Grand Strategies: Literature, Statecraft, and World Order

by Charles Hill

“The international world of states and their modern system is a literary realm,” writes Charles Hill in this powerful work on the practice of international relations. “It is where the greatest issues of the human condition are played out.”A distinguished lifelong diplomat and educator, Hill aims to revive the ancient tradition of statecraft as practiced by humane and broadly educated men and women. Through lucid and compelling discussions of classic literary works from Homer to Rushdie, Grand Strategies represents a merger of literature and international relations, inspired by the conviction that “a grand strategist . . . needs to be immersed in classic texts from Sun Tzu to Thucydides to George Kennan, to gain real-world experience through internships in the realms of statecraft, and to bring this learning and experience to bear on contemporary issues.”This fascinating and engaging introduction to the basic concepts of the international order not only defines what it is to build a civil society through diplomacy, justice, and lawful governance but also describes how these ideas emerge from and reflect human nature.

Genres: History, Politics, Nonfiction, Philosophy, Political Science, War, Military Fiction

384 pages, Kindle Edition

First published April 13, 2010

Reviews

[Frank Kelly · Rating 5 out of 5]

"The restoration of literature as a tutor for statecraft has been the aim of this book." This is the last line of Professor/diplomat Charles Hill's rich, robust and deeply enlightening book covering the classic Greeks to modern times and the role literature can (and should) play in inspiring and building civil society and credible international order amongst nations and states. The breadth of Hill's knowledge and ability to interweave so many of the classics of literature with history is extraordinary. This is not an easy to book to read, I must admit. But I read it in chunks and really enjoyed it -- and learned an great deal of the true meaning of literature throughout history. Moreover, it gave me new insights into the development of strategy - whether diplomatic, military or even corporate. Strategy, to be sucessful, should never be sterile. The narrative, the context of history in which we live and work, they all are important to achieving success. An amazing work of literature in and of itself. Highly recommend it.

[Fred Leland · Rating 4 out of 5]

I very good book I highly recommend. the lessons from literature as they relate to strategy, including modern day strategy are laid out very nicely by Charles Hill. The book will most definitely get you to thinking in ways you had not before.

Fred

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

This will be a difficult book to review. There are a number of reasons for this but let me mention just a few.

1. Academically eloquent. The language, though beautiful and a pleasure to experience, lacked clarity and precision. Which is strange because, generally, eloquence is a function of clarity. However, in this case, this wasn't my experience.

2.Readings of the books were ones that I had generally come across in the past but told through the lenses of statecraft and diplomacy. For myself there was nothing new in these so this was, on numerous occasions, tedious to the point of redundancy.

3. I was hoping for some explanation as to how these 'great books' could be applied to real word situations and though I got this occasionally more often than not I did not...least did not feel I did.

4. Although the claim of the last sentence of the book was: The restoration of literature as a tutor for statecraft has been the aim of this book (location - 5715)...I do not feel this was or ever would be accomplished. As argued in the book, the computer/internet/web has put an end to this type of leisurely and challenging activity. People are too pressed for time and lack a solid grounding in the classics of world literature, philosophy, and political science. The complaint appears to be intellectually reactionary...instead of thinking how the new technologies might be exploited to offer this grounding or how they might offer new avenues of thought to counter the loss of the 'classical' canon. This issue needs to be addressed instead of bemoaning the loss of time and traditional literacy (literature, philosophy, political science).

5. The idea of literature being 'unbounded' was great. [Of all the arts and sciences, only literature is substantially and methodologically unbounded - Loc. 163]. His attempt to make literature (including philosophy) relevant after the textual obscenities of post-structuralism is very compelling...and I am grateful for the effort....though it does not quite succeed.

6. The author's observations, sprinkled through the book, about diplomats, statesmen/women, and ambassadors (such as: To be effective, ambassadors do not merely execute, “but frame and direct by their own advice and counsel, the will of their master.” They need leeway to distill, classify, clarify, and shape the essence of their mission - Loc. 317-19)are very astute and help the reader to understand their real job. Though these observations might have been more effective brought together in a single chapter.

