Top Tens – History: Top 10 Wars (Special Mention: Revised) (4) French Revolutionary & Napoleonic Wars

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Napoleon Crossing the Alps by Jacques-Louis David 1801 (public domain image)

 

(4) FRENCH REVOLUTIONARY & NAPOLEONIC WARS (1789-1815)

 

Cue the La Marseillaise!

The wars that made the modern world – and the modern world wars. Indeed, I’ve seen it persuasively argued that the Napoleonic Wars should outrank the First World War as the more genuinely global conflict. And the French Revolution – along with its subsequent wars – are generally regarded as the landmark of modern political history, hence the god-tier special mention entry.

Napoleon needs little introduction – the Corsican artillery officer who commandeered the French Revolution and crowned himself Emperor of France to dominate Europe.

Napoleon distinguished himself as one of the most brilliant military commanders of history. Under his leadership, the French armies repeatedly defeated numerically superior Austrian, Prussian and Russian armies – outfighting coalition after coalition led and financed by Britain.

The French in the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars were not the cheese-eating surrender monkeys of the modern joke – a somewhat unhistorical slur in any event given France’s military history, although the Book of Lists did rank France among its Top 10 Most Defeated Nations in Modern History – but the armies that forged a French empire across Europe from Spain to Russia and from Italy to Denmark.

But in the end Napoleon lost his Napoleonic wars – his empire dismantled, France completely defeated (once and for all in a battle subsequently commemorated by Abba) and Napoleon himself exiled to progressively more pathetic islands.

Despite his strategic and tactical brilliance, Napoleon was undermined by his own flaws. One basic flaw was his nepotism in handing out kingdoms or nations as prizes to his relatives – most critically in giving the kingdom of Spain to his brother Joseph, which prompted Spain to rise up against France in the Peninsular War, the running sore or “Spanish Ulcer” of Napoleon’s empire

Of course, it didn’t help that Napoleon was relentlessly opposed by the British, who were unparalleled in magnificent bastardry – with their most cunning aspect to pose as being nice, as if they were just going about playing cricket rather than taking out almost every country on earth in the name of empire.

In fighting the world’s greatest maritime power, Napoleon was handicapped by his lack of understanding of naval strategy (or his navy’s lack of ability) as well as geopolitics. It was trying to fight outside Europe (and on the seas) that Napoleon met with his earliest (and most consistent) defeats.

For all his romping around Europe, he effectively was bottled up in Europe by the British navy, unable to project his power into the world. All his victories in Europe did not change the basic fact that true world power had moved from the center of Europe to its edges – to the maritime empire of Britain and the continent-spanning empire of Russia, which ultimately crushed him between them. And in the end, all Napoleon’s wars achieved was handing world empire over not to himself, but to two successive Anglo-Saxon powers, Britain and the United States (the latter not least through the Louisiana Purchase) – the real winners of the Napoleonic Wars.

The Napoleonic Wars also initiated the rise of Germany under Prussia – with Prussia reforming itself militarily, and then, as part of the Congress of Vienna seeking to beef it up for a better balance of power, acquiring industrial regions in Germany that transformed agrarian Prussia into an industrial leader in the nineteenth century.

Of course, Germany was to have the same fatal flaw as that of Napoleon before them, bottled up between Britain and Russia as well as misjudging the extent to which world power had moved beyond Europe. Actually, their situation was even worse, as world power to their west had moved across the Atlantic to the United States, well beyond their reach. Indeed, only twenty years after Waterloo, another Frenchman Alexis de Tocqueville predicted Russia and the United States as the two global powers – a process that visibly took shape during the Napoleonic Wars.

The French Revolutionary Wars and Napoleonic Wars saw the transformation of Europe and the world – spreading revolutionary principles over much of Europe (then identified as liberal with the same distaste as a subsequent era was to identify socialist or communist).

Those principles saw the transformation of formerly aristocratic armies into the beginnings of modern warfare, not least the levee en masse or mass conscription of armies – which saw the French revolutionary army achieve objectives that had eluded the French monarchy for centuries

It also saw the beginnings of total war – with the dawn of industrial warfare (with the Industrial Revolution lending Britain the ability to punch above its demographic weight) and the dawn of ideological warfare, as well as the emergence of nationalism (or “people’s wars”) and militarism in the culture of war

“The wars had profound consequences on global history, including the spread of nationalism and liberalism, the rise of Britain as the world’s foremost naval and economic power, the appearance of independence movements in Latin America and subsequent decline of the Spanish Empire and Portuguese Empire, the fundamental reorganization of German and Italian territories into larger states, and the introduction of radically new methods of conducting warfare.”

To which might have been added other things, such as the relative peace in continental Europe during the nineteenth century, and the territorial expansion of the United States with the Louisiana Purchase. And my own pet theory that the destruction of indigenous nations or peoples in the Americas and Australasia can be traced to Napoleon. Not directly, of course, but indirectly through the Louisiana Purchase, consolidation of British “settlement” in Australia and Latin American revolution or independence, which accelerated the impending destruction of indigenous peoples or nations.

 

RATING: 5 STARS*****

S-TIER (GOD TIER)

Top Tens – History: Top 10 Types of War (Special Mention) (3) Religious Warfare

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Baldwin of Boulogne entering Edessa in 1098 – painting by Joseph-Nicolas Robert-Fleury, 1840 (public domain image)

 

 

(3) RELIGIOUS WARFARE

 

Holy war, jihad and crusade.

