Naval War College Review Volume 56 Article 9 Number 3 Summer 2003 Book Reviews The .SU . Naval War College Follow this and additional works at: https://digital-commons.usnwc.edu/nwc-review Recommended Citation War College, The .SU . Naval (2003) "Book Reviews," Naval War College Review: Vol. 56 : No. 3 , Article 9. Available at: https://digital-commons.usnwc.edu/nwc-review/vol56/iss3/9 This Book Review is brought to you for free and open access by the Journals at U.S. Naval War College Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Naval War College Review by an authorized editor of U.S. Naval War College Digital Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. War College: Book Reviews BOOK REVIEWS SUCH IS WAR’S EFFECT Hedges, Chris. War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning. New York: PublicAffairs, 2002. 211pp. $23 Chris Hedges’s timely and moving re- an addiction to the “jag” of combat. flection War Is a Force That Gives Us Michael Herr, a reporter during the Meaning is about how war destroys the Vietnam War, summarized this addic- people who experience it. He elo- tion: “[Under fire] maybe you couldn’t quently argues throughout his short love the war and hate it inside the same book that no one who is caught up in instant, but sometimes those feelings al- war ever emerges unscathed or un- ternated so rapidly that they spun to- scarred. Hedges wants the reader to see gether in a strobic wheel rolling all the war for what it is—an evil designed by way up until you were literally High On humans to empower great violence War like it said on all the helmet covers. against other humans. Hedges depicts Coming off a jag like that could really this evil graphically, many times and in make a mess out of you.” many ways, throughout the book. He As a “cure” for his addiction, Hedges feels compelled to make his case in ex- spent a year in self-reflection and study tremely stark terms because he knows at Harvard; the result is this book. He that for all its wickedness, war is also a argues that war is so attractive because most addictive psychological and social it provides meaning and purpose to our drug. Worse, Hedges states, war is lives and fills a void in our existence. sometimes a necessary evil, a poison The Faustian bargain is that war also that civilized and humane peoples must demands sacrifice—the destruction of take to defeat horribly deformed na- everything and everyone who is impor- tions and peoples who have completely tant to the combatants, including the surrendered their humanity to it. culture in which they live. Hedges knows of what he writes. For Hedges would have the reader believe that over fifteen years, he covered wars for war really expresses the Freudian notion various news agencies. He was one of of Thanatos, or death wish—that humans those reporters who, like Ernie Pyle of a find meaning in their lives through their generation past, travel to the front to self-sacrifice, through dying. One imme- get their stories. Hedges got something diately thinks of the suicide bombers in else, for which he had not bargained— Published by U.S. Naval War College Digital Commons, 2003 1 Naval War College Review, Vol. 56 [2003], No. 3, Art. 9 158 NAVAL WAR COLLEGE REVIEW Israel or the hijackers of “9/11.” However, an aerospace company for over forty he argues further that if Freud is correct, years and never missed a day to sick- the balance to Thanatos is Eros, or the ness. Every night, after work, he drank love of life. While Thanatos drives hu- himself insensate. That is my most sa- mans to self-annihilation, Eros drives lient memory of him. Now, after my them to embrace each other with affec- war, I know that his drinking was a tion and support. The Freudian view is learned coping behavior that served that both concepts are real and in eternal him well after each landing. It also got struggle; there can never be a lasting him through the rest of his life. Such is peace between them. war’s effect. Hedges closes with a plea: “To survive With this book Hedges has rammed the as a human being is possible only issue of morality and ethics of war in our through love. And when Thanatos is as- faces. Will we take heed, or simply strike? cendant, the instinct must be to reach JON CZARNECKI out to those we love, to see them all in Associate Professor of Joint Maritime Operations their divinity, pity and pathos of the Naval War College, Monterey Program human.” Love alone, for the author, has the ability to overcome human destruc- tiveness. One feels almost compelled to regurgitate the Beatles line, “All you need is love.” Therein lies the serious Henriksen, Thomas H., ed. Foreign Policy for weakness of this book. Hedges is con- America in the Twenty-first Century: Alternative vincing in his analysis and reflection on Perspectives. Stanford, Calif.: Hoover Institution Press, 2001. 