7. The general structure of the work appeared more chronological than logical. In the case of this book a logical argument, I believe, would have been more effective. But this may simply be an aesthetic gripe.

Did I enjoy the book? Was this read enlightening? Not quite. For this reason I have only given this book 4 stars. Perhaps, considering my analysis, it only deserves three but my feeling is that four is much more honest an appraisal for this reviewer.

I would recommend this book to those that have not read any surveys of literature or philosophy. As a work on the demands of the diplomat I feel it is lacking in clarity and could not recommend it on that level. Though deeply learned the trees sometimes get in the way of the forest and make the experience more problematic than it should have been.

[Jeffrey · Rating 4 out of 5]

Midway through his monumental flyover of Western Civilization, Charles Hill informs his readers that the first principle of grand strategy is to understand what is happening in the world. Action follows knowledge. Yet, knowledge, as opposed to information, is difficult to attain. “Those who are living through great historical events can rarely even glimpse the significance of what is going on all around them.” Taken out of context, it’s a rather anodyne pronouncement, but halfway through Grand Strategies, the reader will already well understand how the greatest works of literary art throw open the floodgates, allowing knowledge to pour forth.

Charles Hill’s Grand Strategies is a text about texts, seventy-nine of them to be exact. From Homer’s Iliad to Calasso’s The Ruins of Kasch, Hill reveals himself as a first rate reader, able to distill the lessons of history from the heights of literature. Yet his expertise is not from reading alone. Though his resume includes time at Brown, Penn, Harvard, and now Yale, he’s not a lifelong academic. Instead, he made a career out of exactly that about which he writes—as a practitioner of diplomacy, a close observer of statecraft, and a sentry of world order.

Some of the most interesting observations contained within Grand Strategies, therefore, come not from other texts, but instead from Hill’s own experiences. He observes the vaunted cold warrior Paul Nitze reading Shakespeare late into the night on long transatlantic flights, and listens to the laments of Abba Eban, the legendary Israeli statesmen, as the two sipped orange juice overlooking the Mediterranean while Hill was posted to Israel as a junior State Department officer. Even aside from the personal reminiscences, it’s clear that Hill’s experiences inform his understanding of what he reads.

He is particularly strong with the ancients. After a close reading of Homer’s Iliad, specifically The Embassy to Achilles, Hill recognizes that Odysseus has violated two fundamental precepts of diplomacy: he has failed to follow the instructions of his principal (the Greek King Agamemnon) and he has failed to report back an accurate accounting of his meeting with the wayward Greek warrior Achilles. Yet, Hill counsels his readers not to be fooled, for this is diplomacy. He understands through personal experience that Ambassadors must be able to, in the words of Montaigne which Hill perfectly employs, “frame and direct by their own advice and counsel, the will of their master.”

It’s in the discussion of another ancient text, the Orestia that the reader will glean not only the origins of civilization, but perhaps also the underpinnings of Hill’s conservative-minded outlook on the world. The Orestia documents a series of interfamilial killings all prompted by the curse of an earlier generation. After sacrificing his daughter so the Greek fleet can sail to Troy, Agamemnon, upon returning victoriously from Troy, is murdered in revenge by his wife, Queen Clymnestra. In turn, she is murdered by her son Orestes. After a dramatic trial Orestes is acquitted, a decision in which the goddess Athena elevates the sanctity of the contract (the marriage, in this case) above kinship ties, transfers power from the family to the state, and ultimately signals that justice, as administered by the state, will be the only legitimate form of violence. Thus, argues Hill buttressing Locke, “the death penalty is the foundation stone of civilization.”

With civilization comes the state, but not until the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648 would it become the basic unit of governance and over the subsequent three centuries render empire obsolete. Hill’s articulation of how the Thirty Years War shaped the modern world order is impressive in scope and detail. Furthermore, it elucidates just how profound an impact that literature, from Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels to Schiller’s The Wallenstein Trilogy, shapes our contemporary understanding of the governance of states. Sources of Modern World Order, more than any other chapter in Grand Strategies, generously unpacks historical events in an orderly way, an especially useful exercise for many who will be unfamiliar with the period and its seminal importance to Western Civilization.