Similarly to psychological warfare, all warfare is religious warfare.

Well, not really, although I do see religious warfare as being wider than the term is usually applied – essentially as a subset of the psychological warfare that is ubiquitous throughout warfare. Granted, that subset is more about motivating or mobilizing your own fighting power by increasing cohesion, discipline, morale, resilience or resistance – essentially religion as a force multiplier, although it can extend to eliminating or reducing your enemy’s religion for the same effect in reverse.

As such, it arguably has similar origins in prehistory as psychological warfare in general – perhaps not in wars of religion as we understand them but in beliefs of supernatural assistance or protection in combat.

Religious warfare is usually applied to the sectarian wars fought between or within the world’s largest – and distinctively monotheistic – religions, Christianity and Islam, even if those wars overlap with secular causes.

Note that distinctive monotheism – while religious warfare has been identified or at least argued for other religious traditions, both contemporary and historical, it is commonly seen to have particular force for monotheism, notably in Christianity and Islam but also traced back to the traditions of ancient warfare seen in the Bible.

However, religious warfare is an incredibly complex and contentious subject, worthy of its own top ten (or several) – “The degree to which a war may be considered religious depends on many underlying questions, such as the definition of religion, the definition of ‘war’, and the applicability of religion to war as opposed to other possible factors.”

That extends to the observation I’ve frequently seen that all modern wars are wars of religion – to the extent that they are based on political ideologies that resemble religions – although I think it has an element of truth, particularly when applied to the ideological war of WW2.

The more usual observation by historians or those from similar academic disciplines is that only a small minority of wars are religious wars, although I think that is viewing religious warfare in a narrower sense than I do as a subset of psychological warfare.

 

RATING: 5 STARS*****

S-TIER (GOD TIER – WHAT ELSE?)

Top Tens – History: Top 10 Wars (Special Mention: Revised) (3) American Revolutionary War & American Civil War

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Washington Crossing the Delaware by Emanuel Leutze, 1851 (public domain image)

 

(3) AMERICAN REVOLUTIONARY WAR & AMERICAN CIVIL WAR (1775-1783 & 1861-1865)

 

That’s right – two wars for the price of one in this special mention, the American Revolutionary War (1775-1783) and the American Civil War (1861-1865). Also two wars that could be described as the commencement of modern history – and certainly of the predominant superpower of modern history, the United States.

These two wars earn their special entry mention for a number of reasons – firstly as representative of those categories of war that deserve (and will get) their own top ten (and special mentions), revolutions and civil wars.

Of course, those two categories tend to be overlapping, as revolutions tend to evolve (or devolve) into civil wars – that is, if they don’t start out that way. For that matter, we often forget the American revolution was itself a civil war between British subjects – loyalists and revolutionaries.

And the American Civil War has also been seen as the unfinished business of the American Revolutionary War, with the victor of the American Revolution effectively as the South (or what Gore Vidal called the Virginian junta). Indeed, some have seen both as part of series of Anglo-American civil wars back to the English civil war. Not to mention the American Revolutionary War’s loose sequel, the War of 1812.

However, both are more than representative – each earn top entry in those categories. In large part that’s due to their iconic predominance in American history and therefore in the American popular culture that is to a large extent global popular culture.

But more so because I categorize the American Revolution as the best revolution – firstly, because it succeeded, and secondly that it did not collapse into despotism like other revolutions. Pro tip – revolutions are best when they are limited. The more radical the revolution’s goals – the more it seeks to overturn and upend – the more likely it is to fail, or worse, succeed as despotism. Also – shout-out to the American Revolution’s good fortune in its quality of leadership, particularly Washington (with his only rival in popular American reverence being its Civil War president Lincoln).

Secondly, these two wars also earn their special mention in another category of wars that will get their own Top 10 – American wars. Although in that case I do cheekily profess to rank them by their art of war – and the American Revolutionary War ranks up there with the best American wars in art of war.

In large part, that is because it is almost unique among American wars as the Americans fought it as underdogs, against the largest and most powerful maritime empire in history (of course, that is, apart from their own subsequent modern maritime empire)

And they won it through the tried and true art of war for states weaker than their adversaries (as well as Americans generally in their bigger wars) – having others do the fighting for you. In particular, the French – but also the Spanish and Dutch in what was effectively a world war against Britain.

Not so much the American Civil War of course, which was fought entirely between themselves without foreign allies or intervention – and remains, not coincidentally, the American war with the highest American casualties.

Thirdly and finally, these two wars earn their special mention for their own significant impact in history, military or otherwise.

The American Revolution looms larger here, inspiring as it did the Haitian and Latin American revolutions. And it not only inspired the French revolution, but directly led to it as the French monarchy had bankrupted itself fighting the American revolution – literally two revolutions for the price of one.

The American Revolution also not only saw the United States gain independence from the British maritime empire, but ultimately supplanting it as world power, fuelled by their territorial expansion across the continent that also originated with the American Revolution.

And perhaps Europeans – particularly Germans, who were unified under Bismarck at about the same time – might have paid more attention to the American Civil War as more indicative of the attrition, industrial mobilization and general slog-fest of modern warfare, as opposed to, say outliers like the Franco-Prussian War.

