[inteldump] Phillip Carter: "The road to hell was paved with good intentions"

[Email subscription to blog articles]

Posted by Phillip Carter:
"The road to hell was paved with good intentions"
http://inteldump.powerblogs.com/archives/archive_2007_02_04-2007_02_10.shtml#1170806286


   This week's New Yorker carries an interesting review about a new book
   titled "[1]The First Total War: Napoleonâs Europe and the Birth of
   Warfare As We Know It", by Prof. David Bell, a historian at Johns
   Hopkins. In addition to providing us with a compelling history of
   Napoleonic warfare, [2]Adam Gopnik writes in his review that Prof.
   Bell offers something much more substantial in his history: an
   explanation for the rise of modern war as we know it today.
   [3]The First Total War, by David Bell 

     The modern practice of total war, Bell argues, was driven by the
     Enlightenment dream of total peace. Before the modern period, wars
     were just part of life, like taxes and sickness. Every country
     fought them and was expected to fight themâthey were a necessary
     sign of aristocratic virtue among the officers who led themâbut
     they were fought largely along established lines, and among
     soldiers who were, like Renaissance mercenaries, more devoted to
     the profession than to any cause. Bell draws entertaining pictures
     of the improbable dandywarriors of the eighteenth century, from the
     Duke of Cumberland, who took a hundred and forty-five tons of
     baggage into battle with him, to the Duc de Richelieu, who helped
     defeat Cumberland in the battle of Fontenoy, but who was mostly
     âfamous for his primping, using so much perfume that fellow
     courtiers claimed that they could detect his fragrance on people
     who had done no more than sit in a chair he had occupied hours
     earlier.â
     Into this often bloody but still limited and cautious warfare came,
     alas, the intellectuals. The French philosophes of the
     Enlightenment began to see war not as one of those things which
     happen but as one of those things which must be forbidden. (âWar,
     like murder, will one day number among those extraordinary
     atrocities which revolt and shame nature, and drape opprobrium over
     the countries and centuries whose annals they sully,â the Marquis
     de Condorcet wrote, while Diderot and dâAlembertâs Encyclopédie
     assured readers that the body politic âis only healthyâthat is to
     say, in its natural stateâwhen it is at peace.â) Bell traces the
     spread of this view that war was unnatural, and that a new era of
     permanent peace was about to dawn. Of course, once the philosophes
     had dreamed of an end to war, the fact that war hadnât ended could
     mean only that someone was keeping it from ending. The vexing
     remnant of the old-fashioned had to be swept away. Through the
     one-last-time exertions of total war, total peace would arrive at
     last.
     And so, Bell arguesâusing a reverse spin familiar to all readers of
     Foucault and company -- from the germ of Enlightenment idealism
     springs modern horror. Instead of limited battles, we have entire
     nations swept up together in ideological or nationalist crusades:
     the long line of misery that led to "the war to end all wars," "the
     decisive ideological struggle of our time," and so on, each
     designed to use maximum violence to end violence in the world, with
     predictable results. Wars to end all wars give way to wars that
     never end. Bellâs book details how this grim logic worked out in
     its original form in Republican and then Imperial France. First,
     waves of volunteers, often armed only with pikes, came together to
     defend the Revolution, and then, in a history that stretches from
     Grande Levée to Grande Armée, the popular mob-armies evolved into
     Napoleonâs conscripted troops. The new-model French Army swept
     through Europe, country by country, fighting a new kind of warfare,
     one that depended on rapid movement and, crucially, on the
     concentrated manpower (and firepower) that those enormous numbers
     allowed. And so it went. The road to hell was paved with good
     intentions because the people doing the paving thought they had
     found a shortcut straight to heaven.

   It's an interesting argument, and one worth considering. Gopnik
   distinguishes Bell's history from others such as John Keegan's classic
   "[4]A History of Warfare" and Sir Rupert Smith's new work "[5]The
   Utility of Force". My own sense is that there is some connection
   between the political philosophies which lead us to war and the ways
   that we actually wage war. When a war is framed in apocalyptic or
   existential terms, its means will eventually conform to fit those
   ends. Invoking such dire circumstances seems to reduce people's
   aversion to carnage, and make them more willing to endure sacrifice
   (or deal it out to others). The precise contours of this relationship
   are unclear, but it's important enough to warrant further thought and
   study, so I look forward to reading Prof. Bell's book.

References

   1. http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0618349650?ie=UTF8&tag=inteldump-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0618349650
   2. http://www.newyorker.com/critics/books/articles/070212crbo_books_gopnik
   3. http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0618349650?ie=UTF8&tag=inteldump-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0618349650
   4. http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0736627774?ie=UTF8&tag=inteldump-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0736627774
   5. http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0307265625?ie=UTF8&tag=inteldump-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0307265625