Throughout Grand Strategies Hill counts himself a staunch defender of the state and therefore the status quo. Though as he notes, defending an institution of governance that includes among its ranks Nazi Germany and Stalin’s Soviet Union can be a thankless task. While the state itself continues to be the subject of contemporary rhetorical attacks from both the right and the left, it’s revolutionary ideology in action that keeps Hill awake at night. His take on the Paris Commune of 1871 is deeply pessimistic, a notable departure from the way it is often depicted, romantically, in literature. He also notes that the German philosopher Nietzsche, the French poet Rimbaud, and the Russian author Dostoevsky were all on hand, their understanding of the world shaped by that monumental moment of European history.

The bottom line, Hill concludes, is that “the state, and the Westphalian international system of which it is the basic entity, remain the only working mechanism for world order.” This rather unimaginative outlook, were it not the conclusion of such an erudite assemblage of text, analysis, and experience, would be understandably frustrating. In certain instances, such as Hill’s sympathetic analysis of Israel’s appearance on the international stage, one can sense ideological creep encroaching upon the less impassioned tone that characterizes much of the book. Even his selection of Spark’s The Mandelbaum Gate seems inserted as the basis for a charged discussion of history rather than because the text itself belongs among the classics of statecraft.

Another such instance is plainly visible in Hill’s discounting of the New Left and its criticism of the American War in Vietnam, done not through a text, in this case; but instead, via the personage of Lee Kuan Yew, the founder of modern Singapore, at a 1970 dinner with Harvard faculty. Hill, present at the dinner and having just served a tour at the American Embassy in Saigon, would have been well versed in the potential negative implications of a communist victory in South Vietnam, a sentiment that Prime Minister Lee, also trying to prevent a communist takeover of his nascent state, shared. When the Prime Minister vociferously defended the American war as buying time for other Southeastern Asian states to consolidate their independence, Hill appears to accept the statement uncritically.

Yet just as the reader will begin to question if Grand Strategies has reached the limit of dispassioned analysis, Hill turns to the East, demonstrating a familiarity with a selection of both ancient and modern Chinese texts. His section on China and its continuing evolution from empire deserving of tribute to insecure state within the world system is another high point of the book. As opposed to the Thirty Years War period where contemporaneous literature would later shape our modern understandings, modern Chinese texts appear to be profoundly out of sync with the direction of the modern Chinese state. Contemporary Chinese works of literary merit harken back to ancient texts, both Chinese and Western, a phenomena that would seem to explain the contemporary Chinese fascination with the American political philosopher Leo Strauss.

In fact, though his readings are essentially conservative, Hill’s conservatism is aesthetically Straussian in nature, borne with an eye to the classic texts of Greek civilization. Because of that the reader will be disappointed to find no mention of Strauss’s analysis of Plato or the other ancients including the Hebrews; one can only imagine with delight the exchange of ideas on statecraft between two such learned scholars of the state as Strauss and Hill. Despite his essentially conservative bent, Hill’s scholarship is so neatly ordered, his logic chains so artfully constructed, that even the most partisan of readers will be captivated by the analysis behind Grand Strategies.

At the same time, this book is a goldmine for someone both a bibliophile and a student of international affairs. The most thrilling of Hill’s personal reminiscences contained within Grand Strategies took place on a cold January night in 1986. Hill, then serving as a Senior Aide to Secretary of State George Shultz, accompanied his boss to a meeting of the PEN Society, the literary world’s foremost promoter of free expression, held at the New York Public Library. Shultz, maligned as a member of the Reagan administration, was roundly condemned by much of the gathered audience, even by the likes of Grace Paley and Norman Mailer. Yet his speech, and the rousing defense of the freedom of expression that he made, stand as a model for the good state. Hill, understandably proud to be among the representatives of a state that protects the freedom of the writer to create even works antithetical to the state itself, and ensconced within “the only civilization in history whose major artists and intellects have radically questioned or rejected its core values” has strongly made, through this immensely learned contribution to the scholarship of statecraft, the same case his boss made more than a quarter century earlier.