Lest we do too much cheerleading for the American revolution, let’s remember its losers, apart from the British (as well as French and Spanish) monarchy. British loyalists – many of whom fled to Canada or elsewhere. Those native Americans allied with the British or who otherwise sought to thwart the growing United States. And of course slaves and women, as the new American republic deprived both of liberty or representation, uncannily echoing classical Athenian democracy.

 

RATING: 5 STARS*****
S-TIER (GOD-TIER)

Top Tens – History: Top 10 Types of War (Special Mention) (2) Psychological Warfare

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Photographic portrait of Sigmund Freud by Max Halberstadt in 1921 and signed by Freud – probably the most iconic image of Freud (public domain image)

 

 

(2) PSYCHOLOGICAL WARFARE

 

Psywar, psyops, military information support operations, political warfare, hearts and minds, shock and awe, show of force, propaganda, disinformation

All warfare is psychological warfare.

No, seriously.

Yes, I know the term psychological warfare is usually to connote means of targeting an adversary’s morale or collective psyche – whether of their military, civilian population, or political state (or any part or combination of those) – apart from (or adjacent to) the use of military force.

However, war has always used psychological ‘force’  (and ‘space’ or ‘time’) – such as bluff, deception and intimidation for fear and shock – as much as physical force in combat from its very origin in prehistoric or primal warfare (to the extent we can infer it from observations of more contemporary tribal warfare) or even animal intra-species conflict.

After all, it’s best to reduce your enemy’s fighting power by reducing their cohesion, discipline, morale, resilience or resistance (or alternatively increase your own) – and better yet to avoid as much fighting (or as many casualties) as possible by causing them to break altogether into desertion, flight, retreat, rout or surrender (or alternatively mobilize your own forces against such things). In short, defeating the will of your enemy.

There’s Hannibal or the Mongols using deception or subtertuge to give the impression of forces as present or to inflate the apparent size of their forces. There’s the Mongols – quite the practitioners of psychological warfare – using the carrot of leniency and the stick of annihilation to encourage surrender. There’s the use of sirens on German Stuka aircraft in WW2 for their psychological effect (as well as other uses).

Of course, it’s not always about ‘negative’ impact, reducing or breaking your enemy. It can also be about ‘positive impact’, such as enlisting them to you – although that tends to involve the more usual usage of psychological warfare against their civilian populations or political states apart from or adjacent to the use of military force.

“Psychological warfare involves the planned use of propaganda, fear, and manipulation to influence the emotions, attitudes, and behavior of an opposition group, without relying on physical force. Its primary goal is to break an enemy’s will to fight, undermine morale, and cause confusion.”

Tactics of psychological warfare – particularly in the usual sense of not involving military force – include propaganda, disinformation or deception, demoralization and intimidation.

“The term is used to denote any action which is practiced mainly by psychological methods with the aim of evoking a planned psychological reaction in other people” – “various techniques aimed at influencing a target audience’s value system, belief system, emotions, motives, reasoning, or behavior.”

 

RATING:

S-TIER (GOD TIER)

Top Tens – History: Top 10 Wars (Special Mention: Revised) (2) Crusades

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Richard the Lionheart on his way to Jerusalem by James William Glass, 1850 (public domain image)

 

(2) CRUSADES

 

The Crusades – giving religious warfare a bad name for a millennium!

But seriously, the Crusades had everything – not surprisingly, as they took place at the crossroads (heh) of history, three continents and three major world faiths (with almost every variant of sect and some other faiths thrown in).

There’s the Crusades themselves, from which there are a number to choose. Eight or nine of them, counting the more formal crusades identified as such in the Middle East (by subsequent historians), but not counting all the pseudo-crusades or quasi-crusades in the Middle East and elsewhere, as well as weird and generally disastrous spinoffs such as the People’s Crusade or the Children’s Crusade. If you throw in things like the Reconquista of the Iberian peninsula, Northern Crusades, crusades against heretics like the Albigensian or Cathar Crusade – “kill them all and let God sort them out” – and the crusading rhetoric of the Ottoman Wars, then you could easily compile a Top 10 Crusades.

There’s the wider theme of religious warfare, beyond the crusades to other wars, exemplified by wars fought by, between or within monotheistic religions, such as the wars fought as part of the Protestant Reformation. That theme arguably also extends to wars of modern political ideology or moral causes, including religious or ideological terrorism. It’s not without reason Eisenhower called his memoirs of the Second World War “Crusade in Europe”.

And there’s the metaphorical use of crusade – as well as analogous forms of crusading movements – for ideological, moral or social movements, and the paradigm of crusading as a metaphor for military or political campaigns fought for a belief or ideal.

Back to the more formal Crusades in the Middle East, on the European or ‘Western’ side, you have the Roman Empire coming together, in both its major western and eastern successors – the Catholic Church represented by the Pope in Rome answering the call for aid of the eastern Roman empire, which history disguises as the Byzantine Empire but I’ll use here for convenience of nomenclature.

And answer the call they did, most famously with the knights of military orders – with my favorite the Templars or Knights Templar, which became rich and powerful, but ultimately ran afoul of the French monarchy and the Pope. Also worshipping Baphomet if you believe the medieval gossip.

Of course, the Crusaders were styled more as the Holy Roman Empire, or the founders of that empire, the Franks (despite the Franks increasingly being, you know, French) – and indeed Europeans in general continue to be called some derivative of the term Frank throughout Asia even today.

