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WAR:GENEALOGY OF WESTERN IDEAS & PRACTICES CLOTH
War has been conceptualised from a military perspective, but also from ethical, legal, and philosophical viewpoints. These different analytical perspectives are all necessary to understand the many dimensions war, the continua on which war is situated - from small-scale to large-scale, from limited in time or long, from less to extremely destructive, with varying aims, and degrees of involvement of populations.
Western civilisations have conceptualised war in binary ways denying the variety of manifestations of war along these continua. While binary definitions are necessary to capture different conditions legally, they hamper analysis. The binaries include inter-State and intestine war, just war and unjust war (the latter including insurgencies), citizen-soldiers and professionals, civilians and combatants. Yet realities have mostly straddled such demarcations. Even citizen-armies have usually included professionals, civilians have been treated as enemies and sometimes even formally defined as enemies, and rules have not conformed with binary distinctions, if they were respected at all. While customary rules governing the conduct of war have been turned into International Law, this is the only aspect of war that has developed in a fairly linear way, while the rise, disappearance, and renaissance of the just war tradition has been anything but linear. This non-linearity also applies to the brutality with which war has been fought, especially towards civilians, who for long stretches of European history must have been the main victims of war, notwithstanding increasing protection they were afforded in theory by customary law. To understand war, we must shed some of these binaries.
Western civilisations have conceptualised war in binary ways denying the variety of manifestations of war along these continua. While binary definitions are necessary to capture different conditions legally, they hamper analysis. The binaries include inter-State and intestine war, just war and unjust war (the latter including insurgencies), citizen-soldiers and professionals, civilians and combatants. Yet realities have mostly straddled such demarcations. Even citizen-armies have usually included professionals, civilians have been treated as enemies and sometimes even formally defined as enemies, and rules have not conformed with binary distinctions, if they were respected at all. While customary rules governing the conduct of war have been turned into International Law, this is the only aspect of war that has developed in a fairly linear way, while the rise, disappearance, and renaissance of the just war tradition has been anything but linear. This non-linearity also applies to the brutality with which war has been fought, especially towards civilians, who for long stretches of European history must have been the main victims of war, notwithstanding increasing protection they were afforded in theory by customary law. To understand war, we must shed some of these binaries.
448 pages, Hardcover
Published March 17, 2022
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September 8, 2026
2.5/5 stars
Heuser’s reputation for being knowledgeable in strategic studies is clearly warranted. War is an incredibly ambitious examination of the relationship between violence and the organized ideas that shape conflict between "imagined communities." She traces Western thinking on war back to six primary sources: the Hebrew Bible, Ancient Greece, Rome, Christianity, Germanic and Slavic traditions, and Islam. These influences emerge in different combinations across time and place, so it could be said that the interplay of these sources creates a tapestry unique to each actor and situation. It’s a compelling framework, and Heuser seems well-positioned to deliver on it.
Unfortunately, knowing a great deal and turning that knowledge into a readable, reliable book are different things.
For starters, this book was in dire need of an editor. In the Acknowledgements, Heuser thanks the publisher for indulging her habit of “exceeding word limits.” This indulgence is evident to the reader, and it comes at the expense of the book’s readability. The prose is frequently clogged by sloppy, winding sentences that meander through parenthetical detours and passive constructions before eventually arriving (more or less) at their point. I’m relatively well-versed in academese, but some of these circumlocutions and typos should’ve never made it past an editor.
That lack of restraint extends to the book’s structure. Sections frequently become so dense with historical examples that it was difficult to see the forest for the trees. Heuser herself notes in the Introduction that “this is not a book designed to be read cover to cover by those interested in specific ideas only.” Fair enough, but even a book like that needs to help readers understand what its examples add up to. Too often, this felt less like a polished, sustained argument and more like an exhaustive (and exhausting) database of historical citations.
I could have lived with the frustrating prose and excessive detail. What ultimately soured me on the book was the growing sense that I couldn’t trust how those citations were being used – particularly in its treatment of Islam.
To be clear: I am not Muslim. I have plenty of critiques around how many members of each Abrahamic religion weaponize their texts. But Heuser appears to have a vendetta against Islam in particular. Allow me to provide some examples.
In Chapter 5, she asserts the authors of the Quran “rejoiced in punitive acts performed by Muslims,” citing Sura 22:45, which reads: “‘How many a township have We destroyed while it was sinful, so that it lieth (to this day) in ruins, and (how many) a deserted well and lofty tower!’” As Heuser should know, this passage is written from God's perspective, using the "Royal We." It's not rejoicing "in punitive acts performed by Muslims.” Divine slaughter isn't my favorite concept either, but that doesn’t make it acceptable to misrepresent who is doing the slaughtering.
