ASEAN: The Association of Southeast Asian Nations. It’s emblem is 10 sheaves of rice tied together to show solidarity. Southeast Asia has been looming large in American foreign policy recently– Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has been traveling to the area, visiting places like the Philippines and Myanmar. The Americans have also rather firmly sided with the Philippines in the current imbroglio with China over the Spratleys. Southeast Asia occupies an extremely important part of the world’s strategic and economic considerations (don’t forget, people, that Indonesia is the world’s largest Muslim country and it also has very extensive energy deposits). However, as is typical, most people– Americans, Europeans, or even the Southeast Asians themselves– don’t know much about the region as a whole.

The term Southeast Asia is itself very recent. In World War II, the Allies needed to create administrative and strategic spheres in order to better prosecute the conflict. East Asia was the China theater, South Asia was India, and it was decided that the odd assortment of countries not part of either area would be given the rather unwieldy term of Southeast Asia. This was simply was strategic-speak for “not India and China.” Up to that point, the region as a whole had never really been given a name: the spice-producing areas of modern-day Malaysia and Indonesia were the “Indies,” Vietnam, Laos, Thailand and Cambodia were “Indochina” and the Philippines tended to be the odd man out.

These terms, along with “Southeast Asia,” were Western terms– given to the region by European academics, government officials or military planners, and they illustrate rather neatly how the outside world tended to understand the region. The grand old civilizations of China and India dominated Western thinking, and there was always an assumption that Southeast Asia was simply an extension of these two great civilizations: a peripheral region that absorbed their cultures and ideas and was largely dominated by them. It also goes back to the Western notion that “Asians” are the “Other” ala Edward Said, that there is something similar about them.

This is the Russian baritone Dmitri Hvorostovsky. He was born in Siberia and could be geographically described as being "Asian."

The Southeast Asians themselves eventually embraced this inclusive term “Southeast Asia” during the Cold War. This was done for political and strategic reasons– the Southeast Asian nations wanted to separate themselves from India and China. The region tended to be aligned to America and NATO, and the regimes in power in Southeast Asia were wary of the non-aligned India or communist China. Vietnam is the obvious exception here, although post-Cold War, Vietnam has very closely aligned itself with ASEAN in order to put some distance between it and its traditional rival and enemy, China.

If it comes down to it, ASEAN may seem primarily like a geo-political grouping and nothing more. The member nations came together out of self-interest and strategic concerns, but not much else. There does not seem to be much regional solidarity. Essentially, Southeast Asia is a very heterogeneous area whose member nations seem to have very little in common.

Just prior to the ASEAN era, the region was never particularly cohesive in large part because it was divided up into colonial domains– European powers like Britain, France, Portugal, Spain and Holland had divvied up Southeast Asia. And as anybody who has read up on colonial economics and the dependency theory will know, the European colonial powers redirected the political and economic attentions of their colonies towards the metropole. The Philippines, for instance, had very little to do with other Southeast Asian societies during the Spanish era– when the Philippine finally ceased being nothing more than a transshipment point for Chinese goods, most of its trade and local produce was directed towards Spain.

When it comes to languages, it seems as if Southeast Asia is a Tower of Babel– the Philippines alone has almost 200 languages (not just dialects, mind), and other Southeast Asian countries like Malaysia and Indonesia are in the same boat.

It’s almost worse when it comes to major religions– Southeast Asia is home to sizeable populations of practically every major world religion, from Christianity, to Islam, to Buddhism and Hinduism. The only religion missing is Judaism.

“Southeast Asia” is therefore not like “Europe,” whose member nations can often claim great similarities or shared experiences. The label of “Southeast Asian” is also less consciously embraced by the people living in it, again unlike “European” which is often proudly used as a means of self-identification (especially when contrasting “Europe” to other areas). I know from experience that Filipinos know very, very little about other Southeast Asians. Filipinos are more likely to turn to America or Japan or China for their movies, music and TV than they are to other Southeast Asians. Little to nothing is taught in Philippine schools about Southeast Asia. I mean, how many Filipinos know who the current monarch of Thailand is or who the current prime minister of Malaysia is? Conversely, how many Thai or Malaysians know much about the Philippines? Is Manny Pacquiao a regional hero, or is he unknown elsewhere in Southeast Asia?

The question therefore is: does “Southeast Asia” have some sort of existence beyond strategic, economic or political considerations? Is there something that unites the countries of Southeast Asia beyond mutual interests?

This is where history and related academic fields like anthropology might be able to help. Perhaps a Southeast Asian identity can be found in the past, or in ethnography or linguistics?

Indeed, one point of commonality might very well be ethno-linguistic. This is the Austronesian connection. Wait, Austrowhat?

Austronesian?

Austronesian, mate?

The Austronesian peoples are an ethnic grouping– I hesitate to use the word “race”– that comprise much of island Southeast Asia (Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines). The Austronesians are probably what you can call the “Malays” or that racial or ethnographic classification so beloved by colonial era-European administrators and ethnographers. Filipinos might remember Otley Beyer in this respect.

Austronesian! Much better.

Austronesians have similarities in language. This link– http://www.zompist.com/anes.htm — shows the words for numbers in most Austronesian languages. So, for instance, in Tagalog the word for the number three is “tatlo” and in (randomly selected) Macassarese (from the Sulawesi) it is “tallu.”

There is also a similarity in culture. Perhaps the most interesting is the idea of the “Big Man” or the ruler who secures his or her authority not through institutional means like law, or strictly through use of force, but through persuasion, charisma and example. This is partly a result of geography– the Austronesian peoples tended to live in places where it is easy to decamp or flee from onerous or repressive rulers and eke out a living elsewhere– so being cruel or repressive didn’t always work. The “Big Man” theory was first observed in the ’50s and ’60s by anthropologists and to the best of my knowledge the similar phenomenon was not described in Southeast Asia until the ’70s. In the ’80s or so, Oliver Wolters described the mandala style of politics in Southeast Asia, where rulers also relied on charisma and persuasion. Again, to the best of my knowledge, no links between the “Big Man” and the mandala were made until much later, but then the “Austronesian” theory wasn’t very well known until recently.

To add to that, Austronesians believe in magical power– they believe that individuals have the ability to manipulate the natural world, the spirit world or other humans because of innate spiritual strength. However, as per Benedict Anderson, Austronesian cultures tend to believe that this power is limited– there is a reservoir of it in the world or in individuals that can either be drained or leeched away by others, or enhanced by magical items like talismans, weapons or amulets, or by spiritual exercises akin to meditation, berserkergang or yoga. This magical power is called mana in the Pacific, but has different names (if it has one) in Southeast Asia. My advisor F. Aguilar used the Ilonggo word dungan.

So yes, fantasy and video games owe the concept of "mana" or usable magic points, to the Austronesian peoples.

There is a major problem with the idea that Austronesian = Southeast Asian, however. First, Austronesians are found all over the Pacific and Indian Ocean area, not just in Southeast Asia. As I related above, Pacific Islanders are Austronesian, as are people from Madagascar (yes, not all Africans are “black”). Indeed, that picture of the Austronesian I showed above? He is Andry Rajoelina, head of state of Madagascar and not a recent immigrant or the child of immigrants. He is a native of Madagascar, as are many others like him.

Secondly, not all Southeast Asians are technically Austronesians. Peninsular Southeast Asia– Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam are not peopled by a majority of Austronesians. There is a theory that some Peninsular Southeast Asians speak a form of Austronesian– Tai-Caday– and so may be distantly related to the Austronesians of Island Southeast Asia, but it is still just a theory. It also means Vietnam cannot be considered Southeast Asian, since the majority of Vietnamese are not at all Austronesian or speak a language related to the Austronesian languages.

This is why I hesitate to use “racial” groupings for Southeast Asia. What might be more accurate is that despite the fact that the Thai and other Peninsular Southeast Asians might not be Austronesians, they share very many cultural traits with their Malaysian, Indonesian or Filipino neighbors.

Take architecture:

Traditional Thai house

Recreation of the palace in Malacca

Note the similarities– the high peaked roofs, the organic, curved curlycue decorations, the stilts, and so on. A lot of these similarities are imposed by physical or topographical conditions– wood as a commonly used building material because of its abundance, the stilts because of flooding, and the high peaked roof to help with the heat. The decorations, the internal layouts and others are more cultural, however. For instance, Southeast Asians tended to sit on the floor and did not have a lot of furniture. Either way, a similarity is a similarity.

There are other important cultural and societal similarities. Southeast Asian conceptions of power prior to colonialism tended to be the same: that it was fluid, based on charisma and that borders were frontiers, not hard lines on a geopolitical map. Again, this is Oliver Wolter’s mandala, a concept that has become orthodoxy in Southeast Asian studies. Southeast Asia has had “kingdoms” or “empires” like the Srivijaya or the Sukhothai, but they were very different from “traditional” notions of empire (no Witfogellian hydraulic despotisms here). Benedict Anderson described it best– the political map of Southeast Asia more closely resembles a series of circles, where a polity’s power is strongest near the center, but fades with distance until it can blur and overlap with the circle of power or influence of another polity. And instead of relying strictly on coercion (through armies) or even through codified law or religious mandate to sustain authority, almost all Southeast Asian rulers relied on “continuous achievement.” The result is a “theatre state” ala Clifford Geertz. Rulers acted like rulers– they displayed their wealth, they displayed their military prowess, they disbursed gifts and held feasts, they arbitrated in disputes and they interceded with the spirit world (be they Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu or pagan rulers). This made Southeast Asian rulers “attractive” to current and potential followers, who pledged allegiance with the ruler who could best protect them or meet their material wants and needs.

What is amazing about this mode of power and politics is that it transcended even the religious diversity of Southeast Asia. Despite the variety of religions in the area, Muslims and Hindus and even Catholics still use charisma, still use spiritual power and all that when in rule– arguably, even today. Suharto, Sukarno, the Sultan of Brunei, Marcos, Mahatir, the Thai monarchs and a host of others all made use of charisma and displays of prowess (like oratory) to win over their people.

Almost all Southeast Asians, Austronesian or not, also believe in the existence of the spiritual power I mentioned above– in mana or dungan. For instance, Southeast Asian modes of combat heavily reflect this belief that spiritual power is a deciding factor in human affairs. This often manifests itself in showy, dextrous martial arts and in weapons that are as much for display as for combat. The keris, or kris, is remarkably widespread in Southeast Asia– it is a weapon imbued with spiritual significance. Elephants were also popular in Southeast Asian warfare because they were large and imposing– visible proof of a ruler’s spiritual power. There is a widespread Southeast Asian similarity in martial arts. The art called silat, is widespread throughout Southeast Asia. There is also a remarkable consistency of two-weapon fighting in Southeast Asia.

Aside from spiritual power, there is also a diffusion and commonality in the arts. I already showed similarities in architecture, but other Southeast Asian arts also seem to have common traits. Note these dancers:

From Thailand

From Malaysia

From Bali

And from Myanmar

These dancers will very often be dancing to the sound of gongs– a distinctly Southeast Asian form of music. In the Philippines they are known as kulintang, but a form of gong-instrument ensemble can be found all over the region: in Vietnam, Thailand, Burma, Malaysia, Indonesia and, of course, the Philippines.

So whether from a similarity of geographic circumstance, or because of cross-cultural contact, Southeast Asian societies do have very real commonalities in culture and society. It therefore might be possible to speak of a Southeast Asian identity, one that– as the name implies– is not simply derivative of the Indian or Chinese.

A historiographical irony: in the early days of Southeast Asian studies, the Philippines was often left out of Southeast Asia. Because of Hispanization, some early Southeast Asian scholars tended to group the Philippines with Latin America! It is ironic because nowadays, I would actually be more inclined to leave Vietnam out of Southeast Asia– the one Southeast Asian country Americans really are aware of or studied. Vietnam’s politics, ethnic make-up, language and military systems owed much, much more to East Asia than it did to even their Thai neighbors.

ASEAN is nowadays criticized for being ineffectual, a kind of gentleman’s club where a lot of talking is done but little accomplished. In recent decades, Southeast Asian countries are more likely to be competitors than a community. Economically, for instance, there is often competition since many Southeast Asian countries have export-dependent economies. There have also been political or strategic conflicts– the konfrontasi that involved primarily Malaysia and Indonesia, but even saw the Philippines joining in at one point. Of course there is the conflict over the Spratleys.

So despite the very real cultural commonalities that Southeast Asians share, there is a distinct lack of unity in the region. It’s been slowly getting better– ASEAN has been slowly fumbling towards a greater degree of cohesion, but it’s slow work. There would be great advantages to the member nations if ASEAN really did try to band together and create a much more coherent economic and diplomatic zone than exists now– although the current problems that the Eurozone is experiencing might give people pause. Certainly it would help in competing with China. China is notoriously averse to any kind of regional alliance or partnership in which it isn’t involved. I mean, this is the country that is propping up North Korea in large part because it doesn’t want a unified Korea as a neighbor. It has courted ASEAN recently, trying to get itself involved in that association. In the Spratleys debate, China has attempted to divide the Southeast Asian claimants by making individual deals with them, preventing a round table agreement.

There would be precedents for greater ASEAN-member nation contacts. Nowadays, the Philippines main trading partners are not Southeast Asian nations, and neither are its main diplomatic and military ties are Southeast Asian. However, once upon a time the Philippines was very closely entwined in the trade and strategic networks of island Southeast Asia. Filipinos might find it interesting to know that one of the datu of Manila was a junior member of the Bruneian royal family. Magellan’s slave-interpreter Enrique was not a Filipino (he was from Malacca) but he could easily understand the Visayans he met– implying either a widespread trade language or lingua franca or just simply a similarity of languages. When Legazpi came to the Philippines in the 1560s, he encountered numerous trade ships from what would now be Malaysia and Indonesia. Indeed, the Philippines contact with China– so often played up in the popular historiography– was limited largely to the port of Manila and the greater bulk of Philippine trade relations was likely with other Southeast Asian polities.

