, on the whole, a continuance of the trend toward humane limitations in warfare. This was registered in the Geneva conventions of 1864 and 1906, which dealt mainly with the protection of the wounded, and the Hague conventions of 1899 and 1907, which covered a wider field.

Civil wars have tended toward the worst excesses and the nineteenth century saw a significant extension of such conflicts.

The American Civil War was the first in which the railway, the steamship, and telegraphy were important factors, and these new instruments had revolutionary effects on strategy. Another important change came from the growth of population and the trend toward centralization—both being the products of a growing industrialization. The sum effect was to increase the economic target, and also the moral target, while making both more vulnerable. This in turn increased the incentive to strike at the sources of the opponent's armed power instead of striking at its shield—the armed forces.

This was the first war between modern democracies, and Sherman saw very clearly that the resisting power of a democracy depends even more on the strength of the people's will than on the strength of its armies. His strategy was ably fitted to fulfill the primary aim of his grand strategy. His unchecked march through the heart of the South, destroying its resources, was the most effective way to create and spread a sense of helplessness that would undermine the will to continue the war.

The havoc that Sherman's march produced in the opponent's back areas left a legacy of bitterness in later years that has recoiled on Sherman's historical reputation. But it is questionable whether that bitterness or the impoverishment of the South would have been prolonged, or grave, if the peace settlement had not been dominated by the vindictiveness of the Northern extremists who gained the upper hand after Lincoln's assassination. For Sherman himself bore in mind the need of moderation in making peace. That was shown in the generous terms of the agreement he drafted for the surrender of Johnston's army—an offer for which he was violently denounced by the Government in Washington. Moreover, he persistently pressed the importance, for the future of the forcibly reunited nation, of reconciling the conquered section by good treatment and helping its recovery.

The humane progress of war was now to be endangered by three factors. One was the survival of conscription. Another was the growth of a new theory of war which embodied all the most dangerous features of revolutionary and Napoleonic practice. That theory was evolved in Prussia—by Clausewitz. Pursuing logic to the extreme, he argued that moderation had no place in war: “War is an act of violence pursued to the utmost.” As his thinking proceeded he came to realize the fallacy of such logic. Unfortunately, he died before he could revise his writings—and his disciples remembered only his extreme starting point. A further dangerous factor was also developing—the terrific scientific improvement in the weapons of war.

Under the combined influence of these factors the 1914–1918 war started in a bad way—and went from bad to worse. The ill-effects of the war were deepened by the nature of the peace settlement. Any people whose spirit was not permanently broken would have striven to evade such crippling and humiliating terms. The prospects were made worse by the state of exhaustion and chaos to which Europe was reduced by the time the peace was made and by the general degeneration of standards produced by the years of unlimited violence.

The first effect was seen before World War II began in the more complete organization of the people for the service of the state. The second effect was seen in the more drastic, and often atrocious, treatment of conquered populations during that war.

On the military side, in contrast, the level of behavior was better in a number of respects than in World War I. Even at its worst it never fell back to the pre-eighteenth century level. The armies in general continued to observe many of the rules contained in the established code of war. Indeed, military atrocities seem to have been fewer than in World War I.

Unfortunately, such a gain for civilization was offset by the development of new weapons for which no clear limitations had been though out—and no code of rules established in time. As a result the immense growth of air power led to a sweeping disregard for humane limitations on its action, in carrying out bombardment from the air. This produced an extent of devastation, and in many areas a degradation of living conditions, worse than anything seen since the Thirty Years' War. Indeed, in the destruction of cities, the record of World War II exceeds anything since the campaigns of Genghis Khan and Tamerlane.

“Total warfare,” such as we have known it hitherto, is not compatible with the atomic age. Total warfare implies that the aim, the effort, and the degree of violence are unlimited. An unlimited war waged with atomic power would make worse than nonsense; it would be mutually suicidal. The most likely form of conflict for the next generation is what I call “subversive war.” Otherwise it can only be some other form of “limited” warfare.

The problem of disarmament

“Disarmament” was a late starter in the race, at snail's pace, for international security following World War I. After protracted preliminary discussions the World Disarmament Conference finally assembled at Geneva in 1932. A few months before it opened, Japan had tentatively started on its long course of aggression in the Far East.

In the second year after the end of World War II, there was a revival of the project. Disarmament suddenly came to the fore in the proceedings of the United Nations although there had been no mention of it in the agenda when the General Assembly met in New York in the autumn of 1946.

