THE SHIELD OF ACHILLES

by Bobbitt, Philip

  4. The Punic Wars, for example, fit this pattern: although the participants thought, more than once, that hostilities had ended, and significant periods without fighting did occur, historians came to view the various Carthaginian wars as engagements in a single war because the peace settlements failed to resolve the conflicts over which the wars were fought.

  5. Geoffrey Parker, The Thirty Years' War (Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1984); see also C. V. Wedgwood, The Thirty Years' War (J. Cape, 1938); P. Limm, The Thirty Years' War (1984); and J. H. Elliott, Richelieu and Olivares (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1984).

  6. P. Brightwell, “Spanish Origins of the Thirty Years' War,” European Studies Review (1979).

  7. Parker, The Thirty Years' War, xiv.

  8. Supra, n. 2.

  9. Egon Friedell, A Cultural History of the Modern Age, trans. Charles Francis Atkinson (Knopf, 1930 – 1932), 15.

  10. Kenneth Fowler, The Age of Plantagenet and Valois (Putnam, 1967), 13.

  11. Anne Curry, The Hundred Years War (London: Macmillan, 1983).

  12. Hunter R. Rawlings III, The Structure of Thucydides' History (Princeton University Press, 1981); Simon Hornblower, Thucydides (Duckworth, 1987).

  CHAPTER TWO: THE STRUGGLE BEGUN: FASCISM, COMMUNISM, PARLIAMENTARIANISM, 1914 – 1919

  1. Kurt F. Reinhardt, Germany 2000 Years, rev. ed., Vol. I, The Rise and Fall of the “Holy Empire” (Frederick Ungar, 1961).

  2. “It is usual, in analysing the constitution of 1871, to emphasize its federal character, pointing out that it betrays in every paragraph the conflicts of a thousand years of German history. But the reality is otherwise. The federal rights… were illusory….Prussia had sufficient votes to veto constitutional changes, but more important was the fact that the Chancellor was under no necessity of consulting the council on any question of major political importance….The system contrived in 1871 included a Reichstag elected by universal and equal franchise; but its powers were nugatory…. [I]t had no power of voting or refusing to vote taxes… since imperial revenue was provided partly from permanent fixed duties, partly by pro rata contributions from the individual federal states….Finally, the Reichstag had no control over executive ministers, who were responsible only to the Prussian king who was also German emperor…. The German labour leader, Wilhelm Liebknecht, was therefore not wide of the mark in dubbing the Reichstag ‘the fig-leaf of absolutism‘; the system of government established in 1871 was, in fact, a veiled form of the monarchical absolutism vested in the king of Prussia.” Geoffrey Barraclough, Factors in German History (B. Blackwell, 1946). It is important to note, in the debate as to whether Wilhelmine Germany was a proto-fascist state, that while many parliamentary nation-states allowed for the suspension of constitutional provisions in an emergency, the Kaiserrech and Nazi Germany permitted the chancellor to remain in office and to rule by decree even when he had lost his parliamentary majority.

  3. Barraclough, Factors in German History, 116.

  4. Fritz Fischer, Germany's Aims in the First World War (Norton, 1967). This is the English translation of his Griff nach der Weltmacht (Droste, 1961); Fritz Fischer, World Power or Decline: The Controversy over Germany's Aims in the First World War, trans. Lancelot Farrar, Robert Kimber, and Rita Kimber (Norton, 1974); Fritz Fischer, War of Illusions: German Policies from 1911 to 1914, trans. Marian Jackson (Norton, 1975); see Krieg der Illusionem (1969).

  5. “Analysis of the origins of the First World War has therefore been profoundly influenced by the ‘Fischer revolution.’” Norman Stowe, Europe Transformed, 1878 – 1919 (Harvard University Press, 1984), 196, comments that “Not many historians nowadays dissent from the proposition that the German government, egged on by its generals, deliberately provoked the war of 1914.” John Moses, The Politics of Illusion (George Prior, 1975), 48, says that “Even Fischer's most persistent opponents such as Gerhard Ritter (1888 – 1967) and Golo Mann, for example, were forced to agree with him that Imperial Germany's policies unleashed the war; however, they imputed to Germany's leaders defensive rather than offensive motives.” “As Fischer has forcefully stated, ‘there is not a single document in the world which could weaken the central truth that in July 1914 a will to war existed solely and alone on the German side and that all arrangements on the side of the Entente served the defensive security of their alliance. And that will to war had been crystallising for many years previously.’” Some historians, while not disputing this, emphasize the opportunistic nature of German policy. “James Joll, The Origins of the First World War (Longman, 1984), 235, feels that by December 1912 German rulers had ‘accepted war as inevitable' but were concerned to wage it at the most opportune time.” Ruth Henig, The Origins of the First World War (Routledge, 1989; reprinted 1991), 43.