There were also Vikings or rather their adventurous successors, the Normans. And you can throw in those scheming Venetians, who ultimately succeeded in diverting the Fourth Crusade to attack their rival, the Byzantine Empire itself (whose claims to the Holy Land were conveniently forgotten by the Crusaders).

That was to prove one of the most short-sighted schemes of history, fatally wounding the empire that had long stood as the southern bulwark of Europe against Islamic invasion. Do you want Ottomans besieging Vienna? Because that’s how you get Ottomans besieging Vienna. Twice.

And on the ‘Eastern’ side, you have a whole host of Islamic combatants, kicked off by the Seljuk Turks taking most of what is now known as Turkey from the Byzantine Empire (leading to that call for aid that started the whole Crusades), but most famously personified by Saladin (albeit he was of Kurdish ethnicity).

My favorite in the whole Crusades remains the Order of Assassins, who derived their name from the hashish with which their founder Hassan al-Sabbah doped them up and who in turn lent their name to our term for assassins.

Lacking the force for more conventional military campaigns, the Assassins focused on – you guessed it – targeted assassination as they infiltrated everyone, Muslim or Christian, until they were defeated by an enemy that came from too far away to have been infiltrated, the Mongols.

That’s right, the Mongols pop up in the Crusades, as they popped up virtually everywhere at that time. Even more interestingly, the Crusaders and Byzantines sought out the Mongols as allies against the Muslims.

This lent itself to the legend of Prester John, a mysterious Christian sovereign whose kingdom moved about Asia and Africa, much like the land of the Phantom – playing its part, as the Crusades did in general, in subsequent European maritime exploration and empire.

 

RATING: 5 STARS****

S-TIER (WHAT ELSE? GOD TIER!)

 

Top Tens – History: Top 10 Types of War (Special Mention) (1) Prehistoric & Primal Warfare

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Cave painting of a battle between archers, Morella la Vella, Spain – public domain image used in Wikipedia “Prehistoric Warfare”

 

 

(1) PREHISTORIC & PRIMAL WARFARE

 

Hobbes vs Rousseau – the Hobbesian state of nature or “the war of all against all” (bellum omnium contra omnes) as against Rousseau’s more noble savage state of nature.

Sadly this special mention is not for some Great Prehistoric War fought between mammoth cavalry and evil Atlantean overlords in the style of the film 10,000 BC – or a tyrannosaur-riding Neanderthal fighting off everything in the style of the Primal animated TV series, although that series seems closer to Hobbes’ state of nature.

It’s for the sheer timescale of prehistoric war compared to historic war, corresponding to the scale of prehistory in general compared to history – 98% or so of the entire span of humanity on this planet so far, all but the last 5,000 years or so out of 300,000 years. And prehistory only gets longer if you throw in our hominin ancestor species as humanity, which potentially lengthens that span to 3,000,000 years.

There’s also that prehistory didn’t just disappear with the advent of recorded history – or rather didn’t consistently disappear across time and place, instead enduring in places more remote from recorded history until the modern period. And prehistoric war hasn’t even ended now, hence the better description would be primal war – as a type of war, exemplified by ambush and raid, to which humanity regularly returns, atavistically time and time again.

Most fundamentally, there’s Hobbes vs Rousseau – the philosophical significance of prehistoric war in understanding the origins of war itself.

Of course, the origins of war in prehistory is the subject of theory or outright speculation, as by its nature prehistory involves those human societies without recorded history – typically Neolithic or Paleolithic, but potentially also more recent societies without written historical records.

It’s where prehistory meets philosophy, hence the opening dialectic of Hobbes versus Rousseau – the ongoing debate over human nature and violence or war. “The existence — and even the definition — of war in humanity’s hypothetical state of nature has been a controversial topic in the history of ideas”.

Philosopher Thomas Hobbes famously proposed that the original “state of nature” of humanity (or human nature) was inherently violent – the war of all against all in which “the life of man” is “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short”. Against that, philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau also famously proposed a more idealistic and idyllic state of nature as more free and peaceful – subsequently styled as that of the “noble savage” – made unequal and violent by “civilized” society.

That debate over human nature continues, not least in speculation or theories of prehistoric war, “spanning contemporary anthropology, archaeology, ethnography, history, political science, psychology, primatology, and philosophy in such divergent books as Azar Gat’s War in Human Civilization and Raymond C. Kelly’s Warless Societies and the Origin of War.”

Essentially, it boils down to those who argue for prehistoric war and violence, potentially at even higher rates than those in recorded history, and those who argue for more peaceful prehistory.

To put it that simply, however, removes all context or nuance from a debate that is much more balanced or varied, reflecting a more complex situation – that prehistory was both more violent than asserted by proponents of prehistoric pacifism and also more pacific than asserted by prehistoric warmongers.

Most concede that violence or war in human prehistory was highly variable between different societies at different times in different places or circumstances. Some societies were notoriously warlike, such as the Maori of New Zealand, the Yanomami (dubbed “the Fierce People”) of the Amazon or the inter-tribal warfare in Papua New Guinea.