© Jeffrey L. Otto, September 8, 2013

[Daniel Burton · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm always on the look out for new books to read (but what I really need is more time). Suggestions from friends, mentors, reviewers, blogs, and references in other books send me off on an endless cycle: hear about a book, find it on Amazon (or the library), purchase (or check out) said book, bring it home, put it on my bed-stand with great anticipation, read ten pages to a reference of another book, and...repeat. The result is a two-stack, five books per stack, "pile up" next to my bed that has resulted in a reading bottle neck. And, believe me you, it's a bottleneck that affords me more enjoyable hours than I've ever passed in traffic.

That's all really just a long way of saying that in reading Charles Hill's "Grand Strategies: Literature, Statecraft, and World Order" I constantly found myself adding new books to some real or imagined book list that I may, or may not, ever get a chance to read. Every chapter of Grand Strategies was full of new books that sounded interesting and fascinating. Some--like Mark Twain's "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn," Salmon Rushdie's "Satanic Verses," or Thucydides's "The Peloponnesian War"--I had read and could quickly relate. Others--Xenophon's "The Persian Expedition" or Marcel Proust's "In Search of Lost Time"--were new, at least to me. Worse, especially for my book list, Hill manages to craft his dialogue about each in such a way as to bestow meaning and insight beyond a cursory reading of the text.

For example, though I've often heard it referenced and cited as powerful piece of poetry, never had I seen John Milton's "Paradise Lost" as a commentary on war and the modern polity. And yet, perhaps it is.

"But far beyond the politics of the day 'Paradise Lost' is Milton's comprehensive commentary on modern warfare, revolution, founding a polity; on strategy, leadership, intelligence, individual choice under conditions of modern statecraft; and on the justification of God's ways to men."

Suddenly, the war in heaven, through Milton's eyes, becomes a proxy for competing views of the world worked out during the Oliver Cromwell English Civil War.

In Hill's eye, fiction is more than just a story. In literature, we see the great ideas and forces that move history worked out, argued, and recorded. The "international world of states and their modern system is a literary realm," he argues. "[I]t is where the greatest issues of the human condition are played out." Nothing may come closer to a thesis for his opus. He continues:

"A sacral nature must infuse world order if it is to be legitimate. that order is not to be identified with a particular social system, but to legitimate, the system must hint at the underlying divinely founded order. The modern Westphalian system was conceived when such was the case, but with the Enlightenment's addition of secularism, science, reason, and democracy, the system increasingly spurned , then forgot, its legitimizing sources of authority.[...] Revolutionary ideology radicalized secularism, science and reason into the task of erasing original sin, o perfecting humanity--all requiring terror to create "the New Man." Modern efforts to create a sovereignty potent enough to fill the void produced the statist monstrosities of Stalin and Hitler. America became an empire but never gained the understanding to go with it. China is now on its own misguided course."

Thought provoking, insightful, and, of course, full of literature to read when you finish it (including a bibliography of primary and secondary sources that will keep you busy for several years), and reread, Hill's "Grand Strategies" is a worthy addition to your bed-stand stack. Just make sure you put it on top.

[Kevin · Rating 1 out of 5]

It's meandering, pedantic, disjointed, and myopic. The most superficial issue is flat wrong statements like Cerberus regrowing heads (it's the hydra, but that's me being pedantic) to being well over 100 years off with the advent of artillery in battle (Hill posits the 1640s which is deeply ironic given his commentary on Gustavus Adolphus who in the 1600s revolutionized the use of cannon in battle. Note revolutionized, not introduced) Then there are the interpretations and assumptions that get stated as fact that do not hold up. Declaring Rome to be the first world empire instead of the latest in a series of Mediterranean and Middle Eastern empires sets the tone for the blinders that Hill displays through the entire text. Starting with Greek texts ignores an entire array of earlier texts (Epic of Gilgamesh, Tale of Sinuhe to name two) that have deep commentaries on statecraft situated well over a thousand years before the cited Greek texts, which rather undercuts the Greeks as the wellspring of knowledge and practice on statecraft that Hill presents.

