John Keegan fans & military buffs

Cafe Society
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I know there are a lot of history and military buffs here, a lot of military veterans, and a lot of people who’ve enjoyed John Keegan’s books.

I found out today he is defence editor of the London Daily Telegraph and I could search his name at the telegraph website http://news.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?view=HOME&grid=P2&menuId=-1&menuItemId=-1&_requestid=562373 and find a lot of articles written by him.

This may be well worth following during the current military action.

For those of you browsing who’ve never heard of him, Keegan is a military historian who teaches at Sandhurst military college, which would be the British equivalent of West Point. He’s written a lot of outstanding best selling books on military history. I think the most outstanding thing about his writing is his clear perception and devotion to the human factor in warfare, a departure from the usual cold military histories.

In my newspaper today (but I didn’t see it on the Telegraph website) is a terrific article by Keegan titled “Tactics Differ in Clash of Cultures”. Keegan says this “is not to stereotype Islamic nationalities as devious or underhanded…nor is it to stereotype Islam in its military manifestation” but it is based on “the fact of military history”.

He compares “settled people” who “farm and manufacture” with fixed borders, to nomads of the “desert and empty places”.

He compares “quite distinctively different ways of making war”. The western tradition and style is “fight face to face, in standup battle, and go on until one side or the other gives in…the crudest weapons available and use them with appalling violence, but observe what, to non-Westerners, may well seem curious rules of honour” Keegan references the “citizens of the Greek city states who fought to defend the strictly defined borders of their small political units.”

“Orientals, by contrast, shrink from pitched battle, which they often deride as a sort of game, preferring ambush, surprise, treachery and deceit as the best way to overcome an enemy.” Keegan discusses horse-riding raiders, the raid and surprise attack, and says that “the Oriental tradition” appeared on September 11, 2001 “in an absolutely traditional form…Arabs, appearing suddenly out of empty space like their desert raider ancestors, assaulted the heartlands of Western Power, in a terrifying surprise raid and did appalling damage.” They expect to “destabilize their opponents, allowing them to win further victories by horrifying outrages at a later stage.”

The appropriate Western response is “not to take fright but to marshal their forces, to launch massive retaliation and to persist relentlessly until the raiders have either been eliminated or so cowed by the violence inflicted that they relapse into inactivity.” Keegan says “It is no good pretending that peoples of the desert and the empty spaces exist on the same level of civilization as those who farm and manufacture. They do not. Their attitude to the West has always been that it is a world ripe for the picking.”

Definitely a distinct lack of political correctness in this writing but IMHO brilliant stuff from a serious academic and good luck to you searching out the full article. Maybe it’ll show up at the Telegraph’s website. Google is your friend.

I gotta go cook my turkey today for Canadian Thanksgiving. Best wishes to you all (make that all y’all). I have a lot to be thankful for and I’m sure you do too.

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Happy Thanksgiving, Al.

I’m a big fan of Keegan’s work, and I think he above all other military historians of today he takes into account the underlying factors which make up the field: geography, culture, psychology, and many others. Keegan’s characterization of the Chechens as “warrior mountain people” is especially valuable in comparison to Afghanistan. Unfortunately, I’ve never been able to find that particular article online.

In a way, I’m happy to see that Keegan, too, is righteously pissed. He above all others knows that the Western way of war is most effective when used in heavy, persistent doses. The implications of that use are far more sobering than I care to contemplate on a Monday afternoon.

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Keegan is normally a fine writer and I am no fan of political correctness, but his use of “Oriental” made me cringe. Not only does the antique usage made him sound like a product of the Victorian age, it also gives the unfortunate impression that all “Oriental” cultures fight the same way, including the Chinese and Japanese (and perhaps the French and the Germans too, located as they are to the east of Sandhurst.) Perhaps the terms “nomadic” or “pastoralist” would been more appropriate.

His cultural radar seems to be malfunctioning as well. The terrorists do not see the West as “a world ripe for the picking” as the Mongols did. They are revolted by the West’s ripeness. These are holy warriors, not raiders, and this will affect their strategy. (Possibly to the West’s advantage. Warriors who are happy to die in battle may give you a temporary tactical edge, but as you deplete your reserves the tactical edge becomes a strategic disadvantage. He who fights and runs away…)

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Keegan is one of the best of the current crop of military historians. One thing that is refreshing about him is that he is very pointed about never having been a soldier and never having been in combat. He more than makes up for this (if it is indeed a fault) by talking to and listening to soldiers and combat veterans.

If I have any difficulty with him, and certainly some people might, it is that he has a tendency to write the way I think he probably talks, with huge long run on sentences filled with subordinate clauses and occasional small sky rocket set of with commas, that simply lead the reader into blind canyons that are interesting but don’t have a lot to do with the thought he seem to be trying to put across. (That was a very poor attempt to parody Keegan’s writing style.) Any number of times I have actually had to diagram one of his sentences to try to figure out where he is going. There are times that his prose is about as dense as the tax code.

He can be moving when he wants to be. Keegan, John and Richard Holmes, Soldiers, a History of Men in Battle, Viking, 1986, is in places as touching and insightful as, for instance, Ernie Pile’s “The Dead Captain” piece.