Book Review - On Wars

Benjamin Franklin once said, “There never was a good war or a bad peace.” But what determines whether war or peace is chosen? The author of the book “On Wars”, Michael Mann, Distinguished Research Professor of Sociology Emeritus at University of California, Los Angles concludes that it is a handful of political leaders—people with emotions and ideologies and constrained by inherited culture and institutions—who undertake such decisions, usually irrationally choosing war and seldom achieving their desired results. If wars are “the least rational of human projects,” why have there been so many of them all over the world, in every era? This is the question that the author poses in the book “On Wars.

Mann examines history of war through ages and across the globe, plumbing roots of war from early Roman Republic to Vladimir Putin’s Russia and Ukraine, with intermediary chapters on ancient and imperial China, Mongol conquests, feudal Japan, the carnage of European Christendom, clashes in preColumbian and Latin America, two world wars, colonial incursions, communist conflicts and wars of the Middle East. He explores reasons groups go to war, different forms of wars, how warfare has changed and how it has stayed the same, and surprising ways in which seemingly powerful countries lose wars. In masterfully combining ideological, economic, political, and military analysis, Mann offers new insight into many consequences of choosing war.

Mann disputes the idea that humans are genetically programmed to make war. “Organized war became ubiquitous,” he contends, only when “fixed agrarian settlements generated states and social classes.” In other words, “societies, not universal human nature, cause wars”. Whatever motives that lead us to fight, Mann sees his project as more than a scholarly inquiry; his aim is to find a way out for humanity. “If we want to achieve Immanuel Kant’s ideal of perpetual peace,” he writes, “we need to know what to avoid that otherwise might lead to war.

Mann is not first scholar to seek to develop a theory of war in order to help foster peace. He does not realize this ambition: war is just too complex and varied a phenomenon to be distilled in a single theory. But the journey is worthwhile as he explores a range of debates about warfare, including arguments about which ancient conflicts should be considered the first wars, value of realist theories of war. Mann considers why societies are more or less prone to war, ranging from Roman Republic to imperial China to cultures in Americas. He examines whether those who waged wars were really enthusiastic for the fight. He finds it difficult to see rational purposes of wars because their consequences are usually awful and counterproductive. Human nature does not drive countries to war. Wars are produced by choices made by leaders who themselves are shaped by institutions and norms.

Mann examines the times and places where wars have not occurred. He highlights southeastern China, which fought only a handful of wars between 1368 and 1841, because its emperors devised a “defensive, diplomatic imperialism” based on tribute trade. Vietnamese and Korean ambassadors would sail with their merchants to Chinese ports, bow so deeply before the emperor that their foreheads touched the ground and then sail back with gifts of silk and gold. Over same period, northwestern China waged countless wars, mainly because agriculturalists abutted pastoralists, a classic condition for conflict. He writes that Africa, though roiled by civil wars, has seen few interstate conflicts in past 80 years, because leaders have accepted borders they inherited from colonialists.

Mann largely rejects Realist school and holds that, in an anarchic world, leaders make rational decisions to protect their interests. He argues that this view understates the role that domestic politics play in matters of war or peace, as well as persistence of miscalculation, emotion and sheer stupidity among decision makers. He also trashes the notion, put forth by Steven Pinker, that wars are more rare and less savage than they once were, owing to rise of democracy, international trade or other civilizing influences. Mann argues, modern wars tend to be more violent, as “civilization makes killing easier, more organized, more legitimate and more efficient.” They are started by nations of every political system, including democracies. Finally, though interstate wars have declined in number, civil wars have not — and many civil wars are aggravated or instigated by major or regional powers as proxy or colonial battles

Mann is honest enough to report that causes of war vary widely, depending on differing “ecologies, class and ethnicity, domestic politics, ideologies, emotions” and individual leaders’ “competences and desires.” Early in the book, he paraphrases French philosopher and historian Raymond Aron as saying, “A general theory of war is impossible”. Mann comes up with three broad causes of war: “greed, status-honor-glory and enjoyment of domination.” This is too simple, not only as an explanation of world, but as summary of his own complex analyses.

Mann frequently dismisses idea of “national interest” as rationalization devised by “coteries of rulers and their advisers.” There is something to this, foreign policy being least democratic of political activities. At one point, amid tirade against pious rhetoric sanctifying U.S. foreign policy, he writes,“Not even Romans had such pretensions — though they did share American pretext for war that intervening abroad was merely defending one’s allies.” Again, there’s something to this, but tell it to French and British, who emerged free and intact from Nazi onslaught because America treated them as allies or to Czechs, Poles and Balts, who begged to become allies within NATO after Soviet Union’s collapse or to Ukrainians, whose desperation to join NATO is hardly a sign of submissiveness. Mann view’s World War II as “a rare just war” and denounces Putin’s war on Ukraine as a contemptible revival of imperial invasion.

Mann treads shakier ground still when offering policy prescriptions. He advocates “not isolationism but peaceful interventionism,” noting that Washington could “learn a lesson from imperial China” by “paying tributes to barbarians not to attack them.” He claims that “cash can usually buy off the chances of war,” observing that U.S. has given Egypt some $70 billion in aid to make peace with Israel but spent $3.5 trillion to wage war in Afghanistan and Iraq. The difference, though, is that Anwar el-Sadat and his successors in Cairo wanted to make peace and align with the West; the Taliban did no

Mann breaks war into three categories: wars of aggression, wars of defence and wars of mutual provocation or escalation. He defines four main types of aggressive war: (1) in and out raiding (2) using military power to change or strengthen regimes abroad to make them compliant (3) conquest and direct rule over slivers of border territory (4) conquest and direct rule of territorial empires

Mann also notes that advances in technology have not made war “less violent” but might in fact give license and moral authority for leaders to more easily endorse more violence toward others. War technologies like drones and modern medicine have empowered leaders continue with violence. Mann differentiates between what Americans see as “ferocious” killings abroad and then names military’s use of drones and long-distance missiles as “callous” killings. “Ferocious” killings are done mainly in civil wars and poor countries with limited supplies, while “callous” killings are done by rich countries with supplies for mass destruction. More recently, Trump decreased troops abroad but increased military spending and had a 50% increase in nuclear weapons spending. More than 40 countries (+ guerilla movements like Hamas and Houthis) have drones, mostly supplied by the U.S., China, Israel or Iran

Mann gives an overview about how Soviets tended toward helping “self-described leftist states”, and US helped “conservatives and monarchists”. Mann stresses that “both formally denounced imperialism while pursuing it.” Discussing current events with war in Ukraine, Mann notes how “Russian imperialism shocked the world into realizing even in Europe war is not dead.” He goes on to discuss Middle East proxy wars. Speaking of U.S. being a major imperial intervener, Mann touches on U.S. backing of Israeli military and discusses land expansion of Israel into Palestine

Mann describes Russia and China as rising and revisionist powers while US is current dominant imperial power. Currently US spends twice what China spends on military, and US has around 600 military bases abroad while China will soon have 3–5 at the time this book was published (2023). In 2021 China had about 300 nuclear warheads, while US had 4,000.

Michael Mann’s book shows how destructive and delusional it has been throughout history and across the world, to try achieving one’s own end through war. Mann explains why wars happen although they seldom achieve their ends. One gets a lot of good information out of this book, but it could have been shorter. “On Wars” is a brisk read, surprisingly so for its density

Book Reviewed by: Prof. Pradeep Kamat