military-history

"Here it is up front: intelligence is, with thanks to Constantine FitzGibbon, knowledge of the enemy. No sooner is it written than the readers' rejoinders flash in the mind, form on the lips, strike the air: No, it's wrong, inadequate, misleading, or impolitic; or, So, what else is new? Rest assured, dear rejoinder-ers, that these objections will be handled long before the last page is reached... so many of those intelligencers who have tried to define intelligence have grievously botched the job. Finally, unless intelligence is properly understood, the country's intelligence agencies, faced with changing targets and priorities, may lose sight of their proper task."

"For producers of intelligence, however, the equation "intelligence = information" is too vague to provide real guidance in their work. To professionals in the field, mere data is not intelligence; thus these definitions are incomplete. Think of how many names are in the telephone book, and how few of those names anyone ever seeks. It is what people do with data and information that gives them the special quality that we casually call "intelligence.""

""Indeed, even today, we have no accepted definition of intelligence. The term is defined anew by each author who addresses it, and these definitions rarely refer to one another or build off what has been written before. Without a clear idea of what intelligence is, how can we develop a theory to explain how it works?"

"Formulating a brief definition of so broad a term as intelligence is like making a microscopic portrait of a continent, and the product of this effort is likely to have less value than the process of arriving at it, the reexamination of our own thinking as we seek to pinpoint the essentials of the concept."

"The debate within Intelligence studies over its central conceptual term is by no means a discipline-specific problem. International security experts have debated the term “terrorism” ad nauseam, while biologistshave been at war over the term “species” for over two centuries. In contrast to these parallel debates over the respective essences of “terrorism” or “species”, scholars of intelligence add that intelligence is under-theorized. In short, they posit the following: if we think harder we could get a better, more functional, definition of intelligence."

"A game for boys from twelve years of age to one hundred and fifty and for that more intelligent sort of girl who likes boys' games and books."

"Strange game. The only winning move is not to play."

"It was the fate of Europe to be always a battleground. Differences in race, in religion, in political genius and social ideals, seemed always ... to be invitations to contest by battle."

"War is as old as Europe. Our continent bears the scars of spears and swords, canons and guns, trenches and tanks, and more. The tragedy of it all resonates in the words of Herodotus, 25 centuries ago: “In Peace, Sons bury their Fathers. In War, Fathers bury their Sons.” Yet, … after two terrible wars engulfed the continent and the world with it, … finally lasting peace came to Europe. In those grey days, its cities were in ruins, the hearts of many still simmering with mourning and resentment. How difficult it then seemed, as Winston Churchill said, “to regain the simple joys and hopes that make life worth living“. As a child born in Belgium just after the war, I heard the stories first-hand. My grandmother spoke about the Great War. In 1940, my father, then seventeen, had to dig his own grave. He got away; otherwise I would not be here today. So what a bold bet it was, for Europe’s Founders, to say, yes, we can break this endless cycle of violence, we can stop the logic of vengeance, we can build a brighter future, together. What power of the imagination."

"But Elias did propose an exogenous trigger to get the whole thing started, indeed, two triggers. The first was the consolidation of a genuine Leviathan after centuries of anarchy in Europe’s feudal patchwork of baronies and fiefs. Centralized monarchies gained in strength, brought the warring knights under their control, and extended their tentacles into the outer reaches of their kingdoms. According to the military historian Quincy Wright, Europe had five thousand independent political units (mainly baronies and principalities) in the 15th century, five hundred at the time of the Thirty Years’ War in the early 17th, two hundred at the time of Napoleon in the early 19th, and fewer than thirty in 1953. The consolidation of political units was in part a natural process of agglomeration in which a moderately powerful warlord swallowed his neighbors and became a still more powerful warlord. But the process was accelerated by what historians call the military revolution: the appearance of gunpowder weapons, standing armies, and other expensive technologies of war that could only be supported by a large bureaucracy and revenue base. A guy on a horse with a sword and a ragtag band of peasants was no match for the massed infantry and artillery that a genuine state could put on the battlefield. As the sociologist Charles Tilly put it, “States make war and vice-versa.” Turf battles among knights were a nuisance to the increasingly powerful kings, because regardless of which side prevailed, peasants were killed and productive capacity was destroyed that from the kings’ point of view would be better off stoking their revenues and armies. And once they got into the peace business—“the king’s peace,” as it was called—they had an incentive to do it right. For a knight to lay down his arms and let the state deter his enemies was a risky move, because his enemies could see it as a sign of weakness. The state had to keep up its end of the bargain, lest everyone lose faith in its peacekeeping powers and resume their raids and vendettas."

"[H]istorical patterns are clear: When Europeans feel sufficiently threatened–even when the threat's concocted nonsense–they don't just react, they overreact with stunning ferocity. One of their more humane (and frequently employed) techniques has been ethnic cleansing."

"Most obvious to historians is the part tribal and later communal differences have played in the violent conflicts that have been Europe’s default setting. These conflicts emerged from the Middle Ages as an ingrained, almost ritualized, addiction to war, practised by youths mostly still in their teens and twenties, men such as Clovis, Frederick II of Germany, Edward III of England, Charles V of Spain, Louis XIV and Napoleon. At this level, Europe’s story has been a tragedy of competing virilities. Each of the treaties that have waymarked history–Augsburg, Westphalia, Utrecht, Vienna, Versailles–has struggled to keep the peace but has done so for little more than two generations before war resumed. Even Potsdam in 1945 lasted only until the fall of the Soviet Union in 1989. Now the conspicuous lack of a post-cold-war settlement is putting Europe’s diplomacy under renewed strain. The continent’s DNA seems to allow people to live calmly with each other only as long as the memory of the last bout of bloodletting survives. A note of wisdom from the past might be that of the dying Louis XIV, ‘Above all, remain at peace with your neighbours. I loved war too much.’ Whether Europe’s belligerence can be attributed to the fractiousness of its original tribes I cannot tell."

"The snowy north is our fatherland; There our hearth crackles on the stormy beach. There our sinewy arm grew by the sword, There our chests burned with faith and honour.We watered our snorting horse in the Neva's bath; He swam across the Vistula as happy as to a feast, He carried our avenging steel over the Rhine, He drank the emperor's toast from the Danube.And if we ride forth over ash and gravel, From the hoofs spring sparks of light, Each cut like the blow of a hammer descends, And for the world a future day dawns.Take heart, you who dwell in darkness and chains! We’re coming, we’re coming, we will free your hand. Slaves do not sigh in our frosty North; Freeborn we ride into the field for God’s word.At Breitenfeld we took Pappenheim into our arms; We wrote on Kronenberg’s armour our name; We burnt Tilly’s beard grey at Lech; We bled with our King’s blood at Lützen’s hedge.And if we ride far from our northern track, To glowing grapes and bleeding wounds, Then the trumpets call the message of our victory. Cut them down, brave ranks! Forward! With us is God."