We shouldn’t idealize pre-colonial Southeast Asia as some kind of cooperative heaven, however. Indeed, the very nature of the mandala system led to great competition, violent or otherwise, and places we now call “Malaysia” or the “Philippines” were actually patchworks of small polities who fought, competed and entered into shifting alliances. This disunity was what facilitated outside conquest throughout Southeast Asian history– there was always someone willing to help the Europeans or Japanese or whoever. There was always a polity willing to provide crucial logistical support or manpower that enabled outsiders to establish themselves in the region.

"If you build it, they will come."

In the end, it does seem as if “Southeast Asia” can indeed be thought of as more than just a convenient geo-political label. Perhaps there are enough commonalities among the current inhabitants of “Southeast Asia” that you could create an identity around which the people can rally.

But basically, like all geopolitical labels, “Southeast Asia” is as much an aspiration as it is a “reality.” There are indeed common cultural traits among the various Southeast Asian societies, but there are also a lot of very real cultural differences. The label “Southeast Asian” is as also an epistemological label, a way of organizing and thinking that, depending on the historian, might be convincing or not. Historians like the theory of the mandala and spiritual power, therefore they tend to explain history and pick facts that support these theories.  But like all theories, it is highly likely that they will be superseded. Maybe one day, future historians will look back at Oliver Wolters and Benedict Anderson and think they had the dumbest ideas in the world–what were those old farts thinking? They grossly misrepresented Southeast Asia!

It will be interesting to see what will happen to Southeast Asia in the future. Will ASEAN succeed in creating a Southeast Asian sphere? Will the member nations go their separate ways? Either way, it’d be interesting– and as in the Age of Exploration, I can bet that the area will once again be of great interest to outsiders as a nexus of trade, diplomatic contact and cultural interaction.

“He was not the most honest of men, nor the most pious, but he was a brave man…”

That’s the opening line to Arturo Perez-Reverte’s famous series of novels, the Adventures of Captain Diego Alatriste y Tenorio. The series is apparently very popular in Spain and is somewhat known here. I like them enough that they are one of the few books I buy brand new and in hard copy. The Alatriste novels are historical adventures, swashbuckling books ala Three Musketeers, but unlike the refined and playful atmosphere of Dumas (soirees with swords, really), Perez-Reverte decided to write about the dark underbelly of El Siglo de Oro, the Golden Age of Hapsburg Spain, when the tercios– of which Alatriste is a member– were the terror of the world and Spain was Europe’s superpower.

According to the long appendix in the first Alatriste novel, El Capitan is one of the men behind the horse.

The Alatriste novels are both conventional and unconventional. They are conventional because they are historical novels, a genre that has been very popular recently, with the success of novels like The Girl in the Pearl Earring or The Other Boleyn Girl. Arturo Perez-Reverte is himself partially responsible for the recent popularity of these historical books– his El Maestro de Esgrima for instance. The military air and clearly masculine audience of the Alatriste books also obviously invites comparisons with either Bernard Cornwell’s Sharpe series or Patrick O’Brien’s Aubrey-Maturin series.

What makes Alatriste so unconventional is the subject matter and setting– Spain in the 17th century that, for a change, doesn’t involve conquistadores or the Armada. I may write about this more later, but suffice it so say for now that I’ve become incredibly, heartily sick of the Anglo-centrism of history here in America and it’s fantastic to be able to read about someone else in history for a change. It’s especially frustrating for me since my research into Philippine history has led me to do a LOT of reading on Spanish history and I’ve developed a certain sentimental attachment to the place. It’s the Old Country, in a way, and I’ve found its history to be a topic of great interest both academically and just aesthetically.

Perez-Reverte seems to have much the same motivation in writing these books. In the fourth book, El Oro del Rey, The King’s Gold, the books’ narrator (more on him later) remarks rather bitterly that the English love to make a big deal of their defeat of the Spanish Armada, ignoring the many other times when the British tried the same trick– a seaborne raid or invasion of Spain– and failed. As Perez-Reverte very rightfully points out, the Spanish army was well-nigh invincible for almost 200 years, defeating the Flemish, the British and the French in open battle, defying the world and perhaps only being defeated after centuries of being worn down by war. It is therefore annoying that all people remember the period is the Armada or Elizabeth being all virginal and heroic.

The books are also sort of unconventional in that they do not focus on any great heroes or figures of the day. Alatriste is a poor, ordinary soldier– just a grognard in a tercio, or army unit. Perez-Reverte created a character who is that which is so beloved in these times which are obsessed with “grittiness” and moral ambiguity– Alatriste is an “anti-hero.” When not involved in brutal, savage wars with either Turks or the Dutch, Alatriste is a sword for hire, willing to kill or duel with anybody for a few gold pieces. As Perez-Reverte said, Alatriste was willing to fight and kill for “otros que no tenian la destreza o los arrestos para solventar sus propias querellas“– “for others who did not have the skill or mettle to solve their own quarrels.”

So there’s a lot of swordplay in the books– a lot of violence, either in the field of  battle or in dark alleys in places like Madrid or Seville. There’s lots of unsavory characters, duels, robberies and all the other acts of legal and illegal derring-do you can think of. Alatriste finds himself ranging up and down the early modern world, fighting for or in the Spanish empire. He fights in Breda, in Holland, he fights the Inquisition, he fights assassins in Madrid, he robs a galleon in Seville, he fights the Turks on a galley in the Mediterranean and he even fights Philip IV, king of Spain, over a famous actress. In short, Perez-Reverte uses Alartriste to paint a picture of Hapsburg Spain in all of its grit and glory.

Alatriste was played by the multi-talented and multi-lingual Viggo Mortensen in the 2006 adaptation of the books. I liked the movie and I like Mortensen but honestly, he was pretty much Aragorn en Espanol.

Perez-Reverte is a good writer who is also a good researcher. He writes tight story lines where the history doesn’t seem forced– you don’t get the impression he is just trying to show off his erudition by mentioning famous names like Francisco de Quevedo, the sword-fighting poet, or Gaspar de Guzman, the king’s famous and powerful advisor (see what I did there, HA). Instead, these characters get woven into the story quite skillfully and they are given personalities that make them amusing to read. I particularly enjoy Quevedo, who is shown as a prickly, passionate writer who despite his seemingly benign profession and limp is one of Alatriste’s most useful allies in a swordfight. This is all  par for the course for Perez-Reverte, however. Anybody who has read his other books like the aforementioned Fencing Master or The Club Dumas will know that he has a talent for intellectual, historical or history-laden novels.

His writing style is also excellent, and his books are deeply textured– you get a feel of the grandeur and tragedy of Spain in this era, how this powerful, haughty country with its wealth, its hidalgos and its armies was slowly collapsing because of, ironically, her wealth, hidalgos and armies. The whole book is very baroque in tone, and Perez-Reverte is probably intentionally imitating this style since it was the literary movement of the period in which the Alatriste books are set (Quevedo is apparently a member of this school of literature). So the series has an atmosphere of echoing, grand ballrooms with dark wooden floors, but also a sort of bitter sadness, of wasted years and fading banners. The whole Alatriste series has a strong feel of a Jorge Manrique poem: “Nuestras vidas son los rios/que van dar en la mar/que es morir“– ” Our lives are rivers that flow to the sea that is death.”

Speaking of language and style, I read the books mostly in English, generally reading the Spanish originals only for practice. The translator of the books, Margaret Jull Costa is fantastic. She captured the mood and style almost perfectly and makes the English version good works on their own. Sometimes, I find that Spanish translates very poorly into English, tending towards literary histrionics or towards being overly florrid. Costa captures the elegiac, Old World charm of Perez-Reverte’s prose without seeming stilted and or awkward.

Juan Echanove as Don Francisco de Quevedo, poet, swordsman, crotchety, faithful friend.

The books are not without their flaws. Perhaps one big one is the fact that by the third book, Perez-Reverte is practically beating you on the head with his oft-repeated refrain of “Ah poor, Spain, your corrupt and lazy people will lead to your demise…” Yes, we get it. Spain declined because of contradictions in her own society. It gets to be VERY tedious, like Perez-Reverte decided to write in a very tiresome, nagging, passive-aggressive Greek chorus. I mean, seriously, Perez-Reverte could give Robert Jordan, with his “sniffs” and “snorts” a run for his money for sheer repetitiveness.

The other major weakness of the books is that as the series progresses, the character of Captain Alatriste becomes rather dull and uninteresting. Perez-Reverte wanted Alatriste to be an anti-hero, not some Galahad, so Alatriste kills and threatens and does all that other good (bad) stuff. But he also wanted to make Alatriste to be a hero still, so he Alatriste has his own stubborn morals, and is someone who is aware of the corruption and decadence around him and tries to maintain his own strict code of honor to balance the sins of his own life. So Alatriste in fact becomes a Gary Stu– an overly perfect character who has to have it all. He’s both dark and gritty, but also honorable.

More than that, Perez-Reverte wanted to contrast Alatriste to the empty flamboyance or fake bravery he keeps encountering in Hapsburg Spain. It seems like every other secondary character that Alatriste encounters is some fake rogue or thief who talks a big game but is actually a coward, or is some puffed nobleman full of arrogance and pride.  So Alatriste becomes a laconic, brooding hero who is much given to staring into space with his cold green eyes– an oft-repeated description– or his “aquiline profile.” He’s always striking a pose that is a combination of macho, world-weary, and pensive. It actually gets incredibly tiring. Basically, as the books progress Alatriste is simply reduced to practically a caricature, a kind of ideal combination of old school quiet and stoic macho man and modern day sensitive thinking man. It also becomes wildly unrealistic, with Alatriste boldly unafraid of high court officials or even the king himself. Perez-Reverte tries too hard to turn his character into the last honorable man in Spain, and into a kind of latter-day El Cid, a faithful soldier just yearning for a good leader. It just makes him unrealistic and unsympathetic.

I get the impression that Perez-Reverte, whose books often ooze with both disdain and regret for the ancien regime, has also written Alatriste as some kind of paean to old-fashioned masculinity. Maybe Perez-Reverte doesn’t like these kids with their rap music, or these metrosexuals, or these stay-at-home dads and he kind of yearns for a sort of Marlboro Man where it was okay to be all rugged and pithy and stoic.

That being said, Alatriste is not always uninteresting. Perez-Reverte is usually too good a writer for that, and you can either ignore or gloss over the character flaws in Alatriste because of the action going on around him or because of the other, more interesting characters in the books. Generally, Alatriste often just becomes predictable, which isn’t so bad, and he’s at least better than the wildly unrealistic and utterly colorless Richard Sharpe of Bernard Cornwell. But then again, Perez-Reverte is a much better writer than Cornwell.

Unax Ugalde as Inigo de Balboa.

In fact, the most interesting character in the book is probably the narrator– the young boy Inigo de Balboa y Aguirre. Inigo is Alatriste’s “squire” and something of an adopted son– the boy was the son of a war buddy of the Captain, and he takes care of him with great and touching affection (Alatriste is at his most interesting and sympathetic when he shows affection and concern for Inigo). The books are also supposedly written by an aged Inigo decades after the fact so his descriptions of Spain and Alatriste are colored by a combination of hero worship, affection and regret. The boy starts the series as 11 or 12 and in the last book he is about 18 or 19. He seems to end the series in his mid to late 20s.

The books are therefore also a bildungsroman, a coming of age story. In fact, one can even see them as not so much the story of Capitan Alatriste, but of Inigo himself. Alatriste serves more as a guide and model for the young Inigo, someone who he first worships and emulates and then grows to resent, before becoming his partner and friend. In short, one way of looking at the Alatriste books is that they are actually very cleverly written coming of age books of a young boy’s relationship with his father. Because of the narrator’s viewpoint you get the impression that Alatriste is the hero when, in fact, it is Inigo– the one who shows the most character development and the one who actually gets into a lot of the most interesting scrapes.

And Inigo is a very sympathetic character. He’s a one a young guy like me can relate to– he shows all the brazenness, arrogance and idiocy of youth but he learns and gets better. He tries to mimic Alatriste’s cold stoicism and often fails, but you seem him maturing and becoming more and more like his father figure not because of imitation but simply because of experience. He also becomes better and better at fighting. In the movie adaptation, Inigo is the one who kills Alatriste’s arch-nemesis, the Italian swordsman/assassin Gualterio Malatesta and the books do hint this might be the case at one point. If he is the one who kills Gualterio, then it’d be fascinating and cleverly written piece of Freudian or Joseph Campbellian literature– the son killing his father (since Malatesta is the mirror image of Alatriste).

In the 2006 movie, Alatriste is grievously wounded by Gualterio Malatesta. Inigo avenges him by killing Malatesta. This does of course practically beg for the line: "Hello, my name is Inigo de Balboa, you almost killed my father figure. Prepare to die."

The books are not for everybody. For one, they might not appeal to those looking for interesting female characters. These are, as I pointed out, masculine books. Indeed, they are even somewhat misogynistic. There are only three, maybe four women who are really mentioned in them: Angelica de Alquezar, Maria de Castro, Caridad le Lebrijana and the queen of Spain, Elisabeth of France. The Queen tends to show up only to be shown as an object of pity– she’s beautiful and charming but largely ignored by her philandering, overly dignified husband. If she’s supposed to be some allegory for Spain, it’s a very ham-handed one. Maria de Castro is central to the plot of the fifth book, but only as a plot device– she is an actress-prostitute over whom the king and Alatriste fight. Caridad le Lebrijana is a former whore who owns the tavern where Alatriste lives, and she’s useful since she’s wildly in love with the Captain and lets him stay there on cheap rates– often for “free” (wink, wink). Angelica de Alquezar is sort of interesting in that she’s something of a Lolita femme fatale. She starts the books at 15 and is shown as an unpredictable, beautiful, scheming and wicked girl whose plots get Inigo de Balboa– and by extension, Alatriste– into trouble. She’s also Inigo’s love interest, so Perez-Reverte is trying to be clever here, although it’s rather predictable. Who hasn’t seen the lover-enemy femme fatale?