  6. For the current status of the Fischer controversy, compare Bernd-Jurgen Wendt, “Zum Stand der ‘Fischer-Kontroverse' um den Ausbruch des ersten Weltkrieges,” Annales Universitatis Scientarium Budapestinensis de Rolando Eotvos Nominatae: Section Historica 24 (1985): 92 – 132 (concluding that Fischer's theses regarding the Riezler papers, the role of Bethmann Hollweg, and the continuity of German policies leading to both world wars remain unrefuted) with Wayne C. Thompson, “The September Program: Reflections on the Evidence,” Central European History 11 (1978): 348 – 354 (arguing that the Riezler paper was only “a provisional catalog of possible war aims drawn up for negotiating purposes”).

  7. See Roger Fletcher, introduction to Fischer, Kaiserreich to Third Reich: Elements of Continuity in German History, 1871 – 1945 (Allen & Unwin, 1986; reprinted Routledge, 1991).

  8. Ian Kershaw, “1933: Continuity or Break in German History?” History Today 33 (1983): 13 – 18.

  9. Fletcher, Introduction to Fischer, 10.

  10. Edward Acton, State and Society under Lenin and Stalin, in Themes in Modern European History, 1890 – 1945, ed. Paul Hayes (London: Routledge, 1992).

  11. Ibid., 156 – 157.

  12. William G. Rosenberg, “Russian Labor and Bolshevik Power after October,” Slavic Review (1985): 222 – 223.

  13. Condoleezza Rice, “The Making of Soviet Strategy,” Makers of Modern Strategy: From Machiavelli to the Nuclear Age, ed. Peter Paret (Princeton University Press, 1986), 648.

  14. “A variety of motives lay behind this support: ideological commitment, patriotism… The rhetoric of class warfare in terms of which the [Five-Year] Plan was implemented struck a responsive chord. It promised a return to the heroic tradition of October and the Civil War, an attack on Bourgeois deformities, on NEP-men, kulaks and privileged members of the intelligentsia.” Edward Acton, “State and Society under Lenin and Stalin,” in Themes of Modern European History, 1890 – 1945 (Routledge, 1992), 162-163. Note the similarity between this rhetoric and the Nazi attacks on Weimar society.

  15. Rosenberg, 164 – 165.

  16. Eugene Genovese, “The Squandered Century,” Current (July – August 1995): 36.

  17. Henig, The Origins of the First World War, 14.

  18. Vladimir I. Lenin, Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism (International, 1988 [1916]).

  CHAPTER THREE: THE STRUGGLE CONTINUED: 1919 – 1945

  1. In Mein Kampf Hitler gave such an account. Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf (F. Eher Nachf 1941).

  2. Paul Hayes, “The Triumph of Caesarism: Fascism and Nazism,” in Themes in Modern European History 1890 – 1945, ed. Paul Hayes (Routledge, 1992), 176.

  3. Fritz Fischer, From Kaiserreich to Third Reich (Allen & Unwin, 1986), 97; the interior quotes are from his work cited as n. 122 in that book.

  4. Alan Bullock, Hitler: A Study in Tyranny (Bantam Books, 1958).

  5. David E. Kaiser, Economic Diplomacy and the Origins of the Second World War (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980).

  6. A.J.P. Taylor, Origins of the Second World War (Hamilton, 1961).

  7. William L. Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1960).

  8. See, for example, T
he Origins of the Second World War Reconsidered: The A.J.P. Taylor Debate after Twenty-five Years, ed. Gordon Martel (Allen & Unwin: 1986); and Paths to War: New Essays on the Origins of the Second World War, ed. Robert Boyce and Esmonde M. Robertson (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1989).

  9. “The march on Rome [was in fact] a mere symbol of a triumph of political intrigue, though in order to satisfy both the squadristi and the need for a myth, it was depicted as a real and important event involving the violent seizure of power.” Hayes, 177 – 178.

  10. May 1924 (6.5%); December 1924 (3%); May 1928 (2.6%); September 1930 (18.3%); July 1932 (37.3%); November 1932 (33.1%). Richard F. Hamilton, Who Voted for Hitler? (Princeton University Press, 1982), 476.

