Beyond the Balance of Power: France and the Politics of National Security in the Era of the First World War, by Peter Jackson
| Author | Martin Horn |
| Published date | 01 March 2015 |
| Date | 01 March 2015 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0020702014564665 |
| Subject Matter | Book Reviews |
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conclusions only after a long review of key conceptual, theoretical, and historical
questions in the study of armed forces and society as well as in the study of causes
and conduct of modern wars. The writing is also neither pretentious nor portent-
ous: for anyone with even a modicum of interest in security and defence studies,
Grounded will be a joy to read. As for experts, they are bound to find it illuminating
for many reasons, not least because it is exceedingly rare to find an author who can
discuss the theories of Giulio Douhet, Hugh Trenchard, Billy Mitchell, John R.
Boyd, or John Warden as authoritatively as those of James Scott, James Q. Wilson,
or John W. Meyer.
It will be interesting to see what Farley does next with his subject matter. It is
notable, for example, that conditions under which the USAF-induced distortions
are likely to affect the White House, the National Security Council, the Department
of Defense, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and similar kitchens of power, to say nothing
of actors like the media or the mass publics, fall outside the scope of the argument
developed in this book. The same goes for conditions under which the ‘‘strategic’’
culture of airpower dominates within the USAF. Last, the chapter on the evolving
legal and moral requirements of strategic bombing provides an excellent review of
the key issues, but stops short of reflecting on the ways in which broader dynamics
of modernity enable not simply systematic targeting of civilians from the air, but
perhaps more importantly systematic forgetting of the true cost of war. On these
dimensions, historians (for example, David Edgerton, Susan Grayzel, Sven
Lindqvist, Michael Sherry, Yuki Tanaka, Marilyn B. Young), sociologists
(Michael Mann, Martin Shaw), and geographers (Derek Gregory, Ken Hewitt)
have supplied us with no shortage of perspectives that can contribute to our under-
standing of how air campaigns became a commonplace—‘‘excessively attractive,’’
to use Farley’s words (2)—form of (liberal) democratic warfare. An attempt to
integrate insights drawn from these more critical literatures into an institutionalist
explanation of (American) militarist tendencies might well end up being as pro-
vocative as Grounded.
Peter Jackson
Beyond the Balance of Power: France and the Politics of National Security in the Era of the
First World War
Cambridge: Cambridge University...
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