Indeed– you notice that in the books, women are either scheming whores or victims. Like I said, the books are practically misogynistic. Alatriste does not show much respect for women or really, does not have much to do with them. He sleeps with them but Perez-Reverte doesn’t particularly portray him as overly enjoying it. He barely talks to them. His advice to Inigo regarding women isn’t nearly as pithy and insightful as Perez-Reverte thinks: Alatriste seem more helpless and bewildered by them more than anything. His struggles with the king over Maria de Castro weren’t because he was in love with her (as the movie suggests) but as a point of pride– he wasn’t going to back down even for a king. I wouldn’t be surprised if the reason why Alatriste is so stoic and quiet is because he’s actually secretly gay and is unhappy about it and always struggling with himself.

"For Frodo! I mean.. Viva Espana!"

These criticisms aside, I still think these are very entertaining, very well-written books. The trick is not to read them all at once, otherwise you’ll get sick of Perez-Reverte’s repetitions– it’s like listening to John Mayer, don’t listen to his whole album at once or you’ll realize that, hey, these songs all sound alike.

But if you are willing to overlook their flaws, the books are exciting– the swordplay is excellently written, the descriptions are vivid and Hapsburg Spain comes very much alive. These books are the sort of best-sellers that you’ll likely still find interesting years later, not the king of Dan Brown crap you’ll leave on an airport lobby. I highly recommend them and there’s an added bonus that there’s a movie with very nice visuals to go with them.

On 13 October 1775, the Continental Congress ratified the creation of the Continental Navy, the ancestor of today’s US Navy. The US Navy recognizes this date as its founding date, although the Continental Navy was dis-established after the Revolutionary War and a new navy had to be built following the Navy Act of 1794.

When people think of American military power, they’d just as likely to think of the giant US Army, or perhaps the US Air Force, the preferred weapon of political planners. But throughout its history, America has really been a naval power. Up until World War II, the US Army was small, often poorly equipped and even a little backward by European standards. It temporarily expanded in times of crisis, like the Civil War, the Spanish-American War, or the First World War, but these were aberrations. The Americans entered the Second World War with one of the smallest, most poorly-equipped armies in the world.

The real muscle of American military force was the Navy, of course. The modern navy has its roots with the 6 frigates of the Naval Act of 1794, commissioned because Barbary Pirates from North Africa had been preying on American shipping. So yes, the Americans had dealings with the Muslim world very early in their history. The fighting with the pirates produced a naval hero: Stephen Decatur, and the ships involved, like the Constitution, United States and the Constellation are now part of American naval legend. The USS Constitution is still afloat and is still a commissioned US Naval vessel, the oldest commissioned ship in the world.

The US Navy eventually grew in size and power throughout the 19th century. The isolationism of pre-World War 2 America fostered this expansion since the Navy was the logical first line of defense, precluding the need for a large army. From almost nothing, the US Navy quickly became one of the largest in the world, rivaling the British Navy.

The Americans were also at the forefront of some key naval innovations. The Americans were not the first to commission the ironclad ships– the French Gloire has that distinction– but the first battle between two ironclads was fought by Americans in the famous Battle of Hampton Roads, when the CSS Virginia fought the USS Monitor in a no-decision engagement.

Later, the American navy produced the foremost naval strategist of the 19th century– of all military history, even. He was Alfted Thayer Mahan, and his famous book The Influence of Seapower in History articulated concepts of sea control and power projection that are now standard ideas of naval strategy. His book had such a profound influence on naval strategy that he probably contributed to the expansion of both imperial colonialism and World War I: he noted that colonies and battle fleets were a source of economic, diplomatic and military strength, thereby encouraging the German Kaizer Wilhem (who was devotee of Mahan) to embark on a fleet building program.

It was possibly Mahan’s ideas of sea control that encouraged the Americans to attack the Spanish fleet in the Philippines in 1897. The Philippines had not been directly involved in the Spanish-American War, which was primarily concerned with Cuba. However, the aggressive, engagement-inclined culture of the Navy encouraged them to seek out the Spanish fleet wherever they could be found. After Commodore George Dewey’s victory over Montojo in the Battle of Manila Bay, the Americans suddenly found they had strategic control over the Philippine Islands. This would lead to the Philippine-American War so, yes, the Philippines was conquered by the Yanks as a side-growth of naval strategy.

"Gridley, there appears to be a country behind that Spanish fleet. Well I'll be deuced... we'll have to figure out what to do with it!"

The Spanish-American War was America’s “coming out” as a major world power at the end of the 19th century. It pushed the country to the forefront of global affairs, and fittingly, American naval power led the way. The traditional European powers continued to dismiss the US Army, but the US Navy was now acknowledged as one of the major naval forces in the world. To more vividly illustrate this point, President Theodore Roosevelt sent the bulk of the US Navy out on a global trip– this was the Great White Fleet, America’s first “showing the flag” expedition.

Ironically, the Great White Fleet was largely outdated by the time it sailed– the HMS Dreadnought, launched in 1906, had made the pre-dreadnoughts obsolete. America was quick to adapt– its own officer William Sims had been closely associated with the gunnery experiments of British officers like Jacky Fisher and Percy Scott. The Americans launched their own dreadnoughts soon after and soon had a sizeable fleet of these doubtfully-useful ships. American naval power was such an established fact that in the Washington Naval Treaty of 1922, the US Navy was put on a level of parity with the British Navy.

The Americans were also at the forefront of aircraft carrier technology and tactics prior to World War 2. The Japanese were building up a carrier force that could rival the Americans, but the American carrier force was one of its best-trained and best-equipped during the lean years of the Great Depression. It was the Americans who fully developed dive-bombing, for instance. The Navy saw dive-b0mbing as a good way to accurately place heavy bombs onto moving, ship-sized targets using the primitive bomb sights of the day. The Germans were so impressed with American experiments that they purchased American dive-bombers to use as models when building their own dive-bombers.

At the outbreak of the Second World War, the US Navy had a cadre of experienced sailors, fliers and captains that were able to eventually stop the Japanese onslaught with the resources they had on hand. For instance, the standard American carrier fighter, the F4F Wildcat, was clearly inferior to the Japanese A6M Zero, but the highly trained American pilots eventually formulated tactics to counter it (the Thach Weave being the most famous, named after its creator, John Thach and for those who like trivia, he enlisted the help of “Butch” O’Hare, the first US ace of World War 2 and after whom O’Hare Airport in Chicago is named).

The US Navy massively expanded during the Second World War. Naval supremacy was the first crucial step on the long road to Western ascendancy over their Axis enemies. The Americans had to help the British defeat the U-Boats and secure the supply lines across the Atlantic, and they had to secure their power in the Pacific as they advanced into Japanese-held waters. For most of the early part war, the bulk of combat was borne by the US Navy and the US Marines.

Eventually, the US Navy would expand to gigantic levels. American submarines largely secured the isolation and economic defeat of the Japanese long before the atomic bombs were ever dropped– they achieved what the German U-Boats failed to do. The Americans would end the war with the largest aircraft carrier force in the world. Perhaps the most important class of American capital ships, the Essex-class were launched in World War 2. These carriers would provide the backbone of American power well into the 20th century.

The US Navy remains America’s main means of power projection. Her aircraft carriers continue to provide mobile air power–during Operation El Dorado Canyon, carriers were used to strike at Libyan forces, and American carriers were used to enforce freedom of navigation during the Iran-Iraq War. The Chinese are obsessed with destroying carriers, they know full well that any of their attempts to take Taiwan or the Spratleys will run into American carriers.

The US Navy also has missiles– nuclear and non-nuclear. Before “drones” were ever known to the public, Tomahawk cruise missiles were the weapon of choice of presidents who wanted to strike at targets without sending in soldiers. Bill Clinton almost killed Bin Laden with a Tomahawk strike. Currently, America’s nuclear deterrent is primarily its SLBM– Submarine Launched Ballistic Missile Force. Indeed, the modern GPS system was first designed to help SLBMs hit their targets. So we owe that little bit of innovation to the US Navy.

I haven’t even mentioned the Navy SEALS.

The US Armed Forces is hopefully about to enter a period of retrenchment and reduction. From its Iraq and Afghani War highs, its about to cut down on size and budget. Hopefully, at least.

So if this military reduction does happen, the US Navy will probably shoulder more and more of America’s strategic burden– it will continue to fulfill the mission it had since the days of Decatur: power projection, defense and acting as America’s long-range muscle.

I did not really start out wanting to study Philippine military history. Once upon a time, when I was “young and full of hope” I thought I might like World War II history or medieval European history. I’m forced into this field out of practical considerations– I’m a Filipino and it was expedient. I knew the languages– I added Spanish after a lot of difficulty– I have a familiarity with the culture and, well, you know, modern academe’s lingering orientalist, colonial-era intellectual structure. By that I mean, there’s an almost tacit expectation that a minority will study his or her cultural or ethnic field. Have you ever heard of a Filipino or a Nigerian being accepted to study, say, US Civil War history or medieval European history? Let’s just say when I sent out exploratory emails to professors in America more than one was puzzled as to why I would want to study medieval Europe, I was Filipino. And I thought them academics were lefty granola types?

One thing I do know– Filipino military history is an incredibly under-studied field. Oddly, more foreigners have written about it than Filipinos. I’m lucky that people like Cesar Pobre, Noelle Rodriguez and Rico Jose have done so, but they’re the exception. There are not so much gaps as gaping black holes in Philippine military historical knowledge. For instance, how many Filipinos are aware of Bancusay Bay? Or of Malong? It seems like the entirety of Philippine military history is Mactan, maybe Tirad Pass and then World War II.

33% of Philippine military history.

Honestly, I can’t say I’m too pleased with the field myself. Part of the reason why I’ve long soured on being a research historian is that, dear god, I don’t want to keep researching Philippine military history. There’s various reasons– it’s tedious work nobody cares about (nobody really cares about Philippine history in general) and it’s difficult to secure funding or publication for it, are two practical ones. But one big reason I’ll admit it is that it’s depressing as fuck.

Why? Let’s just say that the Filipino people have not been… burdened with dealing with the aftermath of victory.

Here’s an only slightly exaggerated little historical generalization for you. Since the 16th century,the Philippine archipelago has practically never been successfully defended. By anyone. It seems like there’s a curse laid on it.

Sure, some Visayans in Mactan fought off the Spanish in 1521, but by the end of the century, the Spanish had established a permanent presence in the islands despite resistance from the native Filipinos. In 1762, the Spanish– with Filipino help– failed to defend the city of Manila from the British. In 1896, the Spanish failed to defend Cavite from the Philippine Rebels, who in turn failed to defend it when the Spanish shipped in reinforcements from Spain. The Spanish again failed to defend the Philippine Islands in 1898, when the Filipinos and Americans attacked the colony. The Filipinos consequently failed to defend the Philippines in 1899 when the Americans decided to take pity on us poor half devil, half children. The Americans and Filipinos failed to defend the Philippines in 1941 when the Japanese invaded and in 1944, the Japanese in turn failed to defend the Philippines when the Americans returned.

Just about the only time the Philippines saw off an invasion was when the Spanish-Filipino forces repelled Limahong’s attempted to capture Manila in the 1570s. Other than that, defending the Philippines seems to be as futile as trying to get Lindsay Lohan off drugs.

Studying Philippine military history.

Filipinos– or people who were ancestors of today’s Filipinos– don’t have a very good military record either. We lost to the Spanish in the 16th century. Our uprisings all failed in the 300 years of Spanish rule. Our Revolutionaries all failed in the 1890s. When we sided with the Yanks, we lost in the early ’40s. Our “fighter ace” Juan Villamor has “two probables.” Our most “renowned” general of the Philippine-American War (or at least one constantly lauded, just read the hagiographic wiki page on him) Antonio Luna lost every single battle he fought. Our current armed forces is constantly baffled and ambushed by various rebel groups. Seems like all it’s good for is scaring us every so often with threats of coup d’etat.

In fact, here’s another depressing little guide for you– the Philippine navy names many of its ships after Philippine commanders from the Philippine Revolution of 1896 or the Philippine-American War of 1899. None of these ships have been named after a victorious general. Not a one.

The newest one is the BRP Gregorio del Pilar, a former Hamilton-class cutter. He’s named after a general who is most famous for losing the Battle of Tirad Pass. He’s an Atenean too, incidentally. There’s also the BRP Artemio Ricarte. There’s a guy with a depressing record. In the Philippine Revolution, he sided with the Bonifacio party, and was spectacularly unsuccessful, unlike the rival Aguinaldo party that supplanted his faction. In the Fil-Am War, Ricarte had switched allegiances and was now an Aguinaldo general– and was also spectacularly unsuccessful. He left for exile in Japan, and returned in World War II on the Japanese side– just in time to share in their defeat. There’s others– the BRP Mariano Alvarez, the BRP Miguel Malvar, the BRP Antonio Luna, the BRP Emilio Aguinaldo, the BRP. Emilio Aguinaldo, Mariano Alvarez and Miguel Malvar were at least military leaders during the 1898 defeat of Spain, but they too would go down in defeat just a year later. Just for kicks, the Philippine Navy also named ships after two datu from the 16th century– Magat Salamat and Humabon. Both were also defeated.

