Why the West has Won

A Californian scholar surveys warfare over two and a half millenia, from the battle of Salamis to the Tet offensive in Vietnam. He concludes that victory in war is most likely to lie with the side that most prizes individuals. Free societies, he thinks, contain a cultural ingredient which makes them superior to despotisms. Besides Salamis and Tet, he discusses seven other battles: Gaugamela, Cannae, Poitiers (Charles Martel's victory, not the Black Prince's), Tenochtitlan, Lepanto, Rorke's Drift and Midway. Dozens of asides make clear that his knowledge of military history is much wider. For each battle, he summarizes its strategic weight as well as going into a gruesome mass of tactical detail; assesses the impact of ground and weather; and sums up the results. He has many telling phrases, such as this : 'the garrison at Rorke's Drift proved to be the most dangerous hundred men in the world.' He lays stress on just those features of battle that get left out by most strategic analysts: he discusses in detail the impact of weapons on flesh, and leaves his readers in no doubt about what a shocking business war has to be. Shock, in fact, is what the 'Western' fighting man is most eager to impose on his enemy. He begins each chapter with an extract from a classical Greek author, and maintains that the Greeks and Romans in turn developed the concept of the citizen soldier, who has a say in how and why he is to endanger himself for his community. He insists, as Aristotle did, that war is a normal way of life for mankind, gloomy though the prospects of modern war with modern weaponry have become. He is sounder on tactics and on armament than he is on political theory. This is a most thought-provoking book, of lasting interest and value. (Kirkus UK)