Reddit mentions of War Made New: Weapons, Warriors, and the Making of the Modern World

My Own Personal Max Boot

When I was a kid, I was a big fan of military history. In 2006 my parents bought me a book called War Made New: Weapons, Warriors, and the Making of the Modern World for Christmas. That was the first time I heard the name Max Boot. Hearing it again on Chapo is to go full circle, because Max Boot, and that book - written in the first year of Canadian involvment in Afghanistan - should represent ideas that are rejected unanimously.

The first half of the book was about how gunpowder and the industrial revolution changed warfare. He posited that technology drove military affairs, first to allow the powers that had it to subjugate those that didn’t, and then to destroy themselves.

I thought at the time, that he was making the point that imperial military expansion was a horror, and that Omdurman lead to The Somme. That colonial conflicts with 48 dead British soldiers and 12000 dead Sudanese, and this pat little poem:

>Whatever happens, we have got
The Maxim gun, and they have not.

Sold the public on an image of low cost, glorious colonial adventures that left them totally unprepared when the other side shot back.

That technological military advantages let empires cut a bloody swath across the world, and showed that cost, and not morality was the only factor in what was considered a “good” war, and consequently there was no such thing. That the Martini-Henry was what took the British Empire to every corner of the world and not a desire to ban widow burning, emancipate slaves or bring order and good governance to poor oppressed people under the Union Jack.

In the second half of the book, he makes the argument that the American advantage in technology is permanent and will allow America to create a benevolent globe-spanning Empire. Technology will allow this empire to wage war with no cost, no collateral damage and to remake the world to be some kind of utopian Pax Americana.

I put the book down. I couldn’t wrap my head around how after the first half of the book anyone could argue that this time the technological advantage will last forever and this time imperial war will be a force for good.

A few years after that, after I had forgotten about Max Boot and his vision of Omdurman with JDAMs, I joined the Army and went to Afghanistan.

Afghanistan was sold on wells, schools, roads and liberating women from the burqa. In other words, Human Rights, Peace and Security. I didn’t see any of that. My tourmates didn’t either. When they were describing the Contras on Chapo this week I got sick because the ANA and ANP did the same things. I watched them do it, and Max Boot thinks that was right and just. Max Boot and people like him would see the same things happen in every corner of the world, without ever telling people what that vision of foreign policy looks like.

The Afghan National Army and Police wore uniforms and carried rifles like us, and ISAF press conferences refered to them as our Coalition Partners, soldiers just like us. Max Boot has talked about how important it is to build the capability of our allies, and until they can do their job as well as we can, we can’t ever withdraw from Afghanistan. As best as I can explain the “job” of the ANP was to shake down locals and the “job” of the ANA was to use our firepower to settle scores, terrorize people and smoke and sell opium.

For our part, in Max Boot’s mind, our job was to use the latest military technology to so dominate and overawe the locals that under the umbrella of our firepower they would develop a civil society and market economy. Somehow, all of that technology has yet to turn Kandahar into a dusty Minneapolis. We did however use the latest technology to land $200k Raytheon Missile Systems and BAE Systems AB M982 Excalibur 155mm GPS guided shells on the correct mud hut. I was fighting Max Boot’s vision of war.

So I thought everyone had agreed that was bullshit. I mean, even if you didn’t have a roto I thought everyone knew Afghanistan was a shit show and we were all lied too.

Which brings me to Venezuela, Iran, North Korea and other future recipents of imperial benevolence. What bothers me most is guys my age already suffered for this and now it’s happening again. I feel so powerless. It’s like I’m taking crazy pills (and not just the ones for PTSD) and everyone else agrees that this is a great idea. “It’s a just war, it’ll be over in 2 weeks, we’ll be greeted as liberators”. Nobody seems to remember that we have heard all of this before, and that the war military intervention that we were told would be short, precise, moral, and bloodless was anything but.

Fuck Max Boot.

I have a lot of reading assignments to give you, but I'm not certain how much time you are going to budget for research. At the very least I hope this will help you refine your Google fu and wiki consumption.

Step one : read Sun Tzu's Art of War. It's a short read, and you'll have a firm grasp of how military leadership is based on proven principles. You'll get a crash course on the essentials of intelligence, logistics, strategy, and tactics. If you want to write about warfare, you can't begin without knowing how it is conducted.

