100 Decisive Battles from Ancient Times to the Present by Paul Davis. Oxford University Press 2001. Xii + 462 pp., table of contents, maps, illustrations, bibliography, index. $18.95 (paperback edition). Five years ago, when this reviewer was a more responsible citizen and contributed regularly to Cry "Havoc!" I wrote an article for Issue #13 (February 1996) with the rather pretentious title “Rapier or Bludgeon? Schwarzkopf, Schlieffen and the Holy Grail of Decisive Battle”. As the title indicates, I offered to help the reader decide when, how and if a battle can be considered “decisive”. I began with the premise that 1991’s Desert Storm had been such a battle, even though hindsight shows that Saddam Hussain’s hold on Iraq, and in the long term, his military power had not been decisively vanquished. However, it was the avowed purpose of the operation to clear the Iraqi poseur’s troops from Kuwait and in the process to curtail his ability to assert any further threat to his neighbors. This, despite all the shoulda-couldas, was accomplished quite decisively, thank you, in terms of battlefield success. Many still argue that ten years later the fellow still sits firmly in Baghdad and most likely has rebuilt his arsenal of CBW goodies, or that Bush senior should have gone for the jugular, creamed the Republican Guard (disregarding the journalist’s carping about our overkill on the “Highway of Death”) and not worried so much about the complexities of nation-building in the resulting chaos. Thus, they reason, the battle, or campaign, was not so “decisive” after all. But that’s all beside the point, now isn’t it? Look at the concept as applied to our ongoing struggle against world terrorism, neatly encapsulated under the rubric Operation Infinite Justice. Were the battles at Mazar al Sharif, Jalalabad, in and around Kabul, or Tora-Bora “decisive”, or were they even “battles”, as we know them? What were the US objectives? Capture and “bring to justice” Ossama bin Laden and his Al Queada honchos? After four months this highly personalized goal still eludes us. Liberate Afghanistan from the Taliban tyranny and create conditions for the accession of a more representative government - one that won’t harbor anti-American terrorists? Perhaps the noted battles may have been decisive in that restricted sense; however the patchwork of tribe, gang and clique that straddles the Hindu Kush has defied centuries of “nation-building”. Rid the world of the scourge of terrorism, as the resident and his spokesmen have consistently reiterated? But what a slippery slope and an elusive framework. Despite the administration’s valiant efforts to hobble together a “coalition” similar to that which helped liberate Kuwait in 1991, we find some hard-slogging as we contemplate the diffuse networks of holy warriors ensconced in Somalia, Kenya, Sudan, Algeria and other nations. These hosts’ inability or unwillingness to stop the vermin from nesting has threatened to embroil us in eternal brushfire actions. Even the more modest goal of stopping the worldwide Al Quaida labyrinth from mounting further attacks against the US both at home and abroad has led us far astray. The cross-currents of the Arab-Israeli and Indo-Pak conflicts further dilute and conflate our goals vis-à-vis terrorism, rendering “decisive battle” a manifest eccentricity at the beginning of our 21st century. My interest in this topic was rekindled by an extended discussion that took place in late 1997 on the LISTSERV H-WAR, one of the many H-NET discussion lists. The discussion was initiated by Paul K. Davis on October 16, 1997; Dr. Davis invited a discussion of the "Top 100 Decisive Battles" by offering up his own list. After reviewing some past efforts by prominent military historians, Davis suggested that decisive battles should have the following attributes: A victory which has major consequences on succeeding events. A battle in which, had the loser won, major changes would have taken place, or A battle which changes the nature of warfare by introducing something (weapons or tactics, for example) or someone significant. One of the shortcomings of all lists, both the prototypes by Creasy, Fuller and Liddell Hart and the members’ recommendations was the preponderance of “Western” (i.e., Euro-Brit and Caucasion American) battles. When Asian battles were included, they tended to be the ones involving the U.S - specifically the great Pacific Theater in WWII. One Asian specialist was quite surprised at that some very consequential Asian battles were omitted, such as the Arab-Chinese engagement at the Talas River in 751. This encounter is widely considered to have defined the limits of territorial expansion in Central Asia for the respective combatants. Even the decisive 1905 Japanese defeat of the Russian navy at the Tsushima Straits