In Chapter 8, she describes a “Quranic worldview [that] presupposes a constant war” between the Dar al-Islâm and the Dar al-Harb. These concepts are not Quranic; they were developed by Islamic jurists centuries later. A couple sentences later, she asserts that the Quran contains “direct instructions to fight the infidel, especially if they obstructed the spreading of Islam.” She cites Sura 9:5 and Sura 2:190-3 – verses regarding specific belligerent Arabian polytheist tribes who broke peace treaties, not a blanket command against all non-Muslims. Heuser elides the distinction between fighting an enemy and forcibly converting someone, as well as the obvious relevance of 2:256: “There is no compulsion in religion.”
The most egregious examples, however, appear in Chapter 10. Heuser attributes mass rape in Bangladesh’s 1971 war of independence to “Muslim leadership.” Both victims and perpetrators were predominantly Muslim, yet she chooses to identify the perpetrators by religion rather than name the Pakistani military. What, exactly, is “Muslim” doing in that sentence? If religion is supposed to explain the violence, she needs to establish that connection rather than simply insinuate it.
She proceeds to decry “deliberate encouragement of rape, by Muslim rebel groups in Darfur targeting local non-Muslim women.” This claim took my breath away. First, the Amnesty International report Heuser cites implicates the Sudanese government army and government-sponsored militias as the primary perpetrators – not rebel groups. Second, there is no evidence to suggest any targeting of "local non-Muslim women" as a defining pattern. This is the kind of claim I would expect to see on an AfD message board, not in the work of a serious scholar.
By this point, I was struggling to distinguish carelessness from intellectual dishonesty. And the problems weren’t confined to Islam.
In Chapter 9, Heuser inexplicably claims that nuclear weapons "definitely" accelerated the end of WW2. I’ll grant that she’s the expert here and I am not, but this by no means seems to be a consensus view. Soviet invasion of Manchuria, anyone?
On the same page, she suggests that John Meirsheimer “would be glad to see [nuclear weapons owned by all” countries – an incredible mischaracterization of his support for selective proliferation. The 1990 Mearsheimer article she cites contains this rather unambiguous sentence: "Ideally, as I have argued, nuclear weapons would spread to Germany, but to no other state."
Then, in the penultimate chapter, she writes that “Kazakhs and other Central Asian groups” were resettled by the Soviets – if any evidence exists to support this claim, I would love to see it. My understanding is that Kazakhstan and Central Asia were major destinations for deported peoples.
The cumulative effect of these examples was a loss of trust. As a non-academic, I’m not equipped to check every assertion in a book of this scope. When the claims I DO scrutinize turn out to be misleading, poorly supported, or contradicted by the sources cited, what am I supposed to do with the rest? Heuser’s background in NATO and the Bundeswehr brings relevant experience, but it also comes with its own ideological baggage.
That also colored my reaction to the book’s (self-admitted) Eurocentrism. Relegating Chinese, Indian, and other non-Western strategic traditions to the distant margins feels like a missed opportunity in an era where the Western monopoly on international law is so visibly fractured. I understand the need to define a scope, and this is certainly a less fair criticism than what I've already mentioned. Still, after reading her treatment of Islam, I found it difficult not to wonder how much that frame of reference shaped her judgments as well as her choice of material.
There is a great deal of knowledge in War. But the book repeatedly asks the reader to work too hard to follow its argument and then gives them reasons to doubt it. I came away impressed by Heuser’s erudition, exhausted by her prose, and frustrated that a book with so much potential left me questioning how much of it I could actually trust.
Heuser’s reputation for being knowledgeable in strategic studies is clearly warranted. War is an incredibly ambitious examination of the relationship between violence and the organized ideas that shape conflict between "imagined communities." She traces Western thinking on war back to six primary sources: the Hebrew Bible, Ancient Greece, Rome, Christianity, Germanic and Slavic traditions, and Islam. These influences emerge in different combinations across time and place, so it could be said that the interplay of these sources creates a tapestry unique to each actor and situation. It’s a compelling framework, and Heuser seems well-positioned to deliver on it.
Unfortunately, knowing a great deal and turning that knowledge into a readable, reliable book are different things.
For starters, this book was in dire need of an editor. In the Acknowledgements, Heuser thanks the publisher for indulging her habit of “exceeding word limits.” This indulgence is evident to the reader, and it comes at the expense of the book’s readability. The prose is frequently clogged by sloppy, winding sentences that meander through parenthetical detours and passive constructions before eventually arriving (more or less) at their point. I’m relatively well-versed in academese, but some of these circumlocutions and typos should’ve never made it past an editor.