On the one hand, archaeological studies of human remains from prehistory have suggested a higher rate for violent injury and death substantially above those in recorded history. One interesting feature is that a recurring motive for inter-tribal warfare is raiding for nubile women – as with the Yanomami, suggesting that the legendary motive for the Trojan War may not be so far removed from the historic or prehistoric truth.

On the other hand, depictions of human violence or war is comparatively rare until relatively recently in prehistoric art. Proponents of prehistoric pacificism persuasively suggest that low population density among prehistoric tribal hunter-gatherers – and the potential costly nature of violence between them – both allowed for and pushed towards avoiding conflict, typically by migration.

Another issue is that even if or where Paleolithic societies were violent, the scale of that violence was necessarily limited or disorganized – in the nature of feuds and raids or ambushes and skirmishes. Some argue for what is termed endemic warfare – in which “war is often ritualized with a number of taboos and practices that limit the number of casualties and the duration of the conflict”. Of course, endemic warfare could readily escalate into actual warfare without such limits.

Others have also asserted various historic or prehistoric event horizons that saw the escalation of war. One such is the development of missile weapons such as bows or slings allowing for less risk than melee combat. Another more commonly argued one is the horizon between the Paleolithic and Neolithic – with the increased sedentism from agriculture in the Neolithic seeing a corresponding increase in the intensity of scale in war.

One obvious model for theories of prehistoric war is more recent or contemporary tribal warfare. And one could argue that tribal war remains the predominant model for war in general – that most wars in history are tribal wars at heart.

Top Tens – Top 10 Wars (Special Mention: Revised) (1) Decline & Fall of the Roman Empire

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The Course of Empire: Destruction (1836) – one of a series of five paintings by Thomas Cole (in public domain) and typically the painting used when someone wants to use a painting to depict the fall of Rome, albeit the series depicts an imaginary state or city

 

(1) DECLINE & FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE

 

The decline and fall of the Roman Empire – that “melancholy, long, withdrawing roar, retreating to the breath of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear and naked shingles of the world”.

I don’t think it is overstating it to describe the decline and fall of the Roman Empire as the PTSD of western civilization. Europeans looked to the Roman Empire as their state or imperial model, with kingdoms or states purporting to succeed or revive it in one form or another thereafter.

Even now, the decline and fall of the Roman Empire informs much modern discourse about state failure – from Edward Gibbon onwards, “we have been obsessed with the fall: it has been valued as an archetype for every perceived decline, and, hence, as a symbol for our own fears”.

I would rank it in my top ten wars but for the lack of a definitive war – although my top ten entry for the Hunnic Wars comes closest – or that matter it is many wars, hence the special mention albeit in god-tier. Also as decline and fall, it involved the former as much as the latter. The Romans were consistently their own worst enemies – not just in their relentless civil wars but also in aspects of internal decline that were observed even as early as the second century – at its peak! – by contemporaries such as the historian Cassius Dio, who lamented the decline “from a kingdom of gold to one of rust and iron”.

But our interest here is its external fall or military defeats, most notoriously at the hands of barbarians at the gates – the Germanic tribes that swept over the empire in what history calls the Barbarian Invasions or Migration Period.

The empire was shocked to its core with the sack of Rome itself – twice, firstly by the Visigoths in 410, and secondly by the Vandals, who thereafter lent their name to wanton destruction, in 455. These sacks of Rome were still shocking even though the imperial capital had been moved to Ravenna in 402, such that the Roman Empire might more accurately be styled as the Ravennan Empire instead.

And there’s something about the Romans desperately trying to hold one line after another in that “melancholy, long, withdrawing roar” that resonates with me. Indeed, any last stand or waning force often invokes the fall of the Roman Empire, both in history, and as we shall see, in fantasy or science fiction.

And there’s certainly plenty to choose from with the fall of the Roman Empire in the century from the disastrous defeat in the battle of Adrianople against the Goths in 378, which opened the floodgates to barbarians invading and setting up kingdoms within the Empire itself, varying between alliance with and opposition to the Empire, until the Germanic leader Odoacer decided it would be easier not to have a puppet emperor and deposed him instead in 476.

Of course, what history tends to forget is that the proverbial decline and fall of the Roman Empire was of the western Roman Empire – the eastern Roman Empire survived and even thrived for another millennium after the fall of the western empire. It even had a damn good shot at recovering the western half of the empire under Justinian and his legendary general Belisarius, before receding again. It then ebbed and flowed, until its final decline over two centuries before its conquest by the rising Ottoman Empire in 1453. So there’s plenty to choose from there as well.

Indeed, the decline and fall of both western and eastern Roman Empires was invoked by Tolkien in The Lord of the Rings with Gondor – the eastern half of the Numenorean states that survived the fall of the western half Arnor. Of course, that would make Gondor correspond to the Byzantine Empire, increasingly focused on its capital city Minas Tirith corresponding to Constantinople making its last stand against Sauron – who would correspond to, ah, the Ottoman Turks?!

Anyway, the decline and fall of the Roman Empire – and the Great Migrations or Barbarian Invasions – might be considered to be on the scale of a world war, but is a little too piecemeal in space or time.

And one can argue we are still living in the decline of the Roman Empire. Or on our Third or Fourth Rome (or more), going by all the countries that have claimed the succession to the Roman Empire. Or the Empire never fell…according to P.K. Dick. Or something like that.

