Military Orientalism: Eastern War Through Western Eyes

274 Pages·2009·0.998 MB·English

by  Patrick Porter

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PATRICK PORTER is a lecturer in the Praise for Military Orientalism Westerners have long fetishized the idea of “Orien-
R
Defense Studies Department at the British tal” warfare, hoping to either emulate the strategies
Defense Academy, King’s College, University of “This important new book takes a fresh and detailed look at the role of foreign armies or assimilate members of Eastern
London. of culture, culturalism, ethnocentrism, and perceptions of the ‘other’ and “martial races,” such as Sikhs or Gurkhas, into
in strategy. It should be required reading for any strategist or student their ranks. Samurai warriors, obedient to an ancient
of international aff airs who seeks to understand the complex hybrid code of chivalry and honor, and the Mongol hordes
confl icts in which we now fi nd ourselves.” —David Kilcullen, author of thundering across the steppe—these exotic visions
The Accidental Guerrilla: Fighting Small Wars in the Midst of a Big One have thrilled Western imaginations for centuries.
Yet, at the same time, today’s Eastern warriors,
“Military Orientalism seeks to expose the perils of using culture as a
such as the Taliban and Hezbollah, are treated with
means to understanding war, whether it unfolds in the East or (implic-
skepticism, and their success is acknowledged only
itly) closer to home. It is a rich and wide-ranging text that displays a
grudgingly in the West. These contradictory positions
depth of historical reading to good eff ect and is beautifully written.”
throw into question the romantic notion that race,
—Daniel Neep, University of Exeter
culture, and tradition determine how armies fi ght.
“This is a timely and important book. It is timely because culture shapes Military Orientalism argues against the idea
the confl icts in which we fi nd ourselves engaged as never before. It is that culture dictates the strategy of war. Culture is
important because smartly, comprehensively, and systematically it de- powerful, Patrick Porter asserts, but it encompasses
molishes the dangerous myth that the enemies of the West are archaic an ambiguous repertoire of ideas rather than a clear
curiosities or medieval throwbacks from another era. This is a message code of action. To divide the world into Western,
that the West needs to take to heart—and soon.”—Christopher Coker, Asiatic, or Islamic ways of war is a misconcep-
London School of Economics tion, one that profoundly impacts our approach to
present and future confl icts, especially the “War
“Patrick Porter’s skeptical but constructive approach to the ‘cultural turn’
on Terror.” Porter also emphasizes the danger of
in strategic studies and practice is the principal argument that is thus
fetishizing the exotic, which complicates a more
far missing from public offi cial and scholarly debate. Military Oriental-
accurate understanding of the enemy. Launching
ism is a provocative challenge to those among us who have embraced
a rare investigation into the history of this trend
a cultural theory of strategy too enthusiastically and uncritically. This
as it has appeared in the work of Herodotus and
timely book is a must-read corrective to the fallacies in the current
numerous other fi ctional and nonfi ctional narra-
unduly cultural strategic orthodoxy.”—Colin Gray, University of Reading
tives, Porter strikes at the heart of the fear, envy,
and wonder inspired by the Oriental warrior.
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS / NEW YORK
www.cup.columbia.edu
ISBN 978-0-231-15414-7
Jacket Design: Fatima Jamadar
Eastern War Through Western Eyes
Jacket Image: Samurai of the Chosyu clan,
during the Boshin War period by Felice Beato
taken from Wikipedia under Commons basis 9 780231 154147
COLUMBIA
MILITARY ORIENTALISM
CRITICAL WAR STUDIES SERIES
Series Editors
Tarak Barkawi (Centre of International Studies, Cambridge University)
and Shane Brighton (Birkbeck College, University of London)
War transforms the social and political orders in which we live, just as it
obliterates our precious certainties. Nowhere is this more obvious than
in the fate of truths offered about war itself. War regularly undermines
expectations, strategies and theories, and along with them the credibility
of those in public life and the academy presumed to speak with authority
about it. A fundamental reason for this is the frequently narrow and
impoverished intellectual resources that dominate the study of war.
Critical War Studies begins with the recognition that the unsettling
character of war is a profound opportunity for scholarship. Accordingly,
the series welcomes submissions from across the academy as well as from
refl ective practitioners. It provides an open forum for critical scholarship
concerned with war and armed forces and seeks to foster and develop
the nascent encounter between war and contemporary approaches to
society, history, politics and philosophy. It is a vehicle to reconceive the
fi eld of war studies, expand the sites where war is studied, and open the
field to new voices
DAVID KILCULLEN
The Accidental Guerrilla––Losing Small Wars in the Midst of a Big One
PATRICK PORTER
Military Orientalism––Eastern War Through Western Eyes
PATRICK PORTER
Military Orientalism
Eastern War Through Western Eyes
Columbia University Press
Publishers Since 1893
New York Chichester, West Sussex
Copyright © 2009 Patrick Porter
All rights reserved
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Porter, Patrick, 1976–
Military orientalism : Eastern war through Western eyes / Patrick Porter.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-231-15414-7 (alk. paper)
e-ISBN 978-0-231-80040-2
1. Military art and science—Asia. 2. War and society—Asia. 3. Asia—History,
