Understanding War

Christian P. Potholm is the DeAlva Stanwood Alexander Professor of Government at Bowdoin College. He has studied and taught about war for over 50 years. His major works on war include Winning at War: Seven Keys to Military Victory Throughout History, War Wisdom: A Cross Cultural Sampling, Liberation and Exploitation and Strategy and Conflict.

Preface
Part I Analyzing Warfare
1.Why Study Military Matters?
2.“Eros and Mars: The Nature of Humankind” -or- “Making Love AND War”
3.The Search for Fundamental Truths about War: Sun Tzu, Kautilya, Thucydides, Jomini, Clausewitz and Other Military Thinkers and Students of War
4.Geopolitics and the Long Shadow of Geography
5.The Template of Mars
“Superior Weapons Technology”
“Superior Discipline”
“Sustained but Controlled Ruthlessness”
“Receptivity to Military and Integrative Innovation”
“The Ability and Willingness to Protect Capital from People and Rulers”
“The Centrality of Superior Will”
“The Belief That There Will Always Be another War”
6.“The Decision to Drop the Atomic Bomb” -or- “Hiroshima as Seen Through the Lens of Mars”
7.“Mars is a Jealous God”: Part I The Lessons of Iraq War I-or-“Clausewitz Vindicated—For the Last Time?”
8.“Is the Template Obsolete in the Face of Insurgencies?”
Theoreticians and Practitioners
Overviews of Insurgency
Some Illustrative Case Studies: Showing the Experience of Insurgency and Counter Insurgency Across Cross-Cultural Lines
9.The American “Empire” and the Dangers Which Lie Ahead
The Empire as Empire (or Hegemon)
The Nuclear Dimension
China
Failed and Fragile States
Islamic Radical Salafists and Local and Global Insurgencies
Afghanistan: Watch on the Danube Redux
Part II Topics in War
10.Early Warfare
11.Classical Infantry: Greek
12.Classical Infantry: Roman
13.“The Horsemen Commeth”: The Centrality of Mounted Warcraft
Part I: The Mounted Horsemen of the Steppes
Part II: European Heavy Horse: Feudalism and Knighthood, Power Diffusion and Its Consequences and Later Power Centralization
Part III: Byzantium
Part IV: African Heavy Horse: Power Centralization and Power Diffusion
Part V: Arab Light(er) Horse: Flow and Ebb, Ebb and Flow
Part VI: Japanese and Chinese
Part VII: Parthian and Sassanian
Part VIII: Mongol and Later Turkic Asian Horsemen
Part IX: Indian and South Asian
14.The Vikings
15.The Gunpowder and Discipline Revolution and The Expansion of the Gunpowder Empires
16.Era of the European Great Captains
Maurice of Nassau (1567-1625)
Gustavus Adolphus (1594-1632)
Charles XII (1682-1718)
Louis XIV
The Duke of Marlborough (1650-1722)
Frederick the Great (1712-1786)
17.Warfare on the Periphery and The Expansion of the European Gunpowder Empires
18.Revolution and Civil War
19.The Real United States Is Born
American Military History (General)
War of 1812
The Mexican War
20.Further Democratization of War: The French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars Spread Nationalism to Prussia, Austria and Especially Russia
21.“The American Civil War: Fratricide in Living Color”
22.Civil Wars in Perspective
Some Illustrative Examples
23.Precursors to 20th Century War
24.World War I: “The Hypertrophy of War and the Triumph of the Defense”
25.Transition Within the Continuum: The Interwar Years
26.The Battle of Nomonhan/Khalkin Gol
27.“The Triumph of the Offense”: The War in Europe
28.World War II: “Warcraft in the Pacific: 1941–1945”
29.The Cold War and Nuclear Weapons 1946–1992
30.The Korean War: or “The Forgotten War of Great Irony”
31.Vietnam: “People’s War, Long War”
32.“Mars is a Jealous God” Part II, The Lessons of Afghanistan I and II, and Iraq II and III
Afghanistan I and II
Iraq Wars II and III
33.Weapons in War
34.Logistics in War
35.“The Daughters of Mars:” Women at War
36.Homosexuality and Warfare
37.Warriorhood
38.The Return of Warriors
39.Other Wars
40.War Novels, Short Stories, Memoires and Poetry
41.War and Anti-War Films Including Revolutionary Warfare
42.Just War/Moral War
End note