The revival came in an indirect way, arising out of a Soviet proposal for a census of the troops which each nation was maintaining abroad. This led at first merely to a series of wrangles. But it led on to an unexpected resolution for a general reduction of armaments, and then, surprisingly, to acceptance of international inspection in principle—which had previously been opposed as an infringement of national sovereignty. A partial implementation of this principle was reached in the Kennedy-Khrushchev Test Ban Treaty.

Experience shows that a basic flaw, though not the most obvious one, in any scheme of international security or disarmament has been the difficulty of reconciling the view of the expert advisers. Conferences have repeatedly been spun out by the technical pulls and counterpulls, until the prospect of agreement wore thin and the political temper became frayed. That is hardly surprising.

To take the opinion of generals, admirals, or air marshals on the deeper problems of war, as distinct from its executive technique, is like consulting your local pharmacist about the treatment of a deep-seated disease. However skilled in compounding drugs, it is not their concert to study the causes and consequences of the disease, nor the psychology of the sufferers.

While experience has shown the insecurity of international plans for the prevention of war, earlier experience shows that it is possible to develop an international habit of observing limitations, from a shrewd realization that mutual restraint is beneficial to self-interest in the long run. The more that warfare is “formalized” the less damaging it proves. Past efforts in this direction have had more success than is commonly appreciated.

War between independent states which acknowledge no superior sovereignty has a basic likeness to a fight between individual men. In the process of restricting such murderous fights, the judicial combat of the early Middle Ages served a useful purpose until such time as the authority of the state was wide enough and strong enough to enforce a judgment by law. The formal rules of judicial combat came to be respected long before “individual warfare” was effectively abolished in favor of a judicial decision by legal process. The value of such rules was aptly summed up in Montesquieu's Esprit des Lois, where he remarks that, just as many wise things are conducted in a very foolish manner, so some foolish things have been conducted in a very wise manner.

When the authority of Church and State was shaken by the disruptive conflicts of the later Middle Ages, individual warfare was revived in the guise of dueling. In sixteenth-century Italy, its dangers were curbed by such a multiplication of rules that it faded out—formality gradually producing nullity. Elsewhere, especially in France, the duel had a longer run, but it can be seen that its increasing formalization was an important factor in assisting the efforts of law, reason, and humane feeling to suppress the practice. Even at the worst, the custom of the duel provided a regulated outlet for violent feelings which checked a more rampant revival of individual killing.

In a similar way, the wars between the Italian city-states of the Renaissance period, and the greater ones between the European nation-states of the eighteenth century, not only bore witness to human pugnacity but provided evidence of the possibility of regulating it. They were an outlet for the aggressive instincts and for the types of men who are naturally combative, while keeping their violence within bounds—to the benefit of civilization. Such warfare may have been more of a necessity than idealists would care to recognize, but in limiting the evil they served a better purpose than is generally realized.

The problem of irregular warfare

The prospects for disarmament or for formal restrictions on war have become increasingly complicated by the development of irregular warfare in different forms throughout the world—guerrilla fighting, “subversion,” and “resistance.”

Guerrilla warfare has become a much greater feature in the conflicts of this century than ever before, and only in this century did it come to receive more than slight attention in Western military theory—although armed action by irregular forces often occurred in earlier times. Clausewitz in his monumental work On War devoted one short chapter to the matter, and that came near the end of the thirty chapters of his Book VI, which dealt with the various aspects of “defense.” Treating the subject of “arming the people” as a defensive measure against an invader, he formulated the basic conditions of success, and the limitations, but did not discuss the political problems involved. Nor did he make more than slight reference to the Spanish popular resistance to Napoleon's armies, which was the most striking example of guerrilla action in the wars of his time—and brought the term into military usage.

A wider and more profound treatment of the subject came, a century later, in T. E. Lawrence's Seven Pillars of Wisdom. His masterly formulation of the theory of guerrilla warfare focused on its offensive value and was the product of his combined experience and reflection during the Arab Revolt against the Turks, both as a struggle for independence and as part of the Allied campaign against Turkey. That outlying campaign in the Middle East was the only one in World War I where guerrilla action exerted an important influence. In the European theaters of war it played no significant part.

In World War II, however, guerrilla warfare became so widespread as to be an almost universal feature. It developed in all the European countries that were occupied by the Germans and most of the Far Eastern countries occupied by the Japanese. Its growth can be trade largely to the deep impression that Lawrence had made, especially on Churchill's mind. After the Germans had overrun France in 1940 and left Britain isolated, it became part of Churchill's war policy to utilize guerrilla warfare as a counter-weapon. The success of such Resistance movies varied. The most effective was in Yugoslavia by the Communist Partisans under Tito's leadership.