This parochial view continues through the whole book, a sad combination of Whig and Pangloss, of inevitable progress by a few storied nations (Britain, the USA) with all opposed in futile and destructive opposition, completely ignoring that there are reasons why everyone didn't hop onto the gravy train of progress Hill presents. (For all the disasters mentioned by those opposing those Hill lauds, there is no mention of say the Indian famines supervised and directly worsened in the 1870s by the British) This should come as no surprise for someone who so liberally references that noted war criminal Henry Kissinger.

This is already running far too long so I'll end by pointing out two of the author's opinions stated in what can only be termed a magisterially fashion. First, Marx's greatest work of literature being the Communist Manifesto, which is quite a declaration for a pamphlet. Second is declaring Kiplinger's "Kim" the greatest novel about India, which is an opinion. (Which further cements the imperial viewpoint that permeates the book and makes it so dreadfully uninteresting)

I could go on about the personal anecdotes mostly being an elder statesman type bashing the youth for being dumb (not knowing Dr. Zhivago, for one, which was a great movie to be fair) or name/institution dropping (mostly leading me to think much less of Yale for employing the author) but it all boils down to what was a great premise for a book failing due both to Hill not being able to step outside his worldview for even a moment, but even more the disjointed nature of the book, almost as if it's bits a pieces of various essays combined with no structure tying it all together.

[Eduardo Garcia-Gaspar · Rating 4 out of 5]

¿Qué es eso que acabo de leer? Combine usted unas docenas de los libros clásicos de todos los tiempos en la mente curiosa del autor y obtendrá eso. Una serie cronológica de ideas, reflexiones y meditaciones acerca de temas como diplomacia, guerra, naciones, estados, gobierno, estadistas, orden mundial. Desde «La divina comedia» hasta «Los versos satánicos», pasando por «Los viajes de Gulliver», «La democracia en América» y «El jorobado de Nuestra Señora». Un abundante festín de especulaciones fundamentadas.
¿Qué es lo que buscan y ven los «dictadores, generales y estrategas» en los libros que tienen junto a sí? La literatura como un reflejo de la realidad de ma naturaleza humana que tiene aplicación en política con la ventaja de que ella, la literatura, se mueve más allá del «cálculo racional» y da entrada a la imaginación. Como lo expresa el autor: «[...] el argumento de este libro es que el mundo debería reconocer a las altas ideas políticas y a las acciones del arte de gobernar como aspectos de la condición humana que están enteramente dentro del alcance del genio literario y que los grandes escritores han explorado consistentemente de maneras importantes».
Los modos puramente técnicos y meramente racionales de estos temas no son suficientes y llevan a errores. La literatura, esos libros clásicos, llenan el vacío de lo que no es accesible por otros caminos. Una idea fascinante.
De lectura sencilla, aunque llena de citas (difíciles de precisar en la edición de Kindle), el libro me dio la sensación de que terminé siendo un poco más sabio que antes. No, mejor dicho, terminé siendo un poco menos ignorante que antes de leerlo.

[Juan Agustín Otero · Rating 4 out of 5]

This world history of literature and statecraft deserves to be read by both writers and politicians. Homer, Shakespeare, Machiavelli, Dante, Cervantes, Milton, Schiller, Swift, Rousseau, Hamilton, and many others are revisited to bring about a modern, yet also ancient, way of reading: one that sees literature as the true education of statesmen. Inadvertently, Hill also proves the inverse: that modern statecraft offers a language through which to interpret the great books of our past and present.

In Paradise Lost, the grand strategies of God and Satan toward humankind are reconstructed as rival schools of governance. Schiller’s Wallenstein becomes a portrait of the modern political leader: self-absorbed, narcissistic, yet moved by ideals. Homer’s Odysseus appears as a master tactician—though Hill reminds us that tacticians, with their gift for deception, often make unreliable ambassadors.

This is the first time I have seen the languages of war, diplomacy, and power used so deliberately to distill meaning from the masterpieces of literature.

[Ziad Razak · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fascinating and engrossing book that makes you regret not having read more systematically when you were younger. Makes you want to read Virgil, Milton and Proust all at the same time. Melding together the great texts of Western literature into a tour d'horizon of global diplomacy, this book is one of those classics you wish someone had given to you for your 21st birthday.