 

RATING: 5 STARS*****

S-TIER (GOD TIER)

Top Tens – History: Top 10 Types of War (Special Mention) (Preamble)

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Mushroom cloud above Nagasaki after atomic bombing on August 9, 1945. Taken from the north west – photograph by Charles Levy, US National Archives and Records Administration, public domain image

 

 

I’ve ranked my Top 10 Wars of history, but it doesn’t end there – nor does it end with my Top 10 Types of War, because there is almost an infinite variety of types by or into which one can classify wars.

There’s certainly enough for my usual twenty special mentions per top ten, including my usual weird and wild special mentions towards the end.

Top Tens – History: Top 10 Wars (Special Mention: Revised) (Preamble)

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Raising the flag on Iwo Jima as memorialized by the west side of the Marine Corps War Memorial, Arlington Ridge Park, Virigina

 

I’ve always found wars a fascinating subject of history, from the comfortable armchair of hindsight and the fortunate perspective of being well removed from any firsthand experience of them. History, particularly military history, has always been something of a hobby of mine. So of course I have ranked my Top 10 Wars.

But I don’t just have a top ten. As usual for my top tens, I have a whole host of special mentions. My usual rule is twenty special mentions – where the subject matter is prolific enough, as it is here – which I suppose would usually make each top ten a top thirty. My special mentions are also where I tend to have some fun with the subject category and splash out with some wilder entries.

Stark Ravings – The Art of War: 5 Ways of Winning Without Fighting as Proved by the USA (Complete)

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The Iconic 1917 Uncle Sam recruitment poster by J.M.Flagg for WW1, based on the original British Lord Kitchener poster of 1914, using Flagg’s own face as the model for Uncle Sam and veteran Walter Botts providing the pose – public domain image in Wikipedia “Uncle Sam”

 

 

Sun Tzu’s The Art of War is the cult classic of military strategy. And yet Sun Tzu often comes across as a pinko pacifist ponce, quoting poetry to hide that when he’s not being obvious, he’s being obtuse. I mean, come on – “The onset of troops is like the rush of a torrent which will even roll stones along in its course” and “The quality of decision is like the well-timed swoop of a falcon”. What?!

Of course, part of this is because The Art of War is thoroughly imbued with Taoist philosophy, including my personal favorite principle of ‘wu wei’ or the art of doing nothing effectively. Nowhere is this more evident than in its defining principle that the true art of war lies in winning without fighting. Well obviously, but how? It brings to mind Bart Simpson’s response when his karate teacher gives him a copy for his first lesson – “Um, I already know how not to hit a guy”.

In fairness, Sun Tzu does explain how to win without fighting, when you cut away all the poetry. However, as usual, history shows it much more bluntly, as proved by the United States of America. Of course, it really shouldn’t surprise anyone that this superpower excelled at the art of war (at least until recently)  – as opposed to, say, Germany, which despite (or perhaps because of) its reputed military professionalism, proved that it was very good at fighting but not very good at war. So how does history show the art of war in winning without fighting? Let me count the ways…

 

 

Carving of the Three Wise Monkeys who “hear no evil, say no evil, see no evil” in Nikko Toshogu, Japan. Restored c. 2021, but the original carvings are several centuries old (c. 1600s) and long out of copyright. – photograph by Jpatokal in Wikipedia “Three Wise Monkeys” licensed https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en

 

 

(1) SPLENDID ISOLATIONISM (OR STAYING OUT OF WARS)

 

Now this one should be a no-brainer, as it is Sun Tzu’s apparent eagerness to avoid war that makes him seem such a pinko pacifist ponce. Wars are costly and destructive, especially big or long wars of attrition, and even when you win, you often lose – Pyrrhic victory, anyone?

The best strategy lies in avoiding wars in the first place, if possible – and the worst place to be in wars is at the front line. The best place is sitting it out at the sidelines, ideally playing the balance of power and making money through financing or supplying your favored side – and only entering, if at all, to tilt the balance of power in your direction. This pretty much defines the historical foreign policy of Britain towards continental Europe (and generally) – they coined the phrase ‘splendid isolationism’ and it served them pretty well, until you know, they fought two world wars too many.

 

USA! USA! USA!

 

The Brits might have coined the phrase, but the United States historically defined itself by isolationism. George Washington declared it in his Farewell Address in 1796 and Thomas Jefferson similarly announced in his Inaugural Address in 1801 the policy of “entangling alliances with none”.

Isolationism suited the United States pretty well, generally avoiding war with European powers until, you know, it was big enough to win – and the strategy of sitting it out on the sidelines also essentially defines American foreign policy in the world wars. After the Second World War, it was a different story, as isolationism got a bit of bad press, although critics of American foreign policy on both left and right would argue that the United States has not been isolationist enough. It is even arguable that the United States fought the First World War to “make the world safe for democracy”, only to make it safe for fascism – then fought the Second World War against fascism only to make it safe for communism.

Of course, like most things in life and history, there’s a catch to isolationism – the luck of geography. No doubt Belgium would have loved splendid isolationism, but the geography of being wedged between France and Germany was against it. The isolationist ideal is to effectively have a continent to yourself, like the United States – or better yet, to actually have a continent to yourself.

 

Guarded by its navy of sharks and crocodiles – Wikipedia “Australia” by license https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en

 

 

Islands are the next best thing, particularly as historically you could get by with a strong navy instead of a standing army. We’ve already mentioned Britain, but another example was Japan (to the point that it closed itself off from the world from 1641 to 1853), which also did pretty well until, you know, it fell victim to the most famous of classic blunders by getting involved in land wars in Asia.

