La cultura de la guerra y la guerra total

El título de este post suena a alguna obra de Victor Davis Hanson o de John Keegan. Casi...cúanto me falta.
Estoy con poco tiempo, voy a hacer un post ladri dedicado a dos reviews de libros que no leí,
2 reviews hechos para el Michigan war studies review.

Uno sobre la cultura de la guerra en la Alemania imperial, informativo y complementario para los que vieron el otro jueves el muy buen capítulo sobre las escenarios coloniales y ultramarinos de la serie documental sobre la Gran guerra emitida por Encuentro. Allí en Africa, Asia y en el mar, donde peleaban como caballeros, el review de este libro viene a dar otra idea. El primer genocidio del siglo es un gesto poco caballeresco.
Otro sobre una tesis, fallida según el crítico, de que las guerras napoleónicas de las que hablábamos el otro dia vendrían a ser la primera guerra total de la historia, por ser total el grado en que se involocra la población civil.
Aunque exagerado, es pintoresco el contraste que marca el autor entre esta supuesta primera guerra total inaugurada con la revolución francesa, y el old way. En la cita hay algo le va sonar a Mack y algo a Hugo.

The first two chapters deal with the epoch before the French Revolution—the Ancien Régime. Here we learn that warfare in the Old Regime was an expression of aristocratic culture and therefore a fairly ridiculous business, essentially a sport for the nobility, who led the armies of Europe in a kind of military minuet or chess game, each side maneuvering to achieve minor advantage while avoiding battles, which were indeed rare but often very bloody, further encouraging avoidance. The evident restraint with which the great powers fought one another, and in so doing observed the rules that protected civilians and prisoners of war from war’s violence, reflected the strictly limited aims of warfare itself. Bell builds on this picture of contemporary limited war to expose at some length the hopes of Enlightened Europe, articulated by men of Reason from Fénelon to Kant, that under a rational New Regime this absurd spectacle would simply disappear. The weakness of these chapters is that on both themes he has exaggerated greatly.

Bell’s account simply ignores other determinants of limited warfare in the Old Regime—the balance of European power, the tremendous financial burden of maintaining armed forces and replacing their losses, operational methods imposed by primitive infantry weapons and highly developed systems of fortification, and situationally defined limits on strategic objectives. In doing so, Bell has rehearsed an old, flimsy stereotype of Old Regime warfare—effete generals leading brave but incompetent officers who command peasant‑soldiers too brutalized to run away in battle.

Cuánto nos dicen los conflictos del hombre.