[Ruben Diaz-plaja · Rating 5 out of 5]

Splendid exploration of the junction between writing, statecraft and strategy, and how being a good reader can help you gain the imagination needed to navigate the uncertainties of diplomacy.

[Zachery Tyson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliantly erudite. A spectacular achievement of literary scholarship and statesmanship.

[Jay Phipps · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not recreational reading - but some really great lessons for strategy and leadership.

[Abdullah · Rating 5 out of 5]

Will definitely read it again.

[T King]

Useful as an introduction to some of the influential works that played a role in the foundation of the modern-day world.

[Charles Puskas · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've been reading this book by scholar and diplomat, Charles Hill, for a year and taking notes on it (which I've lost). I've also been stopping along the way and reading or re-reading some of literature cited for illustrative purposes in his discussion of statecraft and world order, e.g., Dante, Thucycides, Shakespeare, Grimmelshausen, Gunther Grass, Dickens, Life of Bismarck, Kafka, Dostoevsky, even George MacDonald Fraser. So I have been slowly reading it as a reference or springboard to the reading of other writings.

I agree with the review. Through lucid and compelling discussions of classic literary works from Homer to Rushdie, Grand Strategies represents a merger of literature and international relations, inspired by the conviction that “a grand strategist . . . needs to be immersed in classic texts from Sun Tzu to Thucydides to George Kennan, to gain real-world experience through internships in the realms of statecraft, and to bring this learning and experience to bear on contemporary issues.” This fascinating and engaging introduction to the concepts of international order not only defines what it is to build a civil society through diplomacy, justice, and lawful governance but also describes how these ideas emerge from human conflict and reflect human nature.

[R. Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

I could probably put this book on a half-dozen different Goodreads bookshelves. Statecraft (particularly in international relations) is viewed through the lens of great literature. Until I read "Grand Strategies" it had never occurred to me how much about statecraft, international relations, politics, political philosophy, even warcraft could be learned from reading great literature beyond Shakespeare's historical plays. If I ruled the world, I'd require every national executive (i.e. President, Prime Minister, Chancellor) and every national foreign policy leader (i.e. Secretary of State, Foreign Minister) to read "Grand Strategies" then pass an oral and written examination on it before being allowed to touch the wheel of the ship of state. It's that good!

[Michael · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very interesting survey of books of historical importance through the ages and how they were influenced by -- and how they influenced -- the political movements of their times. Ultimately a summons to a more thoughtful, creative, and educated approach to the management of global affairs. The reader cannot help but feel at times that the author's musing are too airy and somewhat disconnected from the task at hand. Nonetheless, there are strong insights here.

[Alin C. · Rating 5 out of 5]

A book that emphasised the need for leaders to read. The concept of grand strategy -- that is so required in international affairs and successful leadership -- is a by-product of literature. From Virgil's Aeneid to Kafka's The Castle, each major work draws on themes that are useful for statecraft. The study of international relations is not the study of ammunition charts, but the study of grand strategy across time, i.e. literature across time.

[Jordanjohnhamel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great book that will introduce you to the greatest works of fictional literature throughout the centuries that have impacted the world and it's statecraft. Strong thoughts on the future of statecraft in the future where shorter attention spans and the lack of background in the classics may set back future relations between states.

[Chris · Rating 5 out of 5]

I should not like this book, its a combination of literature, history international systems analysis and culture (the only part i dislike/distrust is the literature element) however that is the best part by far!

[Jennine (Cheska) · Rating 4 out of 5]

Introduced me to an academic area I'm very much interested in pursuing. Definitely gave a lot of insight and perspective.

[Christopher · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nonfiction about fiction you could say. I thought this was a great and welcome voice to IR.

[Anthony Zupancic · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hill is smart. His writing is clear and quick but loaded with references to his vast knowledge of history and literature and state craft. This is what academic writing can be at its best.

[Steven Miller · Rating 5 out of 5]

A remarkable look at the role of literature in shaping statecraft from the beginning of literature to near present.

[Ryan · Rating 1 out of 5]

A great concept, but poorly executed. Reads like a series of book reports.