  11. Jacek Jedruch, Constitutions, Elections, and Legislatures of Poland, 1493 – 1977: A Guide to Their History (University Press of America, 1982); Rett R. Ludwikowski and William F. Fox, Jr., The Beginning of the Constitutional Era (Catholic University of America Press, 1993); Timothy Wiles, ed., Poland between the Wars, 1918 – 1939 (Indiana University Polish Studies Center, 1989); Jan Karski, The Great Powers & Poland, 1919 – 1945: From Versailles to Yalta (University Press of America, 1985).

  12. Kenneth B. Pyle, The Making of Modern Japan, 2nd ed. (D. C. Heath, 1996), 78, 87, 122 – 124.

  13. Ibid., 116 – 117.

  14. Ibid., 125 – 138.

  15. Bernard Eccleston, “The State and Modernization in Japan,” in The Rise of the Modern State, ed. James Anderson (Brighton, Sussex: Harvester Press, 1986), 204.

  16. For example, with the Peace Preservation Law of 1925.

  17. James B. Crowley, Japan's Quest for Autonomy (Princeton University Press, 1966), 116 – 121. For an opposing view, see Richard Storry, A History of Modern Japan (Pen-uin Books, 1960), 186 – 187.

  18. “Teikoku Zaigo Gunjinkai Sanjunenshi,” in Richard J. Smethurst, The Social Basis for Japanese Militarism (dissertation, University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, 1968), 22.

  19. Diane Shaver Clements, Yalta (Oxford University Press, 1970); Richard F. Fenno, The Yalta Conference (Heath, 1955); Edward R. Stettinius, Roosevelt and the Russians: The Yalta Conference (New York: Doubleday, 1949).

  CHAPTER FOUR: THE STRUGGLE ENDED: 1945 – 1990

  1. W.S. Churchill, Speech at Fulton, Missouri, March 5, 1946.

  2. H. S. Truman, Address to the U.S. Congress, March 12, 1947.

  3. G. M. Malenkov, September 22, 1947, quoted in Edgar Geoffrey Rayner, The Cold War (Hodder & Stoughton, 1992), 17.

  4. NSC 68: United States Objectives and Programs for National Security, April 14, 1950, reprinted in American Cold War Strategy: Interpreting NSC 68, ed. Ernest May (Bedford Books, 1993), 32; see also Philip Bobbitt, Lawrence Freedman, and Gregory F. Treverton, eds. U.S. Nuclear Strategy: A Reader (New York University Press, 1989).

  5. David N. Schwartz, NATO's Nuclear Dilemmas (Brookings Institution, 1983), chapters 1 and 2; Jane E. Stromseth, The Origins of Flexible Response: NATO's Debate over Strategy in the 1960s (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1988).

  6. See statement by Arthur Henderson, British Secretary for Air, May 11, 1949.

  7. Known as Jiang Jieshi in later transliterations of Chinese nomenclature.

  8. N. S. Khrushchev, Khrushchev Remembers, ed. Strobe Talbott (Boston: Little, Brown, 1971).

  9. This assessment was first broached by a senior Chinese diplomat in conversations with the author.

  10. Although the circumstance of Nagy's judicial murder remain uncertain, the best recent scholarship can be found in György Litván, “A Nagy Imre per politikai háttere,” Vilá-gosság, vol. 10, 1992, 743 – 57; and János M. Rainer, “Nagy Imre életútia,” Multunk, vol. 4, 1992, 3 – 14.

  11. Letter of President Eisenhower to Marshal Bulganin, November 5, 1956.

  12. Kai Bird, The Color of Truth (Simon & Schuster, 1998), 203 – 206.

  13. This doubled U.S. forces in Germany. In the 1950s allied forces levels in Germany were between 240,000 and 250,000. During the “flexible response” period of the mid to late sixties, force levels were just over 200,000. See Horst Menderhausen, “Troop Stationing in Germany: Value and Cost, Memorandum 588 – 1 PR” (Santa Monica: RAND, 1968), 8; and James D. Hessman, “U.S. Forces in Europe,” Armed Forces Journal (July 11, 1970): 20.

  14. See the Soviet Reply to Western Notes on Berlin, August 3, 1961.

  15. N. S. Khrushchev, television broadcast, August 7, 1961. See also Lawrence Freedman, Kennedy's Wars: Berlin, Cuba, Laos and Vietnam (Oxford, 2000), 45 – 111.