was overlooked on H-War. This fleet action marked the first modern era decisive victory by an Asian power over a European one and was studied by Great Power naval establishments for decades to come for its tactical lessons. The concept of a "decisive" battle was also kicked around quite a bit in the discussion. Several participants questioned the basic premise that there was or is such a thing as a "decisive battle." Essentially, some of the lists members dismissed the notion of a decisive battle as being the hallmark of the pre-World War II, less scholarly period of military history. That epoch emphasized "Great Men" who had a singular effect on historical change through the medium of the "Great Battle”. The perpetual search for the key to victory conforms to the concept of a single coup de main as the ideal goal of all military exertions. The Daddy of All Decisive Battle books was that 1856 classic, Sir Edward Creasey’s Decisive Battles of the World, which in his day ended with Waterloo. (The Crimea was too recent to measure). Russell Weigley, in his 1993 Age Of Battles, argues that despite the alleged pursuit of decisive engagements from Breitenfeld to Waterloo, the battle was rarely, if ever, the deciding factor in that period. That is, an individual fight did not resolve an entire war "on an afternoon." John Keegan, in his landmark study, The Face Of Battle, tracked this attribute through modern military history, whose leading lights have all written catalogues of "decisive battles since ...". See, for example, Liddell Hart's original configuration of his well known book on Strategy of the Indirect Approach and J. F. C.Fuller's three-volume A Military History of the Western World. Each of these works highlights history's deciding moments, all that goes in between comprising mere footnotes and parentheses. This drum and trumpet school tended to ignore the war’s cultural context, which should include the social and economic (i.e. “civilian”) backdrop as well as the combat itself. One of the most knowledgeable critic of the Euro-Centric approach pointed out the significant battle in 1054 at the Kunlun Pass in southern China (today's Guangxi Autonomous Region). That scholar held that the Chinese battle was fully as decisive for world history as was a battle which occurred twelve years later in 1066, in what is today known as England, at Hastings ---actually Senlac Ridge. So finally, a thousand words later I finally get to the book. The book is, of course, what Dr. Davis was developing in his moderated discussion on the Internet. I became involved when I questioned the inclusion of the siege of Jerusalem in 69-70 AD when the 66 AD battle at Beth Horon Pass was the First Jewish Revolt’s deciding moment, all else being anti-climactic futility, though often dramatic and always quite knife-to-the-bone deadly. So in order to defend my choice of the relatively little known encounter at that graveyard of ancient armies (Gideon and the Midianites, Judah Maccabee and the Seleucid Syrians, et.al.), I eventually wound up writing the chapter. Paul Davis wrote up the vast preponderance of the 100 . I believe mine is one of about four or five chapters that were hired out to other authors. So, what of the Asian battles? Not counting those where Western opponents were met, I counted seven. To be sure, Tsushima was there (along with that war’s major land fight, Mukden) but these were between Russians and Japanese so didn’t figure in the total. Of combats between non-whites, the book numbers: Kaihsia (203 BC), Hsiang-yang (1268-1273), Hakata Bay (1274 and 1281), Panipat (1526), Sekigahara (1600), Shanhaikuan (1644) and Huai-hai (Suchow 1948-49). No Talas River nor did Kunlun Pass make the cut. As for other criteria for inclusion - the “decisive” standard -- one might quibble why, for example, the fall of Singapore was included among WWII engagements but not El Alamein, or why Leuctra elbows Cannae aside. However, each entry is set up in a standardized format to include forces and leaders employed, the objective, the opposing battle plans, the course of the action and the reason why the outcome justifies the battle’s coverage. The entries usually run 2 or three pages, with a few longer ones (mine was 5 ½ pages) where warranted. This allows for much fuller development than the brief blurbs in the “dictionaries” such as Eggenberger’s or Harbottle’s. Maps are included for each battle. Illustrations are sometimes superfluous, i.e. of dubious relevance or otherwise unsuitable. All-in-all this book is a worthwhile addition to the armchair general’s five-foot reference shelf. Back to Cry Havoc #36 Table of Contents Back to Cry Havoc List of Issues Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 2001 by David W. Tschanz. This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com