152pp. $15 war but superficial to the point of trivi- ality about its necessary counterbal- A brief, clean-cutting compendium ance, love. It is as if he remains with six well known scholarly contribu- addicted to the very thing that he recog- tors, Henriksen’s volume illuminates nizes will destroy him. the current cardinal directions in the Nevertheless, every civilian defense ex- debate over American foreign policy— ecutive, soldier, sailor, Marine, and air- unilateral versus multilateral interven- man should read War Is a Force That tionism along one axis, and aggressive Gives Us Meaning. Those of us who promotion of democracy (or global have known the intimate jag of war also markets) versus conservative harboring know its nightmares. Hedges’s work is a of national strength on the other. Be- cautionary tale implying that nations hind this compass hides the more theo- and peoples should enter war most re- retical discussion of whether the United luctantly. It warns that war should be a States needs or could possibly maintain last resort, and that tragic consequences a grand strategy in the absence of an may result even so. immediate national security threat. Henriksen’s own contribution (intro- My father made four opposed landings duction and chapter 5) is to lay out the with MacArthur’s army in the South- dynamics of the post–Cold War world, west Pacific theater, each one with the emphasizing the rise of China, threats first assault wave. He was never from rogue states, a stumbling Russia, wounded. After the war, he worked for and a series of regional crises that https://digital-commons.usnwc.edu/nwc-review/vol56/iss3/9 2 War College: Book Reviews BOOK REVIEWS 159 mandate “measured global activism” in stridency and the absence of the near- order to protect U.S. national interests. utopian rhetoric that marks his earlier, John Lewis Gaddis stresses the need to longer works. develop a coherent U.S. grand strategy Larry Diamond, Hoover Institution in the post–Cold War world—primarily scholar and founding coeditor of the as a tool for managing foreign policy in Journal of Democracy, stakes out the ac- a disciplined, proactive fashion rather tivist end of the other axis. He insists than simply responding to crises on a that building a world of liberal democ- case-by-case basis. Gaddis argues, “A racies, whether by unilateral or multi- country without a strategy is like a mis- lateral means, should be the primary sile without a guidance system. It’s objective of U.S. grand strategy. Not likely to dissipate resources ineffectually only does Diamond subscribe to the and spread potential damage far. It can “democratic peace” theory (that real pose as many risks to those who build democracies do not fight each other), and maintain it as it does to those at but he also argues that democratic in- whom it’s supposed to be aimed.” stitutions function as “elixirs” to all so- Gaddis is known as a key historian of cioeconomic ills. Unlike Falk, Diamond the Cold War. Under current circum- finds the solution for abusive power stances, he sees grand strategy as an and brutality through domestic democ- “endangered discipline,” suffering from ratization rather than in democratizing a shortage of generalists who under- international institutions—the latter a stand the “ecology” of the international process that (by implication) is at best environment rather than narrow re- moderately helpful and potentially dis- gional or functional specialties. tracting. At worst, “one nation, one Starting the directional debate, Richard vote” (or votes cast in international fora A. Falk argues that American grand by rulers of people who are not free) strategy should emphasize strengthen- thwarts the process of true (internal) ing global economic governance via in- democratization by allowing authori- ternational financial institutions, tarian states to subvert the evolving support for European Union–type re- global trend toward greater individual gionalism as a means of international freedom. Diamond identifies the Mus- security, and the transformation of the lim world, rogue states, and China as United Nations toward a global parlia- having cultural “dilemmas” that resist ment. In Falk’s view, all these develop- much direct U.S. support for demo- ments are in sync with the natural cratic change, but he maintains that instinct of America, although thus far they should remain the particular focus “the United States’ position has exem- of U.S. efforts. plified the democratic paradox of favor- Sebastian Edwards, UCLA business pro- ing democracy at the domestic level but fessor, presents a scholarly defense of resisting its application at the global the beneficial aspects of economic glob- level.” Those familiar with Falk’s writ- alization and concludes that the United ings over the past four decades, advo- States must be the driver of free trade cating world federalism, might find and economic openness throughout these familiar arguments repetitive; the global system.