  16. Khrushchev Remembers, 460. This report invites skepticism in light of Khrushchev's antipathy toward Mao. See, e.g., pp. 461– 479, discussing Mao Zedong and the schism.

  17. Bobbitt, Democracy and Deterrence, 201 – 202.

  18. In English as “… without firing a single shot” and “… without having to fire a single shot” in Khrushchev Remembers, 460 and 504, respectively.

  19. Frederick the Great wrote in his 1747 Instructions for His Generals: “The greatest secret of war and the masterpiece of a skillful general is to starve his enemy. Hunger exhausts men more surely than courage, and you will succeed with less risk than by fighting. But since it is very rare that a war is ended by the capture of a depot and matters are only decided by great battles, it is necessary to use all these means to attain this object… War is decided only by battles and is not finished except by them. Thus they have to be fought, but it should be opportunely and with all the advantages on your side… The occasions that can be procured are when you cut the enemy off from his supplies and when you use favourable terrain.” Reproduced in The Roots of Strategy: A Collection of Military Classics, ed. T. R. Phillips (Military Service, 1955), 173, 213.

  20. Donald Kagan, On the Origins of War and the Preservation of Peace (New York: Doubleday, 1995).

  21. “Son of Late Soviet Premier to Become U.S. Citizen,” Agence France-Presse, July 11, 1999.

  22. Charles Bohlen, memo to Secretary of State, April 5, 1950, Foreign Relations of the United States 1(1950), 222.

  23. See the views of McGeorge Bundy in this regard, as reported (with some skepticism) in Kai Bird, The Color of Truth: McGeorge Bundy and William Bundy, Brothers in Arms (Simon & Schuster, 1998), 354, citing Department of State Bulletin, February 5, 1968 (speech by Bundy).

  24. Speaking at the Ninth Party Congress of the Chinese Communist Party in Beijing, April 1, 1965. Quoted in E. G. Rayner, The Cold War (1992), 63 – 64.

  25. Compare Thomas Risse-Kappen, “Ideas Do Not Float Freely: Transnational Coalitions, Domestic Structures, and the End of the Cold War,” International Organization 48 (Spring 1994): 185.

  26. Vladimir Tismaneanu, Reinventing Politics: Eastern Europe from Stalin to Havel (New York: Free Press, 1992).

  27. Michael Howard, “Hardship, Famine, and Fear,” The Financial Times, May 6/7, 1995.

  28. Eric Hobsbawm, The Age of Extremes: A History of the World, 1914 – 1991 (Pantheon Books, 1991), 12.

  29. Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man (New York: Free Press, 1992).

  30. Richard Kugler, Commitment to Purpose: How Alliance Partnership Won the Cold War (Santa Monica: RAND, 1993).

  31. G. Craig and F. Gilbert, “Strategy in the Present and Future,” in Makers of Modern Strategy, ed. Peter Paret (Princeton University Press, 1986), 870 – 871. This might also be applied with justice to the “limitations determined by political considerations”—though much criticized—applied by the U.S. in the Viet Nam War.

  32. Carl von Clausewitz, On War, ed. and trans. Michael Howard and Peter Paret (Princeton University Press, 1976 [1832]), 87.

  CHAPTER FIVE: STRATEGY AND THE CONSTITUTIONAL ORDER

  1. Michael Roberts, The Military Revolution 1556 – 1660 (1956), reprinted with slight changes in Michael Roberts, Essays in Swedish History (University of Minnesota Press, 1967), 195 – 225.

  2. Sir George Clark, War and Society in the Seventeenth Century (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1958).


  3. See, for example, Karen Rasler and William Thomson, “War Making and State Making and Governmental Expenditures, Tax Reviews and Global War,” American Political Science Review 49 (1985): 491 – 507; Michael Mann, States, War, and Capitalism (Basil Blackwell, 1988); John Brewer, The Sinews of Power (Unwin Hyman, 1989); Niall Ferguson, The Cash Nexus: Money and Power in the Modern World, 1700 – 2000 (Basic Books, 2001).

  4. Parker, The Military Revolution, 2–3.

  5. See also William McNeill, The Pursuit of Power (University of Chicago Press, 1982).

  6. Geoffrey Parker, “The ‘Military Revolution,’ 1560 – 1660—A Myth?,” Journal of Modern History 46 (1976).

  7. Jeremy Black, European Warfare, 1660 – 1815 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994).