War, Peace and International Relations: An introduction to strategic history

by Colin S. Gray

This new volume explores the theory and practice of war and peace in modern historical context.

In fifteen clear and concise chapters, this book hits the high and low points of international politics over a two hundred year period, plus a brief foray into the future out to 2025. War, Peace and International Relations serves as an excellent introduction to the international history of the past two centuries, showing how those two centuries were shaped and reshaped extensively by war. This book takes a broad view of what was relevant to the causes, courses, and consequences of wars.

This upper-level textbook is an invaluable resource for students of strategic studies, security studies, international relations and international history.

Genres: International Relations, Politics, History, War, Nonfiction, Political Science, Military Fiction

320 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2007

About the author

Colin S. Gray was a British-American strategic thinker and professor of International Relations and Strategic Studies at the University of Reading, where he was the director of the Centre for Strategic Studies. In addition, he was a Senior Associate to the National Institute for Public Policy.

Gray was educated at the University of Manchester and the University of Oxford. He worked at the International Institute for Strategic Studies and the Hudson Institute, before founding the National Institute for Public Policy in Washington, D.C. He also served as a defense adviser both to the British and U.S. governments. Gray served from 1982 until 1987 in the Reagan Administration's General Advisory Committee on Arms Control and Disarmament. Furthermore, he taught at the University of Hull, the University of Lancaster, York University, Toronto and University of British Columbia. Gray published 23 books on military history and strategic studies, as well as numerous articles.

Reviews

[Brett Friedman · Rating 5 out of 5]

An all around great read, but I especially recommend Chapter 18 on Irregular Warfare. It is a must read. It could stand alone as an essay if you don't have time to read the whole book.

[Mihai Zodian · Rating 3 out of 5]

This review was written in 2007, for a former center dedicated to international relations, CSIS Romania and recovered from the web archive. I still agree with most of arguments, but made some small improvements.

The relevance of war in history is the major theme of a new book written by the well-known strategist Colin Gray, War, Peace and International Relations, An Introduction to Strategic Theory, published this year by Routledge. The author has collected his courses, with the intention of providing a clear account of the influence of force and threats upon international relations, during the last three centuries. An interpretation of Clausewitz, mixed with a tendency to conservatism represents the building block of his work.

The object of the book is strategic history, a mixture of political and military domains. Gray defines strategy as “the use of force and the threat” (Gray 2007, 1) to do so, and argues that this factor represents not only the major influence upon international relations, but also, the most important cause of changes in the last two centuries. In his view, the nature of war remains constant in history, only political, economical social and other contexts are variable. The author makes a distinction between war, meaning the “total relationship between belligerents” and warfare, the actual fighting (ibidem, 6). All his premises had some week points.

His first definition represents a useful starting point, making a clear demarcation between security and strategic studies (with the risk of emptying the first concept, although). This distinction was proposed by Barry Buzan, in the light of recent discussions regarding the extension of the security’s conceptualization, both as content and as application, which, in the beginning had only a military meaning (Buzan 1991). By focusing on force and intimidation, Gray evades this kind of debates, focusing on a narrower point of view, but gaining a much needed coherence, especially since this book also has a didactic purpose.

The second affirmation need more elaboration that the one Gray present in his War, Peace and International Relations. There is one thing to say that the most important events in international relations of the last two centuries are shaped by the use of force and threats, and another to enlarge this idea outside this realm. Since war is a continuous phenomenon, from early Antiquity, at last, it isn’t clear what is the characteristic of what he calls modern era, or to put it more bluntly, why this era is called modern? Modernity usually refers to a complex of political, scientific, cultural and economical sources of change, who affected all social relations, including war. For example, after the fall of Napoleon, one of the most significant differences between different major conflicts was scientific and technological. It’s better to restrict the statement to the domain of international relations.

The fourth statement needs also some further considerations. If we retain Gray’s definition of strategy, the distinction between war and warfare is useless. The conduct of the “total relationship between belligerents” is actually or politics (including war), or, as a policy, what is usually called grand strategy (ibidem). In consequence, warfare, actual fighting, remains the tool of strategy, used to attain the stated purpose. But, to gain more insights, we should also investigate Gray’s interpretation of Carl von Clausewitz, which adds flesh to his somehow vague concepts.

After defending the famous Prussian theorist of war, in face of his notorious contemporary, Antoine Henri de Jomini, both drawing on the Napoleonic experience, Gray states boldly that “everything strategic in those 200 years was governed by Clausewitz`s theory. He looks at the classical On War from two perspectives: the relationship between politics and war, and Clausewitz`s conception of the nature of war (which are the same for the German author). Gray cites the notorious dictum “war is a continuation of political activity by other means” (Gray 2007, 22), but he also states that the nature of war is violence, blurring his distinction between this concept and warfare. So, war is only a means to a political end.