Next, I would approach classical warfare. I highly recommend the works of Donald Kagan, a Yale professor who's works on the Peloponnesian War are essentially the gold standard on the subject. He wrote a book called On the Origins of War and the Preservation of Peace. His thesis statement is that "A persistent and repeated error through the ages has been the failure to understand that the preservation of peace requires active effort, planning, the expenditure of resources, and sacrifice, just as war does." What this means is that peace is not the default condition between two states. The natural tendency in foreign relations is entropy and warfare, and thus peace is only maintained through exhaustive effort. Kagan should inspire a certain level of pessimism/realism that could help you make your "empires" seem less cartoonish, and more like states that made hard pragmatic decisions to ensure the survival of their respective populations.

Skim the works of Nicollo Machiavelli. You need to read two of his books : The Prince, and The Art of War. He was an Italian statesmen during what we consider to be Renaissance Italy. It was a time when the country was broken up into warring city-states that shifted alliances constantly. He wrote The Prince to earn the favor of one of these rulers, and with this book he essentially destroyed every illusion about power being a natural extension of god's grace. He showed the world how "the sausage is made" in politics. It was so utterly cynical and dark that some considered him to be the devil himself, and a few historians can't even believe he took his own position seriously. His thesis : of course a prince should be both loved and feared, but if you must choose one, it is "better to be feared than loved". You'll understand every character from Darth Vader to Tony Soprano better.

Next, I would send you to Max Boot. Specifically, pick up War Made New. His narrative begins with the beginning of the Modern Era (roughly 1490), when gunpowder began to change the rules of warfare, and ends with the modern War on Terror in the early 21st century. He shows you how each technological leap from gunpowder and replaceable parts, through the industrial revolutions, to the internet era each shaped warfare. In turn, he shows you how successes on the battlefield shaped the global landscape.

Thats all I have time for at the moment. Please check back if you have more questions.

Adding Even More Books:

Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow. https://www.amazon.com/Alexander-Hamilton-Ron-Chernow/dp/0143034758. Fascinating book, very thick and goes in depth on the man who helped found the current United States, I always like a good history book, not sure how Grey would like it.

War Made New :Weapons, Warriors, and the Making of the Modern World by Max Boot

https://www.amazon.com/War-Made-New-Weapons-Warriors/dp/1592403158. Talks about how the shifts in technology helped further the world today. It was interesting in the way Gustavus Adolphus and Helmuth von Moltke created the armies we had in the 20th century. Tech things always fascinate me too.

In Search of Schrodinger's Cat by John Gribbin

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004JN1CIS/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_hsch_vapi_taft_p1_i0.

The history of quantum physics is a subject which I am not sure how it would translate to audiobook format, though helped me partially understand the quantum. May be a turn off if Grey does not want to deal physics again.

I mostly read speculative fiction, which is typically divided between the subgenres of fantasy, sci-fi, and alternate history. Alternate history is technically considered a subgenre of Sci-Fi, but I read enough of it to make it worth counting as a separate group. Within each of those subgenres, there is a wide variety of styles and some people might find themselves not a fan of one style but a fan of another. If you are not well read in these genres, then you will want to try a few different styles of story before dismissing it. I also sometimes read novelizations of historical events which have their own sort of enjoyment to them that fictional stories lack. Then there are books that are set from an animals point of view, which range from attempts to be as accurate as possible to being practically fantasy stories.

As far as individual books, I will try to give you a few of the best to pick from without being overwhelming. Some are stand alone stories while others are parts of series.

Fantasy single books:

After the Downfall

Fantasy series:

The Dresden Files

A Song of Ice and Fire aka Game of Thrones

Sci-Fi single books:

Slow Train to Arcturus

Mother of Demons

Sci-Fi series:

The Thrawn Trilogy There are a great many Star Wars books worth the read, but this is definitely the place to start.

Ender's Game and Ender's Shadow

Alternate History single books:

The Guns of the South

1824: The Arkansas War Technically this is a sequel to an earlier book, but this one is leagues better and you don't need to read the first book to understand what is going on.

Alternate History series:

How Few Remain

1632

Worldwar

Non-Fiction:

Band of Brothers

War Made New This one isn't even really a novelization, just an analysis of the changes to military technology, tactics, and training over the last 500 years. Regardless, it is very well written and a great read.

Animal POV books:

Watership Down

Wilderness Champion

The Call of the Wild and White Fang These two books are by the same author and go in pretty much opposite directions. Among literature fanatics, there is no consensus over which one is better and I don't think I can decide for myself so I am recommending both.

Edit: I forgot to mention, the first book in the 1632 series is available online for free. This is not a pirated version, but something the author put up himself as a part of an effort to move publishing into the modern day with technology and make books more accessible to readers.