So let that sink in– the Philippine Navy named its ships after a string of incredibly unsuccessful commanders.It’d be like the US Navy naming its ship the USS Loyd Fredendall or the USS John P. Lucas or the USS Horatio Gates (look them up in wikipedia). Not very confidence-building, if you ask me but um, what choice did the Philippines have– there were no other military commanders to name the ships after. At this point, we’d be better off naming a ship the BRP Manny Pacquiao. At least he’s a victorious fighter.

If we do name a ship the Manny Pacquiao, I vote it be something like a Pegasus-class. Small but tough and punching above its weight class.

So yeah… one reason why the Philippines so loves the Battle of Mactan is because it was probably our only notable victory. Ever. And at least it was a reasonably decisive one. Magellan was overstepping his orders, which were to make contact with local rulers for trading purposes, but not to secure their submission or attempt a conquest. He did so anyway, and if he had lived it might be possible that the Spanish would have established a permanent presence in the Philippines sooner. But he died in 1521, defeated by the chieftain Si Lapu Lapu in 1521, in the Battle of Mactan. The Spanish efforts in the Philippines were set back 40 years.

There were a few other fairly successful Filipino commanders. The rebels of the Dagohoy Revolt managed to hold out for 80 years. This, however, is an incredibly understudied revolt. The wikipedia article makes it seem as if the Dagohoy rebels held out because of their fortifications, which would be a false analysis since other Filipino rebels also built good or elaborate defenses and then failed to hold them. Truth is, we don’t really know why they were so successful.

Emilio Aguinaldo, the first president of the Philippine, also had a few victories early in his career in 1896. He did manage to secure Cavite for the Philippine Revolution. Again, these are incredibly under-studied engagements. I’ve read up on them and my assessment is that they barely count as battles. There were very few forces involved– the Spanish were caught by surprise and had no forces on hand other than second rate garrison troops or constabulary forces. Interestingly, the Spanish had more Filipino soldiers than Spanish, so a lot of Aguinaldo’s victories were against other Filipinos.

Finally, I suppose there’s the Balangiga Massacre during the Philippine-American War, when insurgents in Leyte managed to nearly wipe out a small garrison of Americans. This was a victory of sorts, but was promptly followed by a massive defeat, when the Americans showed their benevolent assimilation by killing a lot of innocent Filipinos. That’s because we were uncivilized, and needed to be taught culture and civilization. It was for our own good, mind you.

They're civilizing the hell out of us!

Now there’s some caveats to all this, of course. As dear old Carl von Clausewitz said, war is politics– armed might is a tool of politics, and therefore serves a political purpose and politics never ends during war. So perhaps Philippine military behavior might be more intelligible if viewed from the perspective of politics. The prehispanic Filipinos who were “defeated” by Spain for instance– some things have to be said about them and I probably know more than anyone how these guys thought about war– I’ve been the only historian to do work on the period for the past 8 years.

Firstly, these guys weren’t “Filipinos.” If asked, they might not even call themselves “Visayan” or “Tagalog.” They would think of themselves as datu Si Humabon’s man, or datu Si Lapu Lapu’s woman. Politics was based on charismatic individuals and communities could be ephemeral. Politically and militarily, then, territorial annexation and defense or massive force destruction was not an objective in war. In other words, prehispanic Filipinos didn’t think in terms of “total war” and never got it in their heads to “defend” a Philippines that didn’t yet exist. When they fought the Spanish, the datu were fighting to preserve their authority. Again, herr Clausewitz can help us here since he did note with his obtuse dialectical method that one pole of warfare is “limited war” and not all war led to “true war” which was the complete disarmament of the enemy.

The Spanish were more than happy to keep these datu in power and they coopted them very quickly. Indeed, the datu probably benefited from Spanish overlordship, since the Spanish believed in hereditary power– something that the prehispanic Filipinos did not believe in.

There’s also the idea of “conquest.” Get it out of your heads that the Spanish completely blanketed the Philippines with troops and their writ of law extended to every single inch of Philippine terrain. In fact, the Spanish were confined to mainly a handful of towns and cities– probably 80% of them lived in Manila. During the Conquest in the 1560s and 1570s, the Spanish would demand tribute and then leave– not changing local laws, not changing the elites, not really doing anything other than taking money. This doesn’t amount to a very thorough conquest. After the Conquest, most Spanish in the Philippines were missionaries, and their idea of “conquest” was religious conversion. So those maps that show the Philippines as part of the Spanish empire… people really have to rethink what that means. Some Filipinos saw only one Spaniard for many decades after the Conquest.

Okay, fine, there is that.

The same kind of analysis can be applied to the rebellions during Spanish rule. None of these had more than limited goals in mind. Perhaps only the Malong Rebellion in the 1660s aimed at expelling the Spanish, and even that is debatable. Most had local grievances– anger at this Spanish official, anger at that Spanish law. The missionaries and secular Spanish in the Philippines were so few they tended to accede to Philippine demands. They didn’t have the strength to go out and crush rebels and, to be fair, the missionaries didn’t have the religious inclination to allow that either. Sure, the Spanish would use force to make the Filipinos stop, but the body counts during these expeditions could be quite low. For the most part, the Spanish were forced to execute only ringleaders, leaving the bulk of the rebels to reintegrate with the community. So, no rows of crosses along the side of the road where a Philippine Spartacus can be hung up as a symbol of what happens to those who defy the pax Hispanica.

The Spanish should have a new slogan-- "Hey, it could have been worse! You could have been colonized by the Dutch!"

The Filipinos of the Revolution and the Fil-Am War did aim for territorial hegemony and political self-rule. By their own definitions, they lost and lost badly. Reading up on the Revolution is a singularly demoralizing exercise since the Filipinos were incredibly amateurish and unprepared. My dissertation has uncovered some previously unused documentation that will show just how amateurish the Filipinos were when it came to ideas of tactics and war.

But even for them, I guess it’s not so bad. Sure, Aguinaldo and Malvar lost their wars and failed to become leaders of an independent Philippines, but they maintained their elite status and their local authority. The Americans, like the Spanish, chose to deal with the local elites since this was the easiest way to both stop the insurgency and rule the colony. So get it out of your heads that the Americans magically planted participative democracy in the Philippines– all they did was to reinforce the elite structure with new laws. Emilio Aguinaldo may have failed to become president of the Philippines, but his family has been in power in Cavite for the past 100 or so years.

So okay, there’s highfalutin explanations for Philippine military defeat. Sure, we lost all the time, but a canny historian can write it up in such a way as to make it interesting for revisionist academics who like explanations that use social structures, anthropology, longue duree, agency, and other nice, academic terms. I bow down to the temple of Focault, Benedict Anderson and the “war and society” guys. May their approval rain down upon me in the form of grants and tenure!

But there are times when I do still find this field rather depressing. I understand the culture behind Philippine military behavior, I know the political circumstances, blah blah blah. But like Ellen Degeneres said of Peter O’Toole at the Oscars, sometimes, “you just want to win.”

I find this to be particularly true for the conflicts that the Philippines is in today. I’m not the biggest fan of insurgent groups like the NPA, Abu Sayyaf, MILF and MNLF. Yes, there is a Muslim separatist group in the Philippines called the MILF. If you’re done snickering at the name of a group that has killed probably thousands of Filipinos, we can move on.

Anyway, maybe these guys have legitimate grievances– the national government has certainly not had a good track record with Muslims. But at this point, these groups do more harm to the sectors in society they supposedly help. The Abu Sayyaf in particular is really nothing more than a latter-day remontado group leading ngayaw raids for their own wealth and benefit. It would be nice if our army could just kick the shit out of them and get it over with.

Finally, it’s particularly depressing to me because– if you have paid close attention– the people who suffer the most from these multiple defeats are ordinary Filipinos. The elites, as usual, do just fine. They keep their power, the enemy even often helps them. But the ones who died the most during the Revolution or the Fil-Am War or World War II, or who keep dying and suffering in today’s anti-insurgency efforts? The poor blokes who are either caught in between– farmers, workers, families– people who are forced to fight for elites or get killed in between armies. Sometimes it just seems to me like the armed might of the Philippines has been unable to fight for its own people. It demands sacrifices of them, but gives them little benefits in return. Indeed, people like Aguinaldo are turned into heroes, when these same guys fought labor movements and protests during the Fil-Am War. In Milagros Guerrero’s unpublished dissertation, she shows how the Revolutionary Government in 1898 and 1899 suppressed peasant movements and labor movements– ordinary Filipino people who had taken the rhetoric of revolution (espoused by elites) at face value and were trying to win themselves some social justice were violently repressed by the Philippine army. Ironically, it seems as if the Philippine armed forces– be they insurgent groups or armies– are historically better at crapping on its people than they are at defending them.

Crikey. Why am I in this line of work again?

First, this is a very problematic thing to even talk about because what makes a fight scene “good?” I used to go to forums where there were complaints about “realistic” fight scenes and I have to wonder– what the hell is a “realistic” fight scene? For instance, what is a “realistic” sword fight? I don’t know a lot of people who have ever seen a “real” sword fight– whatever that means– so how do you portray it in a movie? I mean, we can’t even really define a “real” sword fight. Don’t tell me it’s just one that ends in death or has lethal intent, either. Lots of sword combats in the past have involved everything short of death or even serious injury.

I mean, if you want “realistic” then the classic scene from Indiana Jones probably can’t be beat.

Second, I am not at all a movie or theater person but I do understand the limitations the medium imposes. First and foremost, the whole fight has to advance the story or fit into the point of the movie, be it to entertain, shock, play up dramatic effect, or whatever. If you can’t tell, for instance, the personality of the characters in the fight, then it’s a pretty crappy one. Or if you can’t understand what’s going on, well then it sucks– kind of like action sequences in Michael Bay movies. They’re all noisy, blurry, special effecty and… I really have no clue what just happened other than Shia Labeouf somehow miraculously winning again. So this means that punches are often wide, so the audience can see them, or that movements are exaggerated.

Maybe a good place to start is to show crap fight scenes.

So take for instance the light saber duel between Count Dooku and Yoda in the second Star Wars movie.

This is seriously a crap scene. Yoda never particularly aims for Count Dooku himself– not even Dooku’s over-extended arms. Neither does Dooku aim for Yoda. In fact, it’s nothing more than pointless jumps and twirls from Sonic the Yoda. You don’t even get a sense of who is winning or losing. It’s a pointless exercise in arm waving and CGI.

This was an equally crap scene. It was pointless flailing and sword waving. There were some truly idiotic parts too, like when Anakin and Obi Wan literally stand inches apart and twirl their swords around. You don’t get a sense of who is winning, there’s no sense of technique. I did some poking around and the two Jedi apparently have different fighting styles– you simply don’t see it, the two actors seem to be practicing the same kind of Tae Kwan Crap. It didn’t help the dialogue is absolutely hackneyed and that Hayden Christensen is just an iffy actor who (a) is given a political ideology that makes him sound like George Dubya Anakin and (b) portrays turning to the “dark side” as looking angry, perhaps because Obi Wan said his momma was so fat, Luke Skywalker thought she was a small moon.

So given those two examples, I suppose I look firstly for something that helps with the plot or story of the movie, matching the needs of the movie by showing the fight as a turning point, or a point of character development, or whatever. Second, it would be nice if the fight also just shows good acting. The actors just have to sell that they are fighting with whatever emotion is called for: fear, intensity, non-chalance, or whatever. They shouldn’t just stand there and move their arms. Third, it would be nice to see a little bit more than mindless sword twirling or the stereotypical parry high, parry low, parry high, parry low sequence.

Perhaps the movie with the best sword fights– possibly even historically accurate ones–would be Ridley Scott’s first movie The Duellists. This is based on a Joseph Conrad short story and it depicts a long-running rivalry between two hussars in the Napoleonic army. The aggressor and hot-head is played by Harvey Keitel while the rather vanilla hero is played by the appropriately bland and vanilla Keith Carradine.

This, for instance, is a fantastic scene. It builds up suspense, leaving you to wonder what happened without actually showing the sword strike itself. It also shows you Keith Carradine’s fear, his frustration at having to fight for “honor” against someone who is obsessed with it. So the framing the scene, the running montages, show you how all his encounters with Harvey Keitel build up to that one moment, which gives him the nerve to keep riding and meet the attack head on instead of slowing down or hesitating or turning his back– which would be lethal for him. It’s also brief– no fancy twirling, just two hussars riding towards each other to make one pass. From what I can tell from period manuals and such, it’s not a bad depiction of mounted combat from the era. They certainly hold their swords correctly when on point– edge up, arm extended. It shows mounted combat as more a matter of verve and horsemanship rather than fancy sword twirling, which is probably very accurate. Harvey Keitel is shown to be consistently better than Keith Carradine in combat, but in this moment, you see how emotion and a surge of bravery because mounting frustration gives Carradine the will to win. Oh and it doesn’t hurt that it’s a beautiful scene too– the uniforms, the framing, the color palette.

The Duellists is just full of these good, beautiful, well-acted scenes. This first fight involves Harvey Keitel’s character, Gabriel Feraud, dueling with the nephew of the mayor of Strasbourg. Feraud is portrayed as an excellent sword fighter who has obviously done this before and is cool, but intense and aggressive when fighting, while his opponent is clearly depicted as a civilian who knows how to use a sword, but has never done it in a duel with lethal intent. You can see and feel the man’s hesitation and his lack of skill, which Feraud uses. The scene also has correct stances– leaning back, sword out, off-hand defending. The fight is mostly linear, but they circle, which is good, and the two actors have a good sense of distance. Not perfect, but good. It also shows a rarity in movies– as a contrast from the Star Wars scenes above– broken tempo. You don’t see a continuous flurry of sword parries and blows– there is hesitation, the duelists move in and out of range, they sometimes make jerky attacks and flinch. Again– a very good scene.

