War: Ends and Means [Hardcover]

Paul Seabury (Author), Angelo Codevilla (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 1989

Explores the different aspects of war: its causes, methods, endings, and justifications - and along the way demolishes many current myths about war and peace.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

War can be preferable to peace: This is the unconventional argument of Seabury, a political scientist at Berkeley, and Codevilla, a Research Fellow of the Hoover Institute. Their smoothly written monograph surveys war's causes and discusses how wars are fought. Its major contribution, however, is its development of the thesis that human intercourse produces objective circumstances in which kill or be killed becomes the best option. Since 1900 three times as many lives have been lost as a result of shootings, gassings, and famines inflicted on defenseless victims than have been sacrificed to military operations. In this context the kinds of war a nation will fight depends less on the material factors stressed in such works as Paul Kennedy's The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers (LJ 12/87) than on the kinds of peace leaders and people believe available and are willing to accept. A controversial but persuasive book. Recommended.
- Dennis Showalter, Colorado Coll., Colorado Springs
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

"...shrewd in its analysis of the relationship between strategy and operations." -- New York Review of Books

"A provocative review of the many verities about war." -- Lt. Gen. William A. Odom, director of national security studies, Hudson Institute

"A wide-ranging, literate, and insightful work." -- Eliot A. Cohen, director of strategic studies, SAIS, Johns Hopkins University

"An astonishing achievement of compression . . . a one-volume book on warfare that is actually instructive." -- Edward N. Luttwak, Center for Strategic and International Studies --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 304 pages
• Publisher: Basic Books; First edition (April 1989)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0465090672
• ISBN-13: 978-0465090679
• Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 6.5 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #848,403 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Primer, August 30, 2000

By 

Richard A. Aubrey (Flushing, MI United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: War: Ends and Means (Hardcover)

The authors refer to their book as a primer on war. It is the clearest, most useful book for those who nothing of war (or who only know things which are wrong)I have ever read. I recommended it, to no avail, to a committee of faith-based Social Justice and Peacemaking types. They, no doubt clinging to their useful errors, avoided the subject. The authors specifically refer to those who know little or nothing of war (most students these days)and they say the book is written for these folks.

One myth or old chestnut after another is analyzed and demolished. Their use of simple (and I emphasize "simple"--nothing complex) logic and historical examples known to almost all of us--nothing abstruse here--are brutal in the rapid and total destruction of some of the most commonly-accepted misunderstandings of war. For example, they discuss the Phoenix program of Viet Nam days. While acknowledging that it turned sour, they make plain what those involved knew. The Phoenix program worked, killing the cadres, the troublemakers, without killing scores or hundreds of unwilling conscripts and unlucky civilians. While being successful, it deprived the anti-war side of their masses of civilian casualties they needed to make their case. It was a two-fer. Thus, it had to be, as it was, demonized. They make frequent use of Aquinas and Augustine and the Just War Doctrine. It is not that we like war, Augustine said, but that our enemy's peace may be deadly to us. People may be murdered en masse, as we see in this century, without being in war, and fighting to avoid that is certainly moral. This book suffers from one disadvantage: Those who need it most may feel themselves superior to its message.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The best war primer known to modern man, October 26, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: War: Ends and Means (Paperback)

Angelo Codevilla introduced me to the worlds of war in the late 1980's and later to intelligence in the ealry 1990's, leading partly to my career.

This book is what a modern Clauswhitz would write. Speaking in plain english on diverse subjects, he collects the type of thinking necessary to war in one book. I give this book (which is hard to find, but I managed) to every student of modern affairs.

It is hard to find the correct praise to lavish on this book without gushing. It is simply the best book of a primer on war that exists anywhere. More than introducing the student to war, it introduces him to thinking in war's pragmatic thought patterns- to the necessity that war demands.

Better, Codevilla uses his talent in context of historical necessity, drawing carefully from a bevy of beautifully chosen historical people and sitations.

You can do no better on the subject. Start thinking about war with War.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Uniquely insightful analysis of human and political aspects, May 3, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: War: Ends and Means (Hardcover)

I suspect that this book may suffered from the fact that it was published in '89, as so many things changed quickly after publication. The author's do a good job of discussing technical aspects of weapons and military operations, but this book's real strength is its discussion of reasons states go to war, how and why populations fight, political aspects of war, etc. I have read dozens of books on war, each good in its own way, but this book fills a badly needed niche in understanding the overall human and political dimesion to war. Having worked as a defense analyst for many years, I know that Americans suffer badly from the notion that war is a simple contest between competing technologies, and that too little thought has been given to the simple question, "why people fight?" This book is the best I have seen in addressing this question. The author's approach is not overly psychological or philosophical, much of it is "uncommon" common sense richly supported by a wealth of obscure but important historical information. This book must be read by people who want to understand what war is about. Period.