Military. 4. Asia—Foreign public opinion. 5. Orientalism—Western countries.
6. East and West. 7. Culture conflict. 8. Military art and science—Western countries.
9. War and society—Western countries. 10. Public opinion—Western countries. I. Title.
UA830.P66 2009
355.02095—dc22
2009012515
∞
Columbia University Press books are printed on permanent and durable acid-free paper.
This book is printed on paper with recycled content.
Printed in India
c 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
References to Internet Web sites (URLs) were accurate at the time of writing. Neither
the author nor Columbia University Press is responsible for URLs that may have expired
or changed since the manuscript was prepared.
‘We are facing an army of barbarians in Korea, but they are barbarians as trained,
as relentless, as reckless of life, and as skilled…as the hordes of Genghis Khan.’
(Hanson Baldwin, New York Times, July 1950)
‘The Oriental tradition, however, had not been eliminated…On September 11,
2001 it returned in an absolutely traditional form. Arabs, appearing suddenly out
of empty space like their desert raider ancestors, assaulted the heartlands of West-
ern power, in a terrifying surprise raid.’
(John Keegan, October 2001)
‘American ground troops are going to have to learn to be more like Apaches.’
(Robert Kaplan, 2004)
‘What do they know, this bunch of flip-flop, dress-wearing bastards… Fuck, they
actually know what they are doing.’
(Corporal Quentin Poll, Afghanistan, 2006)
As America and its allies fear military failure abroad, culture is being touted as the
key to strategy and even the essence of warfare. The War on Terror has revived
interest in the foreign and the bizarre. But what is the relationship between war and
culture? And what drives our fascination in the first place? Our fixation with the
exotic nature of our enemies is powerful but often misleading. Powerful, because
we articulate anxieties about the West through visions of the enemy, as irrational
fanatic, noble savage, mystical genius, or timeless primitive. Misleading, because
‘Eastern’ warriors are mostly not static cultural captive. They are dynamic strategic
actors. From Imperial Japan to the Taliban, from warlords to suicide bombers, we
find people breaking traditions and remaking cultures in pursuit of victory. Culture
is better approached not as a clear script for action, but as an ambiguous repertoire
of ideas through which people make strategy. It is this lack of cultural determinacy
that helps explain why war is so full of surprises.
CONTENTS
Acknowledgements ix
Introduction 1
Pepsi Cola versus Death 1
The Cultural Turn 6
Definitions: Orientalism and Culture 13
The Argument 15
Some Caveats 19
Chapter Outline 21
1. The Embattled West 23
Western Confidence, Western Crisis 24
The Hybridity of War 32
Savage Wars of Peace: the Colonial Context 37
The Twentieth Century: ‘Yellow Peril’ and
‘Ancient Hatreds’ 48
2. Rethinking War and Culture 55
Why Culture Matters 56
Culture, Colonialism, and Myth 57
War and the Exotic 60
Tribal War and Primitive Fantasies 68
Eastern Wisdom? Texts and Contexts 71
Strength and Weakness 75
Culture and War: Rethinking the Relationship 82
3. Watching the Rising Sun: Observing Japan at War 85
Conclusion 109
4. The Ghost of Genghis: Mongols and the Western
Imagination 111
Introduction 111
vii
CONTENTS
Monsters or Marvels? 114
Unveiling the Captains 120
The Mongols Romanticised 127
Conclusion: the West v. Itself 140
5. Exotic Enemy? America, the Taliban and the Fog
of Culture 143
A War of Cultures 144
Busted Flush or Deathless Army? 146
The Taliban: Rise, Fall and Rise 149
The Fog of Culture 151
Breakers of Tradition 160
Conclusion 170
6. Hizballa, Israel and the 2006 ‘July War’: TheDivine Victory 171
The July War 172
Israelis and Arabs at War 175
Great Expectations, Tough Surprises 179
Great Expectations 182
Psywar and Self-Portraits: the Propaganda War 184
Making Culture Local 188
Conclusion 189
Conclusion 191
Beyond the Wild East 191
Notes 199
Index 255
viii
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
A thousand thanks to Michael Dwyer at Hurst for making the whole
project possible and steering it through, and to Columbia University
Press for agreeing to co-publish. Thanks also to the editors, Tarak
Barkawi and Shane Brighton, for the honour of including this in their
‘Critical War Studies’ series.
Others also contributed in many ways. For their advice, criticism
and support, I am indebted to Dan Neep, Theo Farrell, Jeannie John-
son, Alex Marshall, Mark Adams, Rob Dover, Huw Bennett, Paul
Domjan, Chris Tripodi, Huw Davies, Niall Barr, Vanda Wilcox, David
Betz, Katherine Brown, Derek Gregory, Tim Bird, Pauline Kusiak, Jeni
Mitchell, Stephen Biddle and Robert Saunders.
I am also grateful to participants in forums at the Institute for
National Strategic Studies in Washington, on ‘Governance and Intel-
ligence’ at Loughborough University, at the International Studies Asso-
ciation Conference, New York, and at the Defence Studies Department
at Staff College for their helpful comments on earlier versions of the
argument.
This book would not have been possible without the help of the
staffs of various archives, including the National Army Museum, the
National Archives, the Liddell Hart Archive, the National Security
Archive and the Hoover Institution.
Three chapters draw on articles in War and Society, Parameters and
Orbis; thanks to the editors and publishers for their permission to re-
publish them in a much expanded form in this book.
I am also grateful to the officers at Staff College for their curiosity,
intelligence and humour. Without their influence, this could not have
been written.
To Ronald Ridley, Nick Stargardt, Adrian Gregory, John Moses and
Hew Strachan, great mentors and teachers, go my lifelong thanks.
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