The fight choreographer of The Duellists is a man named William Hobbs and he is probably the reason why Ridley Scott movies have better than average sword fight scenes. He seems to be responsible for some of the better ones in recent Hollywood history, in contrast to Bob Anderson who is something of a doyen of Hollywood sword fights. Hobbs seems to show differences in technique, intensity, good sense of distance and personal space among the actors and broken tempo. He basically “sells” the fight– it seems real, whether or not the techniques used in it are real or not– and its a happy coincidence he has choreographed actors who seem to be into this stuff or willing to learn.

That scene was from the otherwise incredibly dull Rob Roy. It was not a Ridley Scott movie, but it was choreographed by William Hobbs. The claymore or backsword that Liam Neeson uses is probably anachronistic, and I don’t know enough about that weapon to tell if it was used well, but I liked the contrast between the backsword and the small sword. Tim Roth was shown as quick, intense, skilled, arrogant and very angry, a coiled spring, and he was deft with his small sword (not rapier, btw, as so many people seem to think). The scene was making a point with this contrast in fighting styles and weapons– a culturally stereotyped one, I’m sure– of the deft, skilled, scientific but foppish English, versus the more manly, stolid and visceral Scottish with their backsword. Perhaps it was even making a pseudo political one– the Scottish could be nicked and bled, but they would endure and win the end.

Riddley Scott tends to have decent fight scenes, as I mentioned. The movie Kingdom of Heaven was done a terrible disservice in its final cut– the version shown in theaters was crap, but the extended version was probably one of the best Ridley Scott films. All the whining and bleating about its supposed “historical accuracy” aside (which usually says more about the reviewer’s political leanings) the combat in the film ranged from the very good to top notch– even if they weren’t arranged by William Hobbs.

This scene is from the extended version of Kingdom of Heaven. It’s not bad– its better than most out there (although Orlando Bloom really ought to tuck his elbows in). It’s not superb, but almost everything else I’ve seen is much worse. In fact Kingdom of Heaven is rather famous for being the only Hollywood movie to mention that medieval Europe had sword martial arts with its famous “posta di falcone” scene:

Liam Neeson with a sword… again.

Sure, the movements are wide, two-handers and the posta di falcone came a good 200 years later, or even that they probably ought to be using posta di donna and not posta di falcone (which we might call the “Guard That Will Turn You Into the Lord of Jerusalem), but still. The sudden half-swording switch and pommel strike was a nice touch. It gave you the idea that these people weren’t flailing away wildly, but had martial arts and technique.

However, where the movie really did a good job was the battles.

Aside from just looking nice– it was intense, advanced the plot and was surprisingly realistic. Saladin’s trebuchets don’t take down the city walls in a flash– in fact, they are used more to harass and lob missiles into the city, which is probably how they would be used against firm walls. The siege is shown as a series of long, bloody, and inconclusive escalades that only end with a negotiated surrender. Not only is this true to the specific history of the fall of Jerusalem, it was also true of many medieval sieges in general.

Other intense, pseudo-realistic scenes (in that they seem to show plausible or plausible-looking techniques) include, for instance the end fight from the quickly-forgotten The Hunted with Tommy Lee Jones and Benicio del Toro.

It’s a harrowing scene, and as Roger Ebert point out, a very good one. It doesn’t involve dreary Matrix-style CGI and wire fighting which really doesn’t look very… fighty: as I call those scenes, Bitch Slapping in Bullet Time. Instead, in The Hunted you see ugly, visceral, bloody fighting of two guys stabbing and cutting each other, really just trying to kill each other. It’s not pretty or epic or artistic, but you see technique– locks, blocks, all of it. There’s even an attempt to keep the techniques simple– not overly elaborate. It doesn’t hurt they based the knife-fighting on a Filipino style, Kali I believe. Of course, this being the Internet, there’s some dude on Youtube (who sells knives, of course) who is vehemently against this movie because of the style of knife it uses.

The scene from Sherlock Holmes is another favorite. It shows Sherlock’s personality– multi-talented, able to fight but simultaneously think about other things while doing so. At the end of it, you got the sense he was doing all of the falling and fighting largely for show, and could have ended it quickly if he had to. The movie’s trick of having Sherlock plot out in advance what he was going to do was also effective and clever. It doesn’t hurt that Robert Downey Jr. is a good actor when he doesn’t have more coke in him than a vending machine and that he practices Wing Chun Kung Fu. Also, I like the nod to the historical martial art Bartitsu–which Arthur Conan Doyle referenced in The Adventure of the Empty House.

The scene above is an absolute rarity: a depiction of early modern “pike and shot” warfare in a movie. It’s a pretty good one too– pikes form in squares, screened by gunners. I suppose, ironically, the tercios ought not to be shown firing their weapons in countermarch (musketeer fires and then moves to the rear to reload, while a musketeer in the rear ranks moves forward) since the mosqueteros in tercios fired at their own initiative. It’s ironic because the countermarch was developed by the Dutch to counter the advance of the Spanish tercio. The cavalry really ought not to ride forward and fire like that either– they’d be more likely to hit the moon than the tercio. However, the moment when the two pike squares inch forward before meeting each other is fantastic– such a difference from Hollywood, which would probably have these two pike squares run at each other flat out, breaking formation.

The scene is from the Spanish movie Alatriste, a so-so movie largely because it mashed together 4 books into two hours and was barely comprehensible to anybody who hadn’t read the books. But if you have read the books, it was an entertaining visualization of an excellent series of books, and it was very picturesque too. The other fight scenes are okay as well, and it was nice to see Aragorn Espanol.

The Japanese also make excellent sword fight scenes. Not always– I’ve watched enough samurai movies to see crap scenes, so let’s not stereotype that Japanese movies always have good swordfights because every Japanese person has a katana in their bedroom.

This is from The Twilight Samurai– an already excellent movie with fine, understated drama and a depiction of samurai that completely turns the stereotype on its head. The hero is portrayed as a reluctant samurai living at the end of the Tokugawa Era. Unlike the other samurai, who wish to fight to maintain their privilege (like Ken Watanabe’s character in The Last Samurai) the hero in Twilight Samurai wants to give up being a samurai and just be a farmer so he can watch his daughters grow up. Not only is this remarkably true to history– lots of low ranking samurai did give up their swords to become farmers– it was also poignant. However, the hero had a secret: he was actually very good with a sword– his school practiced with the short weapon, the kodachi.

So in this scene, you see him reluctantly taking on an arrogant “squire”– who is shown being a douche-san– to save a friend. He is so poor he uses just  a stick (he pawned his sword), but he also uses the stick because he doesn’t want to kill the other guy. The fight is fantastic– it advances the plot, hell it’s even a pivotal moment since it shows you a hidden talent that makes people around him look at the hero differently. The technique he uses is apparently accurate or at least plausible (from what I heard from people who know about it). Instead of directly blocking the longer katana with his shorter weapon, he moves in at close range and stifles the other man’s hand, preventing him from even moving his weapon. How many Hollywood movies would show something like that? This probably was a better way for Yoda to use his shorter weapon– moving within close range where the man with the longer weapon has less freedom.

There is, of course, Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai. This particular scene shows Kyuzo, the winner of this fight, dueling with another samurai. In a scene that shows very little fancy twirling, you’re given a fantastic example of a sword duel. It clearly shows why Kyuzo won: he is cool, calm, decisive and collected. His opponent is shown as brash and hesitant, his courage generated from hot air. When Kyuzo’s opponent fights, he can’t decide on what stance to use and his advance is jerky and clumsy. It’s subtle film making and a good fight scene, but hell, it’s Akira Kurosawa, what do you expect? It’s also apparently based on a real duel from Japanese history involving a samurai named Yagyu Jubei Mitsuyoshi, son (I believe) of the founder of Yagyu Shinkage Ryu.

Hollywood often depicts battles as brainless charges, or conversely, as heroic melees. That scene from the 1968 movie Charge of the Light Brigade is probably the single most realistic depiction of the charge in movie history– possibly one of the most realistic depictions of pre-20th century warfare. It’s depicted as a mess of poorly planned chaos. The commander of the charge, Lord Cardigan, is shown as a useless card who is more concerned with cutting a fine figure on the saddle (and getting mad at a soldier for riding ahead of him because of that) than thinking about a better way to execute his seemingly quixotic orders to seize a hilltop full of guns or even looking back to see if his men were doing okay. The charge doesn’t start out at a breakneck run either, and the cavalrymen are shown as doing their best to stay in formation– they ride as fast as they can while still in ranks, which in this case looks to be either a fast canter or a slow gallop. Only towards the end of their charge do they actually advance at a run, and it was only after they’d been cannonaded all to hell in the “valley of death” that the cavalry’s ranks begin to tatter. The reactions to their charge are true to history too– John Gielguld brilliantly portrays Lord Raglan as an amateurish old fuddy duddy. The whole charge is presented as a tragedy of amateurishness and boneheaded errors by the incompetent aristocratic British commanders– hardly the heroic ride to destiny of Tennyson.

Oliver Stone’s Alexander was an incredibly uneven film, but this scene was quite good. Alexander’s speech is interesting. I like how he looks to omens, like any ancient world commander would. It’s also nice to see him singling out soldiers for praise, which he is recorded as doing and which was key to his appeal and command style. The contrast between his comment on courage and the frightened soldier soiling himself was classic Oliver Stone too– a combat vet would look askance at such romanticism. The scene has some flaws, I’m sure– I suspect its treatment of the Persians is not overly accurate and Stone completely omits the fact that a large proportion of Darius’s army was composed of Greek mercenaries. However, it is one of the rare Hollywood movies that show actual tactics. Alexander DOES have a plan for Gaugamela, and he carries it out– it’s not just a wild smash of armies. More than that, Stone actually showed what tactic Alexander probably used (or close enough to it)– divide the Persian army by baiting Darius and then riding his cavalry through the gap to head straight for Darius himself.  For those who have read their Arrian (one of the primary sources for Alexander’s life) this is simply remarkable– a Hollywood movie that stuck to history. The way the Macedonians stopped the chariots was even taken from the primary sources. A nice touch is the fact that this is one of those very, very rare Hollywood films that shows ancient world cavalry not using stirrups. You also see all the major troop types– sarissa-armed phalangites, lightly armed hypaspists (in the right place of the battle line– keeping contact with the infantry and cavalry), peltast skirmishers, and of course, the famous Companion Cavalry of Alexander– armed with accurate weapons too. A remarkably accurate scene from an otherwise bleh movie. Credit clearly goes to Stone and to Robin Lane Fox, his historical adviser.

For those who point out I haven’t mentioned guns much, this scene from Michael Mann’s Heat is very famous. Not only is it based on a real life shootout, it shows the use of suppressive fire, reloading (Val Kilmer apparently reloads at record speed) and advancing in rushes. Michael Mann would show something similar again in the shoot out scene in the (if you ask me) very underrated Miami Vice. The movie also shows cars barely being able to protect the people hiding behind them– which is pretty realistic. The scene stands in contrast to this famous one from the otherwise fun movie Grosse Point Blank.

Ladies and gentlemen, bulletproof potato chips.

Fight scenes don’t have to be super-realistic or the like to be nice. I like stylized scenes too, those that are more artistic than anything. The scene above was from the movie Troy. Troy has been much criticized, and I noticed it’s often criticized by people who clearly haven’t read the Iliad– I’ve seen complaints of how Achilles is portrayed as vulnerable, for instance, when in Homer’s Iliad he is never described as immortal and almost drowns in the Skamandros river at one point. Hell, I’ve seen very few remarks on how it shows Menelaus dying, when in fact he was one of the few Greek heroes to survive and make an appearance in the Odyssey. That being said, it was a hum drum movie.

The duel between Hektor and Achilles was good because it’s how I imagine two heroes fighting. Brad Pitt plays Achilles here to perfection: a golden god who is superhuman in skill. He makes fighting look effortless and graceful, adding a touch of genius to his style. Hektor is shown as a skilled craftsman, good through hard work and training, but just not quite up to Achilles’s skill. The movements of the fight look almost poetic, almost as if this is how Homer might have imagined it. It was also nice to see how Hektor does his best, and while he is clearly going to lose he constantly puts it off– you find yourself rooting for him. In the end, he gives Achilles his toughest fight and even manages to scratch his armour.

Brad Pitt is what really makes this scene work– he really does look and move and fight like a golden god. He is what I imagine a hero to be: arrogant, superhumanly beautiful in a fight and epic poetry in motion.

To quote Phil Ken Sebben: "Ha! Ha! Bi curious..."

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon is a brilliant movie, perhaps the best example of the “You Killed My Master!” genre of kung fu movies. The fight styles and scenes in it are closely integrated to the movie, which meant that the aerial acrobatics actually had a point beyond mere visuals. Later “artsy fartsy” kung fu movies would take these to ridiculous extremes (like the pro-communist party Hero or the incredibly dull House of Flying Daggers). I happen to really like the character of Li Mu Bai, Chow Yun Fat’s character, because he is how I imagine the kung fu master to be. He’s restrained, calm and fights with an absolute economy of motion. Unlike Sonic the Yoda, he doesn’t make a movement he doesn’t have to and his fighting style is beautiful in its relative simplicity. The contrast shown when he fights Ziyi Zhang’s Jen is one of the most effective bits of fight choreography I’ve seen: Jen is naturally skilled, but she doesn’t quite understand the techniques she read from the manuals she stole from Li Mu Bai’s school. Li Mu Bai sees this natural talent and while fighting he cannot deny his inner teacher and teaches her–another very nice touch since it shows the character of Li Mu Bai. Jen looks clumsy and overdone in comparison and he disarms her with a stick, despite the fact she is using the best sword in China, the Green Destiny. If any character best shows the spiritual, meditative aspect of Chinese martial arts, it has to be Li Mu Bai.

