As a military professional with long experience in both the Pentagon and academe, I needed little convincing of the essential truth of this volume's subtitle. Close study of almost any strategic blunder will soon unearth appalling ignorance of military history among high-level decision makers. Military historians, well aware of that phenomenon, may approach this series of historical sermons as members of the faithful, already converted. They would do well to read on, however, for unlike many anthologies, The Past as Prologue offers a uniformly high quality of writing governed by an important theme concerning military history and its use.

That theme is relevance. Historians tend to blanch at the idea. It connotes a sense of hypocrisy, of selling out, of amateurism. Yet as Murray, Sinnreich, and their authors argue, the study of military history is essential to the military profession. There are exactly three imperfect laboratories available for soldiers to test ideas, technologies, and practice: war, the training ground, and military history. With luck, a soldier might spend an entire career in preparation for a war that never comes. If it comes, however, the price of experimentation is high in blood and treasure. Training is indispensable for military forces to avoid that price, but training can never approximate reality closely enough, especially the elements of fear, danger, and uncertainty that accompany combat. Thus, education in the art of war, mental preparation through the study of war's history, is another necessary if still inadequate laboratory for the military professional. Sadly, the three taken together are never enough.

Sadder still, military history is routinely neglected in the educations of soldiers and their civilian masters. Part 1 of this volume comprises essays on the use and neglect of history in the British and American militaries, beginning with essays by retired flag officers from both countries chronicling their own professional growth through the study of military history and lamenting that their reading was, of necessity, almost entirely self-directed. As Richard Hart Sinnreich notes in his own essay, “Despite the conventional accusation that militaries invariably prepare to refight the last war, closer examination suggests they are prone more often to ignore history, or at best to recall it carelessly, if not disingenuously” (55). Sinnreich finds the cause of this neglect in the seeming historical discontinuity wrought by the end of World War II. Technology seemed to have rendered history useless, and social scientists and systems analysts ruled the intellectual roost. Vietnam made the study of warfare anathema in academe, ghettoizing military historians. Conversely, that same failure caused American soldiers to return to history to analyze their failures. Clausewitz made a comeback, and operational art appeared in the military lexicon. Still, soldiers demand quick answers to complex problems, and that results orientation draws them toward a focus on “lessons learned” and a shallow approach to history.

The second part of the book treats the dangers of such shallowness, analyzing the failures of armies and navies on both sides of the Atlantic to study and learn from history. Paul Rahe extols Thucydides: “No work written at any time in human history is more essential to the education of a statesman and general officer” (96). Colin Gray would agree with the sentiment, but gives Clausewitz primacy. He sustains an argument against “anti-Clausewitzians,” John Keegan foremost among them, who see the beginnings of a postmodern world wherein history and strategy no longer matter. Clausewitz reasoned from his study of history that the nature of war is timeless, while its character continually evolves. As long as this remains a “strategic world,” one in which “states, groups, or individuals threaten or employ force for political ends,” Clausewitz remains relevant (123).

Advances in technology repeatedly seduce soldiers and statesmen to disregard history. Andrew Gordon demonstrates how the Victorian era's long peace and industrial revolution gave rise to generations of Royal Navy officers who were technically savvy guardians of the empire but unschooled in the Nelsonian art of war. Fortunately for Britain, a “Historical School” of officers dissented at the end of the nineteenth century and rose to leadership of the Royal Navy. Unfortunately, they did not gain supremacy until after Jutland. Jonathan Bailey examines the Russo-Japanese War with its new technologies and tactics under close scrutiny by legions of foreign observers. He analyzes the search for “lessons learned” and the human tendency to be blinded by one's preconceptions. Few observers of that war were able to see how high-velocity machine guns, concealed and indirectly fired artillery, and enormous national armies had changed the character of warfare. Racism and social Darwinism prevented senior officers from preparing for the static, bloody war that would plague Europe a decade later. Ironically, junior officers tended to be more prescient.

J. Paul Harris finds the seeds of the British Army's unpreparedness for World War II in war weariness, economic depression, and, most interesting, Liddell Hart's baleful influence. Christopher Harmon reviews the history of terrorism in an attempt to divine how it occurs, how it works, and how it might be combated. That his conclusions about the future seem unsatisfying has more to do with the complexity of the subject and the dangers of prediction than with his erudition. Francis Hoffman has the last word on the history and current state of American civil-military relations. He addresses the need for managing four gaps between military professionals on one side and their civilian superiors and society at large on the other.

Historians and soldiers alike may profit from The Past as Prologue. Soldiers unaccustomed to the study of military history should begin with an admonition from Liddell Hart (39): “There is no excuse for any literate person to be less than three-thousand years old in his mind.” Historians, especially those who disdain military history, may start with a single quotation from Tolstoy (16) in Michael Howard's introductory essay: “You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you.”