Of course, you can’t just sit around in your isolationism like some shut-in crazy cat lady, you have to do things so as to win without fighting. What to do? Well, that brings me to the next two entries…

 

 

A female demonstrator offers a flower to military police on guard at the Pentagon during an anti-Vietnam demonstration. Arlington, Virginia, USA – public domain image by US Army in Wikipedia “Hippie”

 

 

(2) MAKE LOVE NOT WAR

 

The hippies were right! Well, half right – make babies, not war. War isn’t purely a population numbers game, but it’s hard to beat a big population (and ideally the land area to go with it). At the very least, you have reserves.

Also, there’s nothing quite like a population change in your favor to tilt the balance of power your way without firing a shot. Historians will probably always debate the causes for the fall of the Roman Empire (or even when and if it fell), but at least one factor was its declining population, particularly as opposed to the increasing population of German tribes. And so the Roman Empire slowly became…German (or more precisely the western Roman Empire slowly became a number of German kingdoms).

History never repeats but sometimes it rhymes, and in the modern era, France was eclipsed as the predominant power in Europe when the more populous Germany was united under Prussia – and even more so with France’s declining birthrate and demographic demoralization between the world wars.

There’s even a theory that proposes a high proportion of young males as a leading cause behind conflict or war – the population bulge theory.

Population growth can basically be your baby BOOM…

 

USA! USA! USA!

 

Again, war is not purely a population numbers game, so it’s hard to be definitive about it, but it is no coincidence that the rise of the United States to superpower was linked to its rise to the most populous Western nation. Even in its origin, one hypothetical example might be whether the United States could have effectively won the American Revolution without firing a shot by just waiting until its population outgrew that of Britain – or indeed, if it had secured parliamentary representation instead of revolution whether it would have ended up running Britain and the British Empire.

However, there is one cold, hard example that has recurred throughout history whenever hunter-gatherers have come up against agricultural societies, which can feed more mouths (and have more resistance to diseases) – the Indian Wars. The United States basically steamrollered its manifest destiny from coast to coast over the Indian tribes as a function of population growth – while most of its population barely noticed.

So population helps, but there is another set of numbers that usually counts for even more in my next entry.

 

US $1 dollar bill – public domain in Wikipedia “United States one-dollar bill”

 

 

(3) MAKE MONEY NOT WAR

 

There is a military adage “amateurs talk tactics, professionals talk logistics” – and ultimately logistics are a matter of money so nations with money are hard to beat. Sun Tzu bemoaned the daily cost of keeping an army in the field (“a thousand ounces of silver a day”) – and that was when armies could forage and loot much of their supplies. Wars are costly and expensive, especially with modern industrial technology. As we’ve seen, the best place to be in war is sitting on the sidelines – making money from trade and financing or supplying your side of choice (and entering, if at all, to win it so they can pay you back), or effectively fighting with money by subsidizing other nations. Even better, money is a means to become powerful without fighting at all – through trade, finance, investment and influence. Germany dominates Europe today and Japan rose to power through money more than they ever did by war, while China has risen to superpower through making money more than it ever did through its military or nuclear bluster under Mao.

 

USA! USA! USA!

Need we say more? Money has been the fundamental American art of war. Who says money can’t buy superpower? Just ask Batman…and the United States has been the goddamn Batman of the world. For starters, the United States simply bought large parts of its territory, most notably the Louisiana Purchase from France in 1804 and Alaska from Russia in 1867.

When it has come to wars, the United States has relied on its economic, financial and industrial strength – from the victory of the North over the South in the Civil War to victory in the world wars. As Stalin is reputed to have said of the victory in the Second World War (and if he didn’t, he should have) – England provided the time, Russia provided the blood and America provided the money. That’s how you win without fighting and that’s what Germany got for trying to be a Nietzschean Superman, trying to fight its way to victory (“he who is destined to defeat first fights and afterward looks for victory”), rather than being Batman like the United States. And for the ultimate money shot of winning without fighting, there’s the Cold War, where the United States won when the Soviets essentially ran out of money.

Of course, historically speaking, sooner or later in your rise to power through becoming populous and rich (indeed often as obstacles during it), you will face wars with adversaries or rivals. So, how do you win them without fighting? That’s where we see the next two entries…

 

 

Bald eagle (described as “white headed eagle) in painting by John James Audubon as plate 31 in “Birds of America” – public domain image (Wikipedia “Bald Eagle”

 

 

(4) PICK CURB STOMP BATTLES

 

It’s simple – you should pick battles that are so ridiculously one-sided in your favor that they have their own trope.

Picking curb stomp battles or “winning with ease” is the essence of Sun Tzu’s strategist – “hence his victories bring him neither reputation for wisdom nor credit for courage”. Typically, this is a matter of numerical superiority, as Sun Tzu himself emphasized – “though an obstinate fight may be made by a small force, in the end it must be captured by the larger force”. However, it is very often a matter of qualitative superiority (from what in military lingo is termed force multipliers) – such as superior training or technique but most demonstrably superior technology, the historical equivalent of beating opponents who bring knives to gunfights.