That lack of restraint extends to the book’s structure. Sections frequently become so dense with historical examples that it was difficult to see the forest for the trees. Heuser herself notes in the Introduction that “this is not a book designed to be read cover to cover by those interested in specific ideas only.” Fair enough, but even a book like that needs to help readers understand what its examples add up to. Too often, this felt less like a polished, sustained argument and more like an exhaustive (and exhausting) database of historical citations.
I could have lived with the frustrating prose and excessive detail. What ultimately soured me on the book was the growing sense that I couldn’t trust how those citations were being used – particularly in its treatment of Islam.
To be clear: I am not Muslim. I have plenty of critiques around how many members of each Abrahamic religion weaponize their texts. But Heuser appears to have a vendetta against Islam in particular. Allow me to provide some examples.
In Chapter 5, she asserts the authors of the Quran “rejoiced in punitive acts performed by Muslims,” citing Sura 22:45, which reads: “‘How many a township have We destroyed while it was sinful, so that it lieth (to this day) in ruins, and (how many) a deserted well and lofty tower!’” As Heuser should know, this passage is written from God's perspective, using the "Royal We." It's not rejoicing "in punitive acts performed by Muslims.” Divine slaughter isn't my favorite concept either, but that doesn’t make it acceptable to misrepresent who is doing the slaughtering.
In Chapter 8, she describes a “Quranic worldview [that] presupposes a constant war” between the Dar al-Islâm and the Dar al-Harb. These concepts are not Quranic; they were developed by Islamic jurists centuries later. A couple sentences later, she asserts that the Quran contains “direct instructions to fight the infidel, especially if they obstructed the spreading of Islam.” She cites Sura 9:5 and Sura 2:190-3 – verses regarding specific belligerent Arabian polytheist tribes who broke peace treaties, not a blanket command against all non-Muslims. Heuser elides the distinction between fighting an enemy and forcibly converting someone, as well as the obvious relevance of 2:256: “There is no compulsion in religion.”
The most egregious examples, however, appear in Chapter 10. Heuser attributes mass rape in Bangladesh’s 1971 war of independence to “Muslim leadership.” Both victims and perpetrators were predominantly Muslim, yet she chooses to identify the perpetrators by religion rather than name the Pakistani military. What, exactly, is “Muslim” doing in that sentence? If religion is supposed to explain the violence, she needs to establish that connection rather than simply insinuate it.
She proceeds to decry “deliberate encouragement of rape, by Muslim rebel groups in Darfur targeting local non-Muslim women.” This claim took my breath away. First, the Amnesty International report Heuser cites implicates the Sudanese government army and government-sponsored militias as the primary perpetrators – not rebel groups. Second, there is no evidence to suggest any targeting of "local non-Muslim women" as a defining pattern. This is the kind of claim I would expect to see on an AfD message board, not in the work of a serious scholar.
By this point, I was struggling to distinguish carelessness from intellectual dishonesty. And the problems weren’t confined to Islam.
In Chapter 9, Heuser inexplicably claims that nuclear weapons "definitely" accelerated the end of WW2. I’ll grant that she’s the expert here and I am not, but this by no means seems to be a consensus view. Soviet invasion of Manchuria, anyone?
On the same page, she suggests that John Meirsheimer “would be glad to see [nuclear weapons owned by all” countries – an incredible mischaracterization of his support for selective proliferation. The 1990 Mearsheimer article she cites contains this rather unambiguous sentence: "Ideally, as I have argued, nuclear weapons would spread to Germany, but to no other state."
Then, in the penultimate chapter, she writes that “Kazakhs and other Central Asian groups” were resettled by the Soviets – if any evidence exists to support this claim, I would love to see it. My understanding is that Kazakhstan and Central Asia were major destinations for deported peoples.
The cumulative effect of these examples was a loss of trust. As a non-academic, I’m not equipped to check every assertion in a book of this scope. When the claims I DO scrutinize turn out to be misleading, poorly supported, or contradicted by the sources cited, what am I supposed to do with the rest? Heuser’s background in NATO and the Bundeswehr brings relevant experience, but it also comes with its own ideological baggage.
That also colored my reaction to the book’s (self-admitted) Eurocentrism. Relegating Chinese, Indian, and other non-Western strategic traditions to the distant margins feels like a missed opportunity in an era where the Western monopoly on international law is so visibly fractured. I understand the need to define a scope, and this is certainly a less fair criticism than what I've already mentioned. Still, after reading her treatment of Islam, I found it difficult not to wonder how much that frame of reference shaped her judgments as well as her choice of material.
There is a great deal of knowledge in War. But the book repeatedly asks the reader to work too hard to follow its argument and then gives them reasons to doubt it. I came away impressed by Heuser’s erudition, exhausted by her prose, and frustrated that a book with so much potential left me questioning how much of it I could actually trust.
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