One last scene I happen to like is from the TV show Chuck. First, I mention it because I’m a fan of the series… so clearly this whole fight stuff is generally a matter of taste. If you like stylized fights or light saber combat or flying through the air, then shit, who am I to judge. I ain’t anybody.

But this scene– I like it for a few simple reasons. First, I’m sick to death of what TV Tropes calls Waif Fu or the fairy fighting style so beloved in Hollywood. Little girls like River Tam from Serenity or the Firefly series are shown as kicking ass through the magic of balletic movement, but her hits and blows don’t show much power and you know one hit on her and she’ll go down like glass. In the scene below, Yvonne Strahovsky’s Sarah Walker is shown hitting with power, fighting like a guy or a bruiser, basically. However, she isn’t made to look like some crazy butchy “dyke” but is still depicted as feminine while doing so– she’s just strong. It also shows her as getting hit and feeling pain– I notice the Hollywood double standard where women can fight, and often as gracefully as cats, but can’t be shown getting hit because that would just be offensive. I guess I’m post-feminist enough to think that if the woman is going to want to punch it up with the bad guys, well then she’s going to get hit and that’s all there is to it.

But in the end, I say again– what the hell do I know. Movies are a matter of taste. If it’s fun, its fun: shit, don’t listen me. I say, screw me. I suck. Amen.

Beast's library. Looks impressive? Bet it's all stuff like Chicken Soup For The Cursed Prince's Soul or Seven Habits of Highly Cursed People.

Like a lot of people who are interested in military history, I got my “start” in World War II. Way back in the Philippines, in my old school in Ateneo, I started reading the dribs and drabs I found in our library. Not a lot of stuff– like at all. I lost interest in World War II over the years and when I decided to try making a very minor career out of history, with a focus of sorts on military history, I directed my interest primarily to Southeast Asian history and Philippine military history.

Recently, though, I’ve had to teach more general military history classes. The jobs of being an ABD mean you get more freedom in topics to teach– and I decided to avoid limiting myself to Southeast Asian history because I don’t feel I can fill a term’s worth of teaching with it. I also decided to add a greater range of topics just for the sake of relevance and student interest.

So after 15 years, I went back to World War II. Wow. How could I have known what I had missed? First, I never really studied it with a particularly academic bent, and second, I didn’t have people to tell me what to read. This time around I both had a reason to take a scholarly approach and someone who could point me in the right direction. Like Belle from the picture above, it literally opened up a world of books and literature I had never even heard of. I got to read people like Omar Bartov, John Buckley, Richard Overy, David Glantz, Robert Citino, John Dower, and Geoffrey P. Megaree. And that’s barely even scratching the surface– I know there’s loads of others, like Carlos Este, Russel Hart, Dennis Showalter (yes, I haven’t read him yet) and a slew of others. It completely altered my view of that war– for instance, it showed how unbalanced the view was of German ability, or how underrated the Russians had been. It also reduced the importance of technology in my understanding of victory and defeat in that war.

Why do I bring this up? I love my old school and will always be extremely proud of it– it was responsible for a lot of my good qualities. My intellectual approach is also Atenean, and I have found it a good, solid one. HOWEVER, the problems with my school– I went to the Ateneo de Manila for both high school and college–is that it is not necessarily in touch with the latest scholarship in certain fields. I never would have known how much I was missing when it came to World War II historical literature because of my school’s relative isolation.

There are other, more practical reasons for this lack of up-to-date information, of course. Money is an obvious one– the Ateneo had one of the bigger and better libraries in the whole Philippines because of money and organization. Students and researchers from all over would go to our library to make use of it. But it is an absolutely tiny library in absolute terms– it has 180,000 books. My current school’s library has a collection that far exceeds the Rizal Library’s collection– just the science branch has 160,000. And my current school even has a small library in comparison to other institutions.

Being in the periphery of major educational systems and institutions– really, being in the Philippines– also burdens the library collection. The Ateneo, for instance, did not participate in SUMMIT or WorldCat when I was there (and still doesn’t from what I can tell). I don’t know why it doesn’t, but I can imagine money and logistics plays a role. I mean, both services use the postal service, and I just don’t see the Philippine postal service being fast enough or trustworthy enough to be a viable means of library book transport.

So just as a point of reference, the Rizal Library does not own a copy of Omer Bartov’s Hitler’s Army, Wolfram Wette’s The Wehrmacht or a single one of Citino’s works. When it comes to general military history, the Rizal Library owns only one of Azar Gat’s works and it does not have Russell Weigley’s landmark The American Way of War. Lest I be accused of being focused on American history or authors, the library does not own a copy of Jomini’s works or even David G. Chandler’s The Campaigns of Napoleon. I am gratified to know it at least owns Geoffrey Parker’s The Military Revolution, Overy’s Why The Allies Won and John Dower’s War Without Mercy.

Perhaps the bigger problem I had was the lack of someone to just keep me up to date on the state of the field. So perhaps the main reason why the Rizal Library doesn’t own some of those works I mentioned is because nobody ever told it to buy them. It’s a good library– it’s well-organized, well-maintained and its staff is very good at what they do. But they can’t own or buy something they don’t know about.

As for myself, I had very little guidance in college or after when I was trying to learn about military history. My first exposure to the “new military history” was John Lynn’s book Battle– very belated, as you can imagine. Hell, I still thought that V.D.Hanson was worth a damn (I now know better than to read his garbage). When I came here, I found myself having to catch up, reading all kinds of stuff that I had never heard of. Amazingly– I had never heard of the military revolution debate, for instance. That whole contentious field was new to me, although I at least had the experience of first being absolutely swayed by Parker– and then becoming more and more skeptical of him as I read more on the debate.

Now again– the Ateneo has an excellent faculty. However, we never had a mentor figure who could tell us about the mainstream of Western history. I don’t think that’s anybody’s fault– it was just a product of institutional history, focus and goals. I myself taught Western history there and I sometimes feel the urge to write to my former students to apologize and disclaim almost everything I taught. That would be wrong of me since I think I did teach them something worthwhile– as do all of us there who taught Western history. We might not have taught the newest ideas, but we taught them how to read Western history, taught them the narrative of it, and we taught them good ideas. We basically taught the students how to read and approach knowledge. I was probably the least talented teacher in that field, so my colleagues did a far better job than me in imparting these skills and paradigms. They were (are) rightly considered to be gifted and inspirational teachers by their students.

And just in general– this is why I was able to process new information when I did get my hands on them– the Ateneo taught me how to think and read, although it didn’t necessarily teach me the newest information.

After touching this monolith, the ape-man now knows about circles of kings and the theater state.

However, I won’t deny that we were all hamstrung by a lack of connection with the mainstream of historical current, and that perhaps we were limited by not having someone like a senior faculty member to tell us what was new. I suppose you could say that an Asian institution has no business trying to learn or teach fields like World War II history or European history in general, but I find that to be a very dubious proposition.  Leave aside the fact that I get continuously frustrated by this colonial paradigm in academics– the seeming pigeonholing of minorities to area studies of their ethnic or cultural background while old white men are considered objective enough to study anything they want– knowledge is internationalized. The Philippines has to continually deal with America, yet the Ateneo has no American studies program or American history focus. In fact, nobody in the Philippines is really concerned with this field, and I would think it would be in the country’s best interest to acquire some academic knowledge of the USA. Or another example is Middle Eastern studies– the majority of Filipino Overseas Workers go to the Middle East, yet the Ateneo has nobody studying Islam or Middle Eastern history or culture. Surely it would be in the country’s best interests to have its premier educational institution to know about that stuff?

And it only takes one professor: I remember when my mentor for Southeast Asian history showed me all these new ideas from Benedict Anderson, Oliver Wolters or Anthony Reid. Because of him, there is an entire generation of young students and teachers in Ateneo now who know about concepts of men of prowess and mandala. Perhaps there’s even enough to form a self-sustaining tradition. As I seen by the picture from 2001 Space Odyssey, my mentor served as a star gate– opening up new information and ways of thought I hadn’t known before.

I talk like it’s easy, building a tradition, but obviously it’s not. It tends to require money and resources the Ateneo might not have. And there’s even a catch-22– so the Ateneo does get somebody to, for instance, jump start a World War II specialization. The problem is that person will have no books to work with. He or she might not have the money or resources to keep up to date or to go to conferences, or to publish or do all the stuff that maintaining a tradition or an academic field requires.

Truth is, I suspect it might not be worth it for the Ateneo to invest in such things right now. It might not even have to. Like I said, the system of education the school espouses tends to be more holistic and humanistic than specific. What this means is that it gave me the ability to read and understand new things and not get completely lost. So with this sort of education, you might not have specifics, but you can use it to discover what the new books or ideas are and understand them.

In many ways, I find this Ateneo approach to education much better than what I have encountered in some places here in America: systems of education or thought that produce people with knowledge of specifics, but who have a very poor grasp of knowledge as a whole, a lack of epistemology and philosophy. What ends up happening, I noticed, is that you have people who know “stuff” but don’t know what to do with it. Perhaps this is the effect of the “googling” or “wikipediazation” of information, which has lead to an increase in the amount of trivia and scattered factoids at people’s fingertips– but has not helped in sorting through them. This might be why public discourse here is a battle of absolutist viewpoints, or of ordinary people unable to frame debates beyond dualistic opposition. In a way it’s an irony– Americans tend to scoff at fields like history or English literature, and there is a cultural bias to the “hard sciences” or more “practical” fields. But then the most contentious debates in the public discourse usually involve things like history or culture. Even debates over supposed science are more debates about philosophy or culture than anything else. But these are all incredibly stupid debates because of a lack of critical thinking.

That being said, I’m optimistic that the Ateneo history system will one day grow to the point where it can expand its areas of expertise. The Philippines seems to be headed toward an upward trajectory and I think this will enable the study of history in the Philippines to more fully join in the mainstream of the academic world. And it’s not like the Ateneo is absolutely a backwater that’s completely isolated. I may have given that impression, which is stupidly false– a good proportion of its history faculty already does research and interact with scholars from all over the world, and it’s kind of amazing to consider actually. Perhaps what I mean to say is that the already excellent faculty of the Ateneo will one day be recognized as world quality– I think it already is, but it just has some gaps in certain fields. Maybe as the Philippines assumes a more international role, opportunities for academic engagement and expansion will also increase.  The holistic system of education the Ateneo has will certainly mean it would be well-placed to do so when that time comes.

Take for instance, the cartoon The Jetsons.

Aside from the fact that The Jetsons continues the grand Hannah Barbera tradition of poorly drawn, poorly-animated cartoons of very little amusement value, it’s almost funny how it imagines Rosie. Rosie the robot is basically a human being: she has a personality, she has feelings but she happens to be a robot. So in The Jetsons the future involves human beings creating artificial life.

But what’s this? Their computers still require punch cards. Hell, just look at George’s office computer:

It’s a console the size of a room. With levers. The show is also replete with vacuum tubes and primitive screens. Let’s not forget the fashions– in the future people are wearing Sansabelt pants… the future of clothing!

It doesn’t stop with The Jetsons, of course. In a previous post I already mentioned how primitive Star Wars weapons and aerospace technology actually is. Here’s another example:

This is the so-called A-Wing fighter, and that monument to Anglo-nerdiness, Wookipedia, describes it as being hyper-sensitive to control inputs and requiring so much trimming and attention from the pilot that it was difficult for non-Jedi to fly. Basically, it required magical powers to be really flown effectively. Funnily enough, modern aircraft are designed with relaxed stability– fighters like the F-16, the Eurofighter or, more famously, the F-117 are unstable and require computers and instantaneous control inputs for level flight. However, it’s easily managed now– “fly by wire” and no magical powers required. So the Star Wars world– a world that can imagine golden protocol droids who have personalities and ambiguous sexuality–cannot imagine solid state computer technology and digital processing being used for aerospace applications. Their fighters are still flown with instinct and feel, like World War II machines.

Just like weapons technology– culture determines how people imagine the future, and in movies, cartoons, books and other media, its especially marked because aesthetics and amusement trump all other considerations. And well it should– I watch or read these things to be amused (when I do bother with sci-fi, which I normally don’t like).

It’s probably why space combat in most sci-fi movie not only resembles naval combat here on good old Earth– it resembles very old-fashioned and idealized space combat. Essentially, I have noticed that so much of space combat in sci-fi movies or books resembles combat between dreadnoughts– these things:

The big-gun dreadnought or battleship had its moment of glory just before World War I. The theory behind these ships was that battleships with homogenous armament– big guns of similar calibre on rotating turrets– would trade long range fire. In reality, this theory proved slightly less useful since fire control and spotting were incredibly primitive. In the Battle of Manila Bay in 1898, the Americans managed something like a 4% accuracy rate– against stationary vessels. The American ships weren’t dreadnoughts, but their spotting and range finding technology was pretty much the same as could be found on the later vessels.

However– this kind of naval combat clearly strikes a chord with most people. It looks like a slightly more high-tech version of broadsides from sailing ships of the battle line, it’s loud, its heroic, its impressive. Battleships are also big, impressive, macho machines– people like them too. So it stands to reason, when you want to design a big, impressive space warship and you want to make it look like an effective machine, you basically make a space version of a dreadnought.

Again we have Star Wars. Star Wars space ship to ship combat is in many ways incredibly illogical and rather primitive– and it’s because its basically a high tech version of idealized dreadnought combat from the early 20th century– with a few fighters thrown in. First– why is there even a “front” or a “back” to this space ship? Why do the Star Wars space warships obligingly orient themselves on the same vertical and horizontal axes? In none of the movies do you see a fleet approaching an enemy one perpendicularly– they always face each other on essentially the same plane or on the same orientation.

