Original Sin
I own most of noted British military historian John Keegan’s books except a few. Keegan has written some indisputable classics of military history like The Face of Battle, The Mask of Command, The Price of Admiralty, and Six Armies in Normandy. However, he’s produced a few howlers like Fields of Battle and The Iraq War (which was so obsequious to Tommy Franks that even I, a supporter of the War in Iraq, was sickened). The worse offender in my eyes, however, is Keegan’s A History of Warfare, his attempt at a magisterial world history of war. I had never heard of Carl von Clausewitz before I read the first chapter of A History of Warfare in the local Barnes and Noble bookstore. My introduction to Clausewitz, therefore, was overwhelmingly negative. When I finally got around to actually reading a good copy of On War, I was therefore shocked by how utterly inaccurate Keegan’s portrayal of Clausewitz was.
The intensity of my disappointment is the root of my Clausewitzian orthodoxy. It’s why I find Martin van Crevald so appalling. Keegan has plausible deniability. Crevald, as the author of The Immortal Clausewitz in Michael Handel’s Clausewitz and Modern Strategy, knows better. Keegan confuses Clausewitz; Crevald libels Clausewitz. His Clausewitz is a strawman that Crevald sets up to knock down at whatever whim Crevald has at a given moment. That’s not a new crime, Liddell Hart was as bad or worse. Crevald, however is the most fashionable. Given the amount of influence Crevald’s (and Liddell Hart’s) distortions have had on new fangled frameworks like 4GW, network centric warfare, and effects based operations, the usefulness of such frameworks is fundamentally flawed.
Back to Keegan. Apparently he has a new book on the American Civil War out. The reviews are not kind, even when written by the genial James M. McPherson. Keegan has lost some of the deftness of touch he had as a young and hungry military historian. The Face of Battle may be the best work of military history of the late twentieth century. However, Keegan, like Niall Ferguson, has not been the same caliber of historian since he became a big shot. His name on the cover of this book is almost as big as the title. It might as well be John Keegan’s Civil War, Featuring John Keegan, Presented by John Keegan.
I feel better now.
