The Vicious Cycle of War Perpetuated by Attacks on Civilians

THE LESSONS OF TERROR

A History of Warfare Against

Civilians: Why It Has Always Failed and Why It Will Fail Again

By Caleb Carr

Random House

272 pages, $19.95

“The Lessons of Terror” is a provocative essay inspired by the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11. It was written in haste and shows it. The author, Caleb Carr, a novelist (“The Alienist,” “The Angel of Darkness”) and contributing editor of MHQ: The Quarterly Journal of Military History, is tentative in the book’s beginning, as if he’s looking for his subject and tone.

But by the end of the book, he has found both and presents them briskly. Carr’s thesis is simple and simplistic: Nearly all wars, from the Romans to the present, have been “destructive,” aimed at civilians as well as fighting forces. As a result the angry and defeated sides have in time responded in kind, leading to an endless cycle of self-generating violence.

The major exceptions to this melancholy history have been a few imaginative exceptions by warriors and theorists whose contributions Carr labels “progressive war.” The most notable practitioner of “progressive war” was King Frederick the Great of Prussia. This 18th century monarch, whose wars united and enlarged his kingdom, Carr writes, “devised the most powerful statement and proof yet that wars were best fought for particular and realistic political goals by soldiers whose restrained behavior would limit the impact of conflict on civilians and thereby maintain or even win these citizens’ loyalty.”

By his example, Carr argues, and by the contributions of others in the century of the Enlightenment, especially the German mercenary Marshal Saxe, who fought for France, and the English general James Wolfe, who drove the French from North America, the endemic savagery of European war was tamed.

Of course this kinder, gentler mode of war did not last long. The upheaval of the French Revolution and the rise of Napoleon brought about the vast national mobilizations that predominate to this day in industrial societies with enormous resources to be devoted to slaughter. The American Civil War, Carr asserts, as do many other historians, first demonstrated just how monstrously efficient modern industrial war can be. The 20th century, from World Wars I and II to more recent ones, have only confirmed the lesson.

Nevertheless, Carr argues, the lessons of the limited wars of the 18th century can yet be applied to the current global situation, to the benefit of humankind.

He draws on Frederick the Great and the book “The Law of Nations” (1758) by the Swiss jurist Emmerich de Vatel to point out that the art of war that they taught is--get this--very much like the United States’ effort to conduct its current war against terrorism.

The “essential principles of progressive war,” Carr says, are “refusal to target civilians, constant offensive readiness, the ability to achieve surprise, an emphasis on discriminatory tactical operations and the strength to act alone, if necessary, in order to vigorously attend to our security.”

Carr is lavish with his praise of the Reagan administration decision in 1986 to bomb Moammar Kadafi and scornful of the first Bush administration’s action against Iraq. Libya’s Kadafi was pretty well silenced, while Iraq’s Saddam Hussein is still a powerful threat. Carr praises, too, the invasion of Panama in 1989 to capture Gen. Manuel Noriega.

But Carr excoriates the CIA. He says it has rarely understood what was happening in the world. He writes that, by its own actions, it has caused immense damage to the United Sates. His most recent example is the abandonment of Afghanistan by the United States after the expulsion of the Soviets; from that wreckage, Carr says, sprang Osama bin Laden. Carr’s prescription: Abolish the CIA and create a separate and special branch of service in the U.S. military--comparable to the Army, Navy and Air Force, presumably--devoted solely to special forces like those now employed in Afghanistan.

It is impossible in a short review--or even in a long one for that matter--to list the many great figures for whom Carr has contempt or the surprising aspects of warfare of which he speaks well. The early 19th century military theorist Karl von Clausewitz was a greatly overrated romantic, for example, while he regards the German blitzkrieg of World War II as possessing aspects of “progressive war.” In the current atmosphere of shock and confusion, Carr obviously has attempted to spark an explosion of ideas. In “The Lessons of Terror” he has succeeded.