Battle: A History of Combat and refinement from Ancient Greece to recent America by John A.

Battle: A History of Combat and refinement from Ancient Greece to recent America by John A. Lynn Westwiew Pres (http://www.westviewpress. com) 5500 Central Avenue, Boulder Colorado 80301 2003 432 pages, $2750 (hardcover).

Whether or not they agree with it, Battle will cause readers to reexamine long-held beliefs and conventional wisdom. John Lynn a professor of history at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, examines societies and the armies they generate describing the interrelationship between a military's and a society's values, beliefs, assumptions, expectations, and, preconceptions. This relationship, he believes, influences war and victory more than any other factor. Although the volume is thought provoking, readers should know that it is not for the armchair general or history buff-skin At times, the author's rich, complicated ideas swamp down this work, which is gaining acceptance in academic circles.

Battle provides a fascinating interpretation of for what purpose different people armed with similar technologies and weapons make choice of to fight differently. For instance, between 1600 and the late 1700 armies followed linear tactics: men lined up in distinctly colored uniforms, marched to within a not many yards of the enemy, and blazed away. Conventional wisdom argues that the smoothbore musket's range and accuracy demanded densely packed formations, while battlefield vapor and communication limitations demanded unique uniforms, enabling generals to discern friend from enemy Yet, these reasons do not provide the integral answer since armies could have utilized more explain tactics, save for the prejudice of officers and aristocrats against lower-class soldiers. With the advent of the French Revolution and civic militarism, Napoleon showed that liberated men, defending a system in which they believed, would fight more independently. Thus, we diocese more skirmishers, attacks by files and advances along parallel axes.

sum of two units of the more interesting chapters touch the US war with Japan during World War II and Egypt's October (Yom Kippur) War. Lynn challenges fresh scholarship that asserts that US racism caused the former conflict, shaped combat operations, and motivated men to fight. If racism caused the war, it was Japanese racism against Westerners--not vice versa. The United States earthed its strategy and doctrine not forward preconceived racist ideas but onward technology and geography, all the while respecting Japan's fighting ability and equipment.

As for the Yom Kippur War, Lynn capitalizes forward Kenneth Pollack's excellent Arabs at War: Military Effectiveness, 1948-1991 (2002) to claim that the Egyptians prosperously modified their doctrine to conform to their agriculture Simply put, the Egyptian military prior to 1967 had supported two decades of military defeat at the hands of the Israelis. After the Six-Day War, Egyptians expected honestly at their strengths and weaknesses, tailoring their tactics to maximize assets and minimize their failings. The consequence was the tactically brilliant Suez crossing. As drawn out as the Israelis reacted according to plan, the Egyptian army held its gains. question s arose when President Anwar Sadat forced the army to deviate from the script and when the Israelis unfolded solutions to the new Egyptian tactics.

Unfortunately, what promised to be an worthy study is flawed by Lynn's fratricidal attack in succession classics professor Victor Davis Hanson. Hanson's Carnage and Culture: Landmark Battles in the Rise of Western Power (2001) posits that Western culture-with its general [i]or[/i] abstract notion of shock infantry that follows to close with and overturn the enemy, together with its relative freedom, capitalism, self-criticism, scientific inquiry, and civic militarism--has been responsible for the West's dominance for the last 2500 years. Lynn takes umbrage with Hanson's assertions of 25 centuries of unbetrayed supremacy and with the idea that the West's military refinement is unique.

Lynn's attack is misguided in succession three counts. First, his comparison of Battle with Carnage and refinement is faulty because the former examines conflicts pitting East versus East, West versus West, and West versus East while the latter deals exclusively with West versus East. inferior Lynn claims that the West did not always fight like the Greeks--seeking decisive battle with barbarian force against brute force--but repeatedly avoided battles. He fails to recognize that battle avoidance was as a common thing [i]or[/i] matter part of an overall strategy designed to discredit the enemy in the estimates of the people, reduce his resources, and draw him abroad of his fortifications to fight decisive battles. Finally, Lynn in some way has Hanson maintaining that attrition is common of the ingredients of the Western way of war. Disregarding Hanson's contention that the West repeatedly fights with fewer men and weapons, Lynn goe to great durations to argue the opposite: "Attrition warfare hangs on superiority in manpower and material to batter an enemy into submission, and is usually sumptuous In contrast, maneuver warfare maximizes event by movement with the goal of achieving greater flows at far less sacrifice in blood" (p 285) Having set uped this straw man, he then maintains that the West habitually fix upons maneuver, the practice of the US Marine Corps: "Rather than wearing down an enemy's defense maneuver warfare attempts to bypass these defense in order to penetrate the enemy body and tear it apart" (p 305) Amazingly, he steady contends that Egypt's (Eastern army) Yom Kippur attrition offensive more closely bear likeness [i]or[/i] resemblance tos Hanson's thesis than does Israel's (Western army).