This is how the Europeans curb stomped their colonial empires – as Hillaire Belloc wrote, “whatever happens, we have got. The Maxim gun and they have not”. The Anglo-Zanzibar War lasted the whole of 38 minutes on 27 August 1896, as British ships used the Zanzibari sultan’s palace for target practice from 9.02 am to 9.40 am. (Part of the terms of peace was that the Zanzabaris had to repay the cost of the shells).

 

USA! USA! USA!

 

O land of the free and home of the brave – but you have to admit, this is kind of how the United States won its smaller wars.

H.L. Mencken characteristically mocked this in his essay “The Anglo-Saxon”, but as we’ve seen, it is the essence of clever strategy and all nations like to do it if they can, even Mencken’s beloved Prussian Germany, which lost when it took on opponents bigger than itself – the world in general and the Soviet Union in particular.

Sure, the United States started off big, as the potential stompee against the British Empire in the American Revolution (and its sequel, the war of 1812), but after that it curb stomped its manifest destiny across the continent. We’ve already talked about the Indian Wars, but there was also the Mexican-American War of 1846-1848, which Ulysses S. Grant – no pinko pacifist ponce – called “one of the most unjust ever waged by a stronger on a weaker nation” and added about half of Mexico to the United States. I mean, it’s not like they were using it anyway.

The debut of the United States into the international scene with a war against a European power was equally as sordid, as it pounced upon an enfeebled Spain in 1898 and snatched the last decent remnants of the declining Spanish empire (like the Philippines and Cuba), leaving Spain with such gems as the Spanish Sahara and Fernando Poo. (No, really – Fernando Poo). The Mexican-American War and Spanish-American War typified many American wars south of the border and across the waters, from the so-called Banana Wars through Panama and Grenada to the first Iraqi War.

And for that matter, even the bigger wars of the United States have something of this character. Such was the economic strength and resources of the United States in the world wars, that they were really a foregone conclusion after its entry, especially when you throw in the other allies – and as the United States swarmed Japan with its ships and planes in the Second World War, it did indeed have some actual curb stomp battles, such as the ‘Great Marianas Turkey Shoot’ in June 1944, labelled by American naval aviators for the ease with which they shot down the remnants of Japanese carrier aviation (prompting Japan to resort to kamikazes). Also, although the American Civil War – a war that the Pacific War oddly resembled in many ways – was hardly a curb stomp battle, the North had such advantages in population and resources over the South that its victory was virtually a foregone conclusion as well.

Of course, sooner or later, you will face adversaries or rivals with which you are more evenly matched, so how do you win against them without fighting? Well, there’s my next entry…

 

“Elbe Day” – iconic WW2 photograph of Soviet and American troops meeting at Elbe River. Soviet Lt. Charles Thau (center, looking into camera) behind the handshake, with U.S. PFC Bernard E. Kirschenbaum (left center), 25 April 1945

 

 

(5) HAVE OTHERS DO THE FIGHTING FOR YOU

 

It’s simple – sit back while others do the fighting for you.

This essentially comes in two versions. There’s the adversarial version, in which you sit back while your adversaries or rivals destroy or exhaust themselves fighting each other, although that’s often as much a matter of good luck as good strategy. One reason for the Islamic conquest of the Sassanid Persian empire and (much of) the eastern Roman empire is that they were exhausted from decades (or centuries) slugging it out against each other like glazed-eyed punch-drunk boxers.

Alternatively, there’s the allied version, which is much the same except you sit back while your allies bear the brunt of the fighting, although typically you’ll have to finance or supply them or at least do some cheerleading.

 

USA! USA! USA!

 

Again, one has to admit that, through good luck or good strategy, this is kind of how the United States has won its bigger wars. Perhaps its biggest war, at least in terms of the disparity with its adversary, was the American Revolution, so it was just as well France fought it for them – not just France but Spain and the Netherlands as well, in what was essentially a world war against Britain.

The sequel War of 1812 was somewhat similar, as the United States was mostly a distraction from Britain’s main concern with, in the words of H. L. Mencken, “an enterprising Corsican gentleman, Bonaparte by name”.

The world wars were even more of the same. The United States entered the First World War at the tail end of it, when every other combatant was exhausted by years of fighting, with far fewer casualties as a result. In the Second World War, it came in about halfway, but it was the Soviet Union that did most of the fighting against Germany, as well as most of the dying – about 27 MILLION dead as opposed to about 420,000 dead for the United States. So yeah, it was more like saving Private Ivan.

The biggest exception to the rule was the war it fought against itself, the American Civil War, which is why it involved the most casualties of any American war.

Again, like most things, there’s a catch. The adversarial version needs good judgment – in correctly judging that your adversaries will destroy each other, rather than one defeating the other and becoming stronger or more dangerous to you as a result. The allied version on the other hand has a problem all its own – namely that your uppity allies, having done the fighting, might think that they should do the winning as well.

Once again, the United States has excelled at putting an end to this crap. France went broke from its spending in the American Revolution and had a revolution of its own, while Spain had similar problems (and lost its American colonies). The Napoleonic wars took center stage in the War of 1812. Virtually everyone was exhausted, broke and owed money to the United States or swallowed up by revolution or civil war at the end of the First World War.

The biggest exception was the Second World War, with the Soviet Union claiming its spoils of victory. It just took a bit longer – and the United States winning the Cold War by making money – for them to be exhausted and broke as well.