Why War is Stupid
Oct. 21st, 2004 09:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mtvessel08 Jul 2004
The Hinge Factor - Erik Durschmied - Coronet 1999
* * * * *
In my third and fourth year at secondary school, every Tuesday after lessons, we had CCF (Combined Cadet Force). I hated every minute of it. The pointless square-bashing, the licence for older boys to bully younger ones, the ridiculous obsession with shiny boots and straight seams in trousers. The experience left me with a life-long allergy to military uniforms and a tendency to pacifism. I strongly suspect that Erik Durschmied, a veteran Austrian-born war correspondent, also has a pacifist streak and certainly his book makes the strongest possible case against the use of war to solve political problems.
The sub-title, "how chance and stupidity have changed history", really says it all. We are taught to believe that wars are won by a combination of clever tactics and acts of individual heroism, but as Durschmied shows with sixteen examples from the Trojan War to the first Gulf War, in many cases the outcome is determined by which side has the least cretinously stupid leaders or the least blind bad luck. There is often one single event in a battle that determines who wins - a dumb decision, a vital resource missing at the wrong moment - and this is the Hinge Factor.
The book is a goldmine for lovers of obscure military trivia (except that it turns out not to be trivial). Did you know that the Battle of Waterloo was won by the British because Delort's cavalry, having overrun the British artillery, lacked a handful of nails to put the guns out of action? Or that the British invasion of German East Africa in 1914 was repulsed by a swarm of angry bees? Or that the evacuation of Dunkirk, that symbol of heroism and British spirit, was only made possible because Hitler overruled all his tacticians and generals on the ground and ordered his Panzer divisions to stop before they reached the channel ports? Even the allied success in the first Gulf War depended on the synchronised destruction of two radar listening posts. If one had managed to get a warning to the other, Saddam's command network would not have been knocked out and the battle would have gone very differently (as it was, 192 allied troops and over one hundred thousand - one hundred thousand - Iraqi troops were killed).
You would think that sixteen stories all essentially making the same point would get dull, but Durschmied's writing style, with liberal use of reported dialogue, keeps you reading. Unlike Sun-tzu, Durschmied never loses the human element, using telling statistics and dramatic descriptions to remind us constantly that war is, ultimately, about mostly undeserving people getting killed, often for the most stupid and random of reasons. The navigator of the Enola Gay chose the target he did because the others were obscured by clouds. Nuclear hell was visited on the people of Hiroshima because it was a sunny day.
As this book forcibly reminds us, the destruction and death of war is frequently random, its horrors exacerbated by human stupidity and cruelty. The obvious conclusion is that only an evil idiot would ever consider war as a legitimate way to conduct international diplomacy, rather than as an act of last ditch desperation when all else has failed. I wish someone had given Tony and Dubya this book a year and a half ago.
The Hinge Factor - Erik Durschmied - Coronet 1999
* * * * *
In my third and fourth year at secondary school, every Tuesday after lessons, we had CCF (Combined Cadet Force). I hated every minute of it. The pointless square-bashing, the licence for older boys to bully younger ones, the ridiculous obsession with shiny boots and straight seams in trousers. The experience left me with a life-long allergy to military uniforms and a tendency to pacifism. I strongly suspect that Erik Durschmied, a veteran Austrian-born war correspondent, also has a pacifist streak and certainly his book makes the strongest possible case against the use of war to solve political problems.
The sub-title, "how chance and stupidity have changed history", really says it all. We are taught to believe that wars are won by a combination of clever tactics and acts of individual heroism, but as Durschmied shows with sixteen examples from the Trojan War to the first Gulf War, in many cases the outcome is determined by which side has the least cretinously stupid leaders or the least blind bad luck. There is often one single event in a battle that determines who wins - a dumb decision, a vital resource missing at the wrong moment - and this is the Hinge Factor.
The book is a goldmine for lovers of obscure military trivia (except that it turns out not to be trivial). Did you know that the Battle of Waterloo was won by the British because Delort's cavalry, having overrun the British artillery, lacked a handful of nails to put the guns out of action? Or that the British invasion of German East Africa in 1914 was repulsed by a swarm of angry bees? Or that the evacuation of Dunkirk, that symbol of heroism and British spirit, was only made possible because Hitler overruled all his tacticians and generals on the ground and ordered his Panzer divisions to stop before they reached the channel ports? Even the allied success in the first Gulf War depended on the synchronised destruction of two radar listening posts. If one had managed to get a warning to the other, Saddam's command network would not have been knocked out and the battle would have gone very differently (as it was, 192 allied troops and over one hundred thousand - one hundred thousand - Iraqi troops were killed).
You would think that sixteen stories all essentially making the same point would get dull, but Durschmied's writing style, with liberal use of reported dialogue, keeps you reading. Unlike Sun-tzu, Durschmied never loses the human element, using telling statistics and dramatic descriptions to remind us constantly that war is, ultimately, about mostly undeserving people getting killed, often for the most stupid and random of reasons. The navigator of the Enola Gay chose the target he did because the others were obscured by clouds. Nuclear hell was visited on the people of Hiroshima because it was a sunny day.
As this book forcibly reminds us, the destruction and death of war is frequently random, its horrors exacerbated by human stupidity and cruelty. The obvious conclusion is that only an evil idiot would ever consider war as a legitimate way to conduct international diplomacy, rather than as an act of last ditch desperation when all else has failed. I wish someone had given Tony and Dubya this book a year and a half ago.