The nature of war is explained by the trinity (with obvious platonic origins) of passion, chance and reason/policy (which also includes the discussion of the previous paragraph). To this, corresponds a less important trinity, between people, military forces and government, affected by changes of context. Gray evokes also the distinction between real and ideal war, the concepts of friction and fog of war, the importance of morale, and the autonomy of war. What he misses completely is the major significance attached by Clausewitz to decisive battles.

At this moment, we should remember that the Napoleonic wars were characterized by mobility and great battles like Trafalgar, Austerlitz, Auerstadt, or Waterloo. So, it’s not so surprising that Clausewitz`s conception of strategy is narrower than the one presented by Gray, a difference acknowledged by the British theorist. The famous Prussian author defines strategy as the use of fighting for imposing one’s will upon the enemy. The main instrument for attaining this goal is, in Clausewitz`s opinion, the decisive battles, which affect the war fighting abilities of the opposing side, in a spectrum which varies from limited destruction to complete annihilation of his military forces.

It’s an important topic, not simply a scholastic remark, because it follows that Gray’s conception regarding the absolute validity of Clausewitz theory should at least be amended. For example, attritional conflicts like WWI were not decided by battles and maneuver, but by the superior economical and demographic potential of one party. Moreover, the nuclear age, and MAD, eliminated the rational use of decisive battles and direct confrontations between rival great powers. It remains only the rational, political element of war, or, to be more precise, of force and intimidation, which is only one element of the triad.

In the next chapters, Gray presents a classical account of the XIX century, from a political-military point of view. For example, he criticizes Napoleon, because he didn’t have a political strategy, but the author, unfortunately, ignores one of the best arguments, the organization of French Empire, from 1805 onwards, when royal titles where shared between Napoleon’s family and his protégés, without any long term vision. After that, he devotes large chapter to the two great wars from the first half of the XX century.

His account of the war pursued between 1914 and 1918 is full of contradictions. Colin Gray states that “it is the most misunderstood conflict of modern times” (Gray 2007, 77), but he leaves the reader wondering why his somehow confused explanations fare better than the rival ones. The author tries to defend the political and military decision-makers, who were accused if incompetence and lack of imagination. For example, he tries both to argue that the militaries were competent, and that they did not harbored “the short-war illusion” (ibidem, 81). At a closer look, one could easily see that the decision makers were old and conservative, that they got stuck for four years in trench warfare and useless offensives on the Western front, like Somme, and that the decisive force was the most unprepared of the Great Powers for land warfare, the United States. At the same time, all the planning documents, like war budgets and campaign plans didn’t prevision action after 1914, when the war started.

The chapter on the World War Two and the Cold War are well written, but, again, the relevance of Clausewitz`s theory in the nuclear age remains to be demonstrated. The book ends with a chapter on guerilla warfare, where the author tries to demonstrate that terrorism has the same importance as WWI or WWII, from a strategic point of view, a statement which raises a lot of skepticism. The conclusion is that war is here to stay for a long time, a statement easy to anticipate, one might say.

War, Peace and International Relations, an Introduction to Strategic Theory can be use as a good introduction in modern political-military introduction for students, even taking into account that it`s written in the style of XIX historians, and that some remarks are controversial. Colin Gray compensates with clarity, a good biography, and abstracts of chapters, which make the main ideas easy to comprehend.

Other sources
Original version https://web.archive.org/web/200808032...
Buzan, Barry. 1991. People, states and fear: an agenda for international security studies. 2nd ed, Boulder: L. Rienner.

[Bảo Ngọc · Rating 5 out of 5]

chưa đọc xong vì chỉ đọc mỗi một chương để thuyết trình nhưng hay quá huhu ngại gì năm sao

[D.S.H · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant in its simplicity and execution. I sound like a bot

[Timothy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent Summation of Strategic History

Masterfully explains why the study of strategy remains relevant today and can help guide today’s strategists in the use of or threat of the use of force in achieving ends determined via a political process.

[FocusMyLocus · Rating 5 out of 5]

Written in such a way complex historical strategic decisions are easily communicated and analysed

[A · Rating 4 out of 5]

Într-o structură de manual, eminentul analist și profesor tratează istoria influenței recursului și amenințărilor cu recursul la forța motivată politic.
Istoria strategică încearcă să fie explicată prin teoriile lui Carl von Clausewitz din ”Despre război”, o carte care, în ciuda vechimii considerabile, rămâne actuală prin tematică și problematică. Interesante sunt aspectele referitoare la viziunea asupra războiului, despărțit indubitabil și inexpugnabil de luptă la nivel de semnificație: războiul e o continuare a activității politice, războiul trebuie purtat prin menținerea unui echilibru în cadrul -trinității- pasiune/ostilitate, hazard/creativitate, rațiunea politicii.
Cu precădere interesant mi s-a părut capitolul 18, unde se tratează războiul neregulat: istoric, ce înseamnă în economia războiului strategic, cum a evololuat și ce înseamnă el în timpurile moderne.
https://recenziilesipovestiletale.wor...