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A History of Warfare, by John Keegan (Knopf, 432 pp., $27.50)

WAR, said Clausewitz, is the continuation of politics with the admixture of other means. An Old Soldier, being no military theorist and none too sure what Clausewitz was talking about, might reply: “Oh, is it? Well, maybe . . . sometimes,” and wonder privately what particular political course Genghis Khan was continuing when he carried fire and sword across half of Asia for no obvious reason except that it happened to be there. His was the most extensive conquest in history, but he made nothing of it; he had no apparent desire for imperial dominion or establishing permanent rule, and it has been suggested that his principal purpose was to take revenge on insulting neighbors. If so, he carried it rather far. It may seem facetious to imagine that the Mongols’ motive for devastating everything from China to Baghdad may have been no more than a case of “Well, what else is there to do?”, but whatever the driving impulse within Genghis, or within those other all-conquering horse soldiers, Hulagu and Attila and Timur, it is hard to see how Clausewitz’s dictum can be applied to them, unless one stretches the definition of politics to odd lengths.

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George MacDonald Fraser

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A History of Warfare, by John Keegan (Knopf, 432 pp., $27.50)

WAR, said Clausewitz, is the continuation of politics with the admixture of other means. An Old Soldier, being no military theorist and none too sure what Clausewitz was talking about, might reply: “Oh, is it? Well, maybe . . . sometimes,” and wonder privately what particular political course Genghis Khan was continuing when he carried fire and sword across half of Asia for no obvious reason except that it happened to be there. His was the most extensive conquest in history, but he made nothing of it; he had no apparent desire for imperial dominion or establishing permanent rule, and it has been suggested that his principal purpose was to take revenge on insulting neighbors. If so, he carried it rather far. It may seem facetious to imagine that the Mongols’ motive for devastating everything from China to Baghdad may have been no more than a case of “Well, what else is there to do?”, but whatever the driving impulse within Genghis, or within those other all-conquering horse soldiers, Hulagu and Attila and Timur, it is hard to see how Clausewitz’s dictum can be applied to them, unless one stretches the definition of politics to odd lengths.