One reason I can guess is that it would not look good– or movie viewers would be confused if the space battle wasn’t clearly laid out. If space warships fought on multiple axes, then I could imagine that the whole concept of “front” or “back” would be moot, and you might even logically have spherical warships with weapons pointing in all directions. Or perhaps because there is no up or down or left or right in space– once you move in one direction you keep going in that direction– space warships could point their nose opposite from the direction in which they are moving. Again, I only imagine that movie makers don’t make these kinds of space battles because not only would they be ugly and confusing, but when people imagine warships fighting each other, they imagine battleships.

In fact, you even had the absurdity of this:

George Lucas or whoever liked old-timey sailing warships so much that one of the Star Wars movies featured space warships with by god broadsides. So in the vastness of space, warships need to close to suicidal point blank range to damage each other. Today warships never even see each other in combat- they just flip Harpoons or Tomahawks at blips on monitors.

Movies with space fighters also fall into the trap of aesthetics trumping logic or science. Basically, I noticed that space fighter combat resembles World War II combat– at best. Space fighters use gun analogues– usually lasers– and dogfight each other at what is essentially point blank range. This is amusing because gun combat between modern fighters these days– with our primitive “airplanes” is incredibly rare. The majority of kills are now made beyond visual range– or with the enemy pilots never even seeing each other and firing missiles at dots on a radar screen.

The funny thing is that space would be the perfect environment for missiles. Aside from sensors and guidance– problems now pretty much solved in modern missiles like the AMRAAM– the major limitation with missiles today is that they can’t carry a lot of fuel. It is not uncommon for missiles to rely purely on inertia at the terminus of their flights– when they’re being guided onto their targets. This is not a problem in space– there is no gravity to overcome and missiles need only burn small bursts of fuel when making course adjustments.

Problem is– this is not very impressive looking. Modern air combat usually involves pilots getting killed before they even knew they were being targeted. This makes for poor visuals and might even seem unheroic to some. It’s why movies like Top Gun or Independence Day feature point-blank, visual-range dogfights. We expect our pilot heroes to engage in twisting and turning fights and displays of skill. We don’t expect them to point their fighters at the enemy, salvo off all their missiles in a few seconds, and then go back to the carrier for a cup of coffee.

Finally… I’m not an optimist and I find sci-fi optimism frequently as unrealistic or stupid as “cool” cyberpunk future dystopias. What I find both amusing and annoying about Clarke’s famous “prediction” of the future is… how nice it is. Where was the sci-fi author or scientist or whatever who was enough of an observer of human nature and culture to predict that communication and data sharing technology would one day be used to share utterly depraved porn or videos of kittens?

The Commonwealth Army was essentially a conscript infantry force equipped, trained and led to fight along World War I lines.

In the 1930s, the Philippine Commonwealth attempted to build up an army for home defense. The Americans were leaving soon, it seemed, and the Philippines would have to rely on its own resources for its defense. This is the topic of Rico Jose’s book on the Philippine Army, and it’s an excellent read and probably still relevant today. After some years and a lot of money, the conclusion that Manuel Quezon, president of the Commonwealth, came up with was that the Philippines simply couldn’t afford to defend itself. It would not be able to raise an army capable of fighting off a modern invader. However, Quezon believed that the League of Nation and modern economics made large-scale war between nations unlikely anyway. He was firmly convinced that the Philippines could rely on international diplomacy and arbitration to solve any security issues. And besides, the Americans would always be there to help out somehow.

Surprise! The crew of the USS West Virginia probably have something to tell Quezon about this new era of peace and international arbitration of disputes.

And then World War II broke out and Japan “peacefully” kicked the manbits out of the Philippines. During the ensuing occupation, the Japanese were particularly brutal in the Philippines. It wasn’t like China, but it was certainly bad enough. However, it was for our own good right? They were going to set up the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. It’s got the word Co-Prosperity in it… it can’t be that bad, right? Riiiiight.

So why do I bring this up? A caveat: I don’t actually think a major world war is in the offing. But the security situation the South China Sea is far from stable and claims of peace and international arbitration just really make me think back to Quezon and World War 2.

Ah yes, these guys.

I bring it up because of the Philippines’ cuddly, peace-loving neighbor to the north, China. China has long claimed the Spratleys… indeed, they’ve long claimed the whole of the South China Sea as their “lake.” Bringing back the “China” to the South China Sea, eh? Of course China has made claims to being committed to peaceful exploitation and cooperation as well. A few things about that.

First, this peaceful China has twice invaded its neighbors– Vietnam and India– to assert its claims. This is also the same peaceful China that threatens Taiwan with invasion and is militarily occupying Tibet.

Second, peaceful China seems oddly intent on acquiring weapons that will make it capable of power projection. It is in the process of acquiring an aircraft carrier. It already has and is supplementing its submarine fleet. It already has and is supplementing its long-range aviation assets.

Third, China’s claims towards respect for its neighbors’ rights seems a little suspect considering it tends to adopt a utilitarian approach to its own citizens’ rights. The Chinese government has a benevolently dictatorial approach to ruling– as long as you mind your own business, that’s great– but you do things against government policy, not so great. I can easily see this applying to its international diplomacy and that the only thing currently restraining China is American military power and its own current lack of ability at power projection. Both of those will likely change in the future.

"All under heaven." Pro-Communist party propaganda never looked so good!

The above image is from the movie Hero, where the emperor of Qin had pretty much conquered all of China except for a handful of holdouts– the movie’s protagonists. The movie’s basic conflict is resolved by the line “All under heaven.” All personal nationalisms, passions, conflicts and interests were to be subsumed by allegiance to the emperor of Qin– “All under heaven.” On the bright side, this absolute submission would lead to universal peace and prosperity for all. It’s for your own good!

I can see a future, expansionist and aggressive China basically acting and rallying its own people under this banner. It’ll show the example of its own, impressive, economic and social development to basically force other countries to fall into line. It likely won’t conquer others, but it will likely go very far into coercing other countries. Perhaps when China is ready, there will even be a short, sharp conflict with one or the other of the South East Asian nations. Not a full-on invasion mind you, but more like a Sinic Falklands War, or El Dorado Canyon. Perhaps we will even see a Chinese Desert Storm one day. Indeed– we are so used to seeing America just pretty much going around bombing places in the name of international order that we had better get used to China one day doing the same. So perhaps one day Chinese naval and aviation forces will launch pre-emptive strikes on, say, Vietnam under the guise of international order.

This will not be unlike Western efforts at colonialism in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Remember, those powers also did it “for our own good.”

The Chinese people will likely not object to any kind of military action on the part of their government. They’re justifiably proud of the progress their country has made, but they also seem to be eager to show their progress and pride. They want to assert themselves, it seems. Any future Chinese military action, especially a successful one involving new equipment and tactics, will likely be met with rapturous approval by the Chinese population.

Why, hello there.

Recently, a Chinese vessel has been spotted in parts of the Spratleys again. This ship is within spitting distance of Palawan. It’s still in international waters, but it’s certainly very close to the Philippines.

A few things about this. First, China’s growing and consumeristic population will demand more resources. The Spratleys supposedly has these. Tough luck for the Philippines. China wants these waters, China needs these waters, China will eventually get these waters. Occam’s Razor suggests it could be as simple as that.

Second, a lot of China’s actions– my guess is– are probably motivated as much by internal politics as they are by external ones. There is an assumption that these incursions are official policy, but what if they aren’t? There is always the possibility that this little scouting vessel was sent on the initiative of just the Chinese armed forces– perhaps even just a portion of the armed forces– who are using it to, say, embarrass the Chinese diplomatic corps or civil authorities. Perhaps the Chinese navy is embarking on these actions to stir up trouble in the South China Sea which would alarm the Chinese government and therefore create the pretext for the Chinese navy to claim more money and resources. Perhaps there is an expansionist wing in the Chinese government or armed forces that is doing this. I personally don’t know and internal Chinese government politicking is very opaque. All I know is that my experience and knowledge of history has shown the primacy of internal factors– most countries or governments are far more familiar and concerned with their own inner problems than with external ones, and this is not always obvious from the outside.

Third, if there is any international diplomatic dimension to these ships nosing about the Spratleys, they could just as likely be directed at America. Gates is concurrently visiting the Pacific to reaffirm American involvement– perhaps this little excursion in to the Spratleys was China’s way of goosing him and America. Perhaps this was also China’s way of showing how much America’s promises are worth. Of course this is speculation and Gates and this scout vessel might not be related at all. The Chinese stealth fighter flight last January, also timed to a visit by Gates, might have been a coincidence and not provocation– the civil and diplomatic wing of the Chinese government didn’t seem to be aware of it, after all. On the other hand, it might be more proof of a lack of unity and internal politicking at the top.

In the end, this could all be panicky rumor mongering. China is currently in no state to do much beyond send lone, unarmed ships into a sea it can’t really control. America is still there. Other Southeast Asian countries have surprisingly powerful navies. Hell, Singapore alone could pretty much destroy whatever China could send south (whether it would be willing is another matter entirely).

However, it would be foolish in the extreme for the Philippines to discount China as a future threat. It will be, end of story. It’s an expansionist, aggressive, economically growing power. It might not want to conquer the Philippines but it will probably do much to push the country around to make it bend to China’s will. I can even foresee China meddling in internal Philippine politics. Indeed– China will basically act like America did during much of the Cold War. America and Europe might not have much to fear but the Philippines is a small country that will be trapped between two big ones.

I suppose the easiest thing is to just go along with it. The Philippines did benefit somewhat from American intervention and maybe hitching the Philippine cart to the fast-galloping Chinese horse wouldn’t be so bad. American power is fading in the region and it might simply be the realistic option. For one, the Philippines is currently in absolutely no state to resist China either diplomatically, economically or– especially– militarily.

Ladies and gentlemen, the Philippine Air Force.

Noynoy Aquino and others in his government actually obliquely threatened China with a military build up. This was the stupidest form of diplomatic posturing in the world because it probably just annoyed or even angered the Chinese or– more likely– amused them vastly. Make no illusions, the Philippine armed forces (just like Quezon once said) is in absolutely no shape whatsoever to resist Chinese moves in the Spratleys. None. Limited as Chinese blue water capabilities are, the Philippines cannot– zero ability, absolutely cannot– even defend its own, terrestrial aerospace and can barely defend its own littoral waters. The Philippines recently reminded the world it was hopefully acquiring a second-hand Hamilton-class cutter from the US Coast Guard to strengthen its Navy. All well and good, but this under-armed, second-hand patrol ship is not in any way going to improve its ability to stop the Chinese.

And don’t think any kind of defensive posture can be achieved by the Philippine Amred Forces anytime soon either. Acquiring modern fighter aircraft or ships would use up a very large proportion of the Philippine annual budget– so just buying the things would be difficult. Maintaining them, arming them adequately and training in their use would likely break the Philippine bank. You could clean up all the corruption in the Philippine armed forces and it still couldn’t afford to buy and maintain modern aircraft or ships. Our Air Force is particularly hamstrung because they haven’t operated modern fighter aircraft in decades– so it has now lost the capabilities and skill to do so. Pilots are leaving the air force in droves and those that are there have little to train on. Working up the Philippine Air Force to be able to have the skills and facilities to one day operate advanced machines would be the work of years, possibly even decades.

The ground forces– the Army–has shockingly basic problems with training and equipment. It can probably make an outright invasion of the Philippines difficult for a while, but when I did research on Philippine defense policy back in the early 2000s, the basic strategy was to go guerrilla and then hope for the Americans to come. This will likely be a moot point, though, since I still don’t foresee China actually invading the Philippines itself. The Philippines probably should not count on America intervening over the Spratleys.

Now, this all sounds pessimistic. Perhaps the Philippines will be able to play diplomatic games of brinkmanship and border state politics, playing off China and America and benefiting from both. Perhaps it can play the role of Thailand under the House of Chakri.

Or maybe Filipinos should all just learn to speak Mandarin and find out if they need OFWs in Shanghai.

Oh wait, they do. And they're treating the Filipinos great!

So, what can I say to all this? What else is there left to say?

I, for one, welcome our new Chinese overlords...

Doing history. No, really.

It’s striking how informative it can be too. Granted, I know and fully sympathize with the common complaint that Blair and Robertson (which is how the series is commonly known) talks more about Spaniards in the Philippines rather than Filipinos in the Philippines, but if we do Old Man Scott’s peering Behind the Parchment Curtain it still says something about the country’s history.

One thing that will quickly strike the observant historian is just how tenuous the Spanish hold on the Philippines was. The word “conquest” brings up images of settlement, subjugation, or domination and this clearly wasn’t the case in the Philippines. For one, the number of Spaniards there was extremely small for almost 200 years since the Spanish “conquest” in 1565– a few thousand at most, generally much less– up until the 19th century, the number of Spaniards in the Philippines probably never reached 4,000. Most of these Spaniards were in Manila, with a handful in other places like Cebu. There were parts of the Philippines where Spanish authority was far more nominal than Western triumphalism would have you believe.

Second, most of these Spaniards were priests–and these priests did more “conquering” than the Spanish soldiers. A lot of the Spanish influence was spread through priests coaxing and coercing Filipinos into accepting Christianity, which at this stage– what with notions of Spanish identity and patronato real– were tightly bound up with “Hispanization.” However, these priests often had to minister to very large flocks who lived in very far-flung settlements. Very often, they had to rely on visitaciones for their more outlying parishioners– traveling to Filipino communities in the hinterlands once every few months to preach for a few hours. So if “conquest” already has to be redefined, so does “Christianization.” Philippine Christianity has its peculiarities now and it had its peculiarities then in large part because it was allowed to amalgamate with pre-existing beliefs and “evolved” with often very little Church intervention.

What this made me realize– or reminded me, since I’ve thought of this before or been told it before– is that there is a rather large gap in Philippine historical literature. Mainly, there is no “grand narrative” work that covers the sweep of Philippine history. Historical writing in other fields has been shying away from this, but in the case of (for instance) American or European history this is because there are many, many books that try to cover “totalities” of history. There are only a small handful, all but one flawed, that do the same for Philippine history.

How are the two concepts linked? How is the apparently weak Spanish presence and ill-defined Hispanization linked to this lack of a grand narrative study? In a way it’s very simple, how did these people:

From the Boxer Codex-- 16th century inhabitants of the Philippines.

become these people:

I pulled this picture at random. I have no idea who these Filipinos are.

The problem begins with the fact that most Filipinos know very little about their prehispanic history other than vague images of Lapu Lapu looking uber-macho while he decapitates Magellan.

I strike you down for the Philippines that doesn't exist yet and which I can't possibly believe in!

Most people don’t know much more beyond this image, and a lot of the details– but especially–the context of Lapu Lapu and his world are unknown. The prehispanic peoples in the Philippine Islands had a worldview, a cultural, material and economic environment and a military style that while not unique to the Philippines was certainly Filipino. This prehispanic world has been the subject of a lot of study from people like Laura Lee Junkers, William Henry Scott (most famously), Benedict Anderson (mostly indirectly), my mentor Filomeno Aguilar and, yes, me. These factors or characteristics include the prehispanic Filipino worldview that revolved around spiritual prowess, the importance of manpower over land and a whole bunch of other stuff that are both very interesting and keys to understanding Philippine history and culture.

Unfortunately, this entire prehispanic world is mostly little known. Many Filipinos speak of their culture as “feudal” or “Asian” without much knowing the specifics and therefore assuming a similarity between the Philippines and Western cultures. A whole era of their own history is completely dark to most Filipinos– even the educated ones.

So how much of these prehispanic Filipino cultural or societal traits survived into the present day? How were these traits changed by the course of history– by Spanish colonization, Christianization, the American conquest, and so forth?

Take for instance farming and agriculture. The people of the prehispanic Philippines were not really agricultural. The lowland, coastal communities tended  to be maritime-oriented, with people like the Cebuanos being more engaged in trading and naval raiding or naval warfare than in agriculture. The upland Filipino peoples were often hunter-gatherers, and if they were farmers, they weren’t full-time farmers, tending towards a shifting,  swidden lifestyle that often still included a lot of hunting and gathering. These modes of life persisted well into the Spanish era– a Spanish observer named Domingez de Navarette described Philippine agriculture in the mid 17th century as slash-and-burn swidden farming.

This lack of prehispanic large-scale farming was both a product of and helped contribute to the settlement and economic patterns that existed in the prehispanic Philippines. Filipinos today caught up in the RH Bill debate might be stunned to know that until perhaps the early 20th century, the Philippine population was very small in relation to its land area. This was especially true in prehispanic Philippines and Filipino communities tended to be very widely dispersed while land was not always highly valued.

Not as old as people think?

It was the Spanish who introduced wide-scale farming to the Philippines.  One can imagine that the frequently voiced Spanish complaint of native “laziness” and “indolence” was because the Filipinos didn’t want to be good peasants supporting the Spaniards who wanted to be Reconquista-style hidalgos and dons.

However, it was really the Spanish friars who introduced wide-scale agriculture to the Philippines. In their effort to Christianize Filipinos–or in an effort to export their culture and societal patterns– they began to encourage Filipinos to abandon their previously dispersed, swidden or nomadic lifestyle because this made them hard to convert. One simple proof of this, for instance, is that while the water buffalo was native to the Philippines (I think) it wasn’t used as a farming animal until the Spanish taught the Filipinos to hitch it to an implement they introduced–the plow (the Filipino word for plow, araro, is Spanish). The Spanish friars began to gather Filipinos into villages– this process was called the reduccion–where they could be more easily preached to and watched by the small handful of Spanish friars. The conquest in this case was much a matter of inducing the Filipinos, convincing them– consent– as it was forcible coercion. Here you see the Spanish simultaneously trying to make political, social, economic and cultural changes.

The Filipinos didn’t just passively accept what the Spaniards tried to impose– but neither did they just blindly resist these changes. The Spanish were far too weak to impose their demands on the Philippines through outright force, and they had to rely on slow cultural education along with occasional coercion. What occurred, then, was civilizational exchange where both were affected by the other and not necessarily domination and conquest. The Filipinos didn’t just accept Christianity and Spanish culture wholesale– they often picked what they would accept, and they often adapted what aspects of the foreign culture they did accept. What happened was essentially a kind of cultural discourse– perhaps even a cultural dialectic.  The long period of Spanish rule was not just a period of domination– it was a period of dynamic cultural exchange. It wasn’t always peaceful and the power relationships between Filipino and Spaniard was hardly fair, but it was a form of cultural dialogue nevertheless.

Instead of San Miguel, they're having San Dugo! *rim shot*

For me, this cultural exchange– bounded and concurrent with material, political and military change– is the crux of Philippine history and it is what Filipino students should be learning. Instead of teaching our students bare facts like names and dates they do not understand or that do not have context, I think the Philippine historical establishment should try to teach them this “grand narrative” of Philippine cultural becoming (if you will).

Now I know this sounds very much like traditional statist history, the seemingly old-fashioned kind of history that assumes that there is a linear progression from the past towards the present, with the inevitable outcome being the nation-state. Yeah, I get that, this is basically appropriating history for the state project. In my defense, the hegemonic process when applied to history need not offer a simplistic image of the past. The current image of Philippine history is far more simplistic since it assumes straight lines going back to the past– for instance, I hear a lot about how”family oriented” Filipinos are and how this is grounded in history without much notion of what the Filipino family was. Additionally, I happen to believe there is nothing wrong with a grand narrative approach. As I said before, fields like European or American history now move away from these grand narrative approaches to more particular studies– but they can afford to do so. Philippine history has a far smaller body of work and currently there are only a small handful (one, really) of history books that offer a comprehensive grand narrative approach (and I have serious reservations with it).

It has a lot of relevance too. Take, for instance, the last elections. Noynoy Aquino ran on a platform of “kung walang corrupt, walang mahirap” or “Without corruption, there would be no poverty” to the Tagalog challenged.

The statement is fascinating and it clearly had a resonance among the Filipinos since Noynoy won by a large margin– in part because of his promise to lead a “moral” government. Here, in one person and in one line, you can see so much of Philippine history and cultural development coming together. The idea that the inward, moral nature of a person would manifest itself as good leadership and a “natural” right to rule, along with the idea that the leader’s inner qualities would affect the material world are ancient– they are prehispanic. The fact that the “inner quality” being asked is essentially a form of Christian morality and piety is Spanish influence (one can see the overt link to piety and religion with the candle imagery in the back, something normally done in Church). These two cultural trends of prehispanic notions of spirituality and Spanish Christianity combined like they did for messianic leaders like Apolinario dela Cruz– and Noynoy promises the same thing as leaders like dela Cruz: worldly bliss, free from want. However, his campaign had modern elements to it– it promises political judicial clean-up through the elimination of corruption and graft which hearkens to the middle class Filipino desire to create an efficient, transparent, professional and modern Western-style democratic government.

The above was the national anthem apparently to be shown in theaters and made by the TV channel GMA-7. It’s full of… inaccuracies. The swordfighting in Mactan I found particularly droll. There were others, like the Katipunan having rifles (they barely had 10 guns for a few hundred people during their first attack) or Gomburza calmly going to their deaths (at least one of them was something less than collected, I believe it was Zamora). However, its heart is in the right place and I find I approve. It’s still history of a sort.

It’s stuff like that that makes me think that, fundamentally, the main task of the very small band of Philippine historians to create this cultural history that I discussed in this post. So the Philippines needs a Howard Zinn or Eric Hobsbawm. There are already some excellent historians in the Philippines– people my own mentor Filomeno Aguilar, or Rico Jose, or a slew of others. They have mainly produced studies somewhat more limited in scope, but this is good since perhaps it makes the job easier.

There are big histories of the Philippines, but the two most famous (and widely used) are woefully outdated and very, very tendentious (which has marred their scholarship). The newest and most informative is the multi-volume Kasaysayan series, written by some of the best historians in the Philippines today. However, it is expensive, large, and lacks a certain amount of depth and tends more to narrative history. Also, it suffers from not being written by one person and so it doesn’t have an intellectual focus or consistent overarching theme.

I suppose that’s the challenge for future Filipino historians– and I’m not the first to voice it. One day somebody will write a comprehensive “grand narrative” history of the Philippines. It’s much needed. As an aside, I don’t think it’s likely I’ll be the one to write it. It just doesn’t play to my strengths or my future goals. My main contribution, if I ever manage it, will hopefully be a military history of the Philippines, updating the works of Uldarico Baclagon and Carlos Quirino. Either way, I await the future young turk who will shake Philippine history with his or her great vision of the Philippine past. If that seems like a cop out– putting the burden of change and creation on the next generation–then at least I’m in good company, since that was Jose Rizal’s cop out at the end of the Fili too.

At the end of the Second World War, the American dominated “West”– NATO– ended up facing the Russian dominated Soviet Union– the Warsaw Pact. Everybody knows this– or should– and each side quickly realized that the post-war peace would be a tense one. Both sides re-armed and soon, both sides were trying to figure out exactly how a war between NATO and the Soviet Union would resolve itself. This long rivalry led to a strategic and technological shadowboxing, as each produced weapons, strategies and tactics that tried to anticipate this future war. The influence of the Cold War in military thinking today is– needless to say– incredibly profound.

First, it must be said that any future military showdown between NATO and the Warsaw Pact was predicated on the belief that it would largely resemble the Second World War, or that it would be a giant clash of combined arms machinery and a challenge of industrial and scientific might. It would be total war. The whole idea of “conventional” and “unconventional war” today really stems from this belief. Conventional war, post WW2, was a conflict that resembled the kind of combined arms slugfests of that conflict. By that token, “unconventional war” tended to be any other kind of war, with the irony being that “unconventional war” was by far more common in the post-war world than the “conventional” kind.

Second, nuclear weapons complicated everything. Nuclear weapons existed in both the supra-strategic field and in the tactical sphere, with a blur between the two. Basically, nukes could be aimed at cities and be used as weapons of megadeath and apocalypse– terror weapons designed to hold enemy populations hostage. However, some nukes were also designed to be used on the battlefield, as tactical projectiles to be aimed at enemy formations, depots, bridges, enemy shipping, and other “military” targets. The Americans at one point even had nuclear air-to-air missiles that they proposed to shoot at Russian bomber formations (ironically, this was intended to be a defense against nuclear attack). The line between tactical nuclear weapons and strategic nuclear weapons was probably going to be far more theoretical than real, but no matter how hazy, a distinction was there.

The Russians are coming!

With that being said, the two sides built their military power and doctrine on the elements that helped them win the Second World War. In Russia’s case, what enabled Russia to finally defeat Germany was its effective implementation of “Deep Operation” or “Deep Battle” doctrine that had been formulated prior to the war. Again, I’ve harped on it numerous times on this blog, but the Russians independently developed their own idea of mobile, mechanized operations rather like the German “blitzkrieg.” The goal of these “deep operations” is NOT to slug it out in attrition-style World War I battles, but to use deception and surprise and mechanized forces to first find a weak point in the enemy line, punch through, and then pour tanks through it to fan out into the enemy rear, wreak havoc with supply lines, communication systems and generally cut off and isolate frontline defenses and destroy an enemy army’s coherence. This kind of warfare stressed mobility, momentum and good planning.

“Deep operations” fit in well with Russian strengths and weaknesses. The large, open plains of Russia tend to favor mobile and maneuver warfare and to make static defenses a little harder to sustain unless you know where to put them. The Russians also had to contend with large conscript armies that weren’t always very technically proficient, or would be difficult to train to Western levels due to cost and practicality considerations. This made centralized planning attractive, it helped to compensate for less trained soldiers with less initiative. It also fit in well with Soviet ideas of centralized planning and control. Russian soldiers weren’t robots, they were given some freedom of choice, but they weren’t given the same broad freedom of action as Western soldiers– a Russian had a “menu” of choices to choose from whenever confronted with a situation. This even applied to the field of logistics– Russians used a “push” style of logistics. Instead of the Western “pull” style which relies on requisitions from a unit, the Russians will simply periodically send pre-planned packages of supplies, containing previously calculated amounts of ammunition, fuel, spares and food. This again emphasizes centralized planning and helps keep up the momentum of an attack. Finally, “deep operations” also relied heavily on mechanized warfare– on tanks and trucks and artillery. These were things that fit in well with Soviet notions of heavy industry as a key to modernization, they were easily standardized and mass produced, and they were also effective weapons that weren’t quite as technologically and logistically demanding as sophisticated combat aircraft or ships.

To put it simply, the Russian army of the Cold War– really from beginning to end– was a tank army. It was built around the tank, it was keyed to the pace of the tank and the centerpiece of operations was the tank. Russians would use combined arms forces to punch a hole in NATO lines and then the Russian tanks would race around the rear, destroying NATO rear lines. This was primarily a weapon of offense, and one thing I do note about a lot of the Cold War literature is that there is an implicit assumption that the Russians will be doing the attacking.

The Russian concern for mechanization influenced every aspect of its training and equippage. Russia became perhaps the most heavily mechanized army of the Cold War. Everybody rode on something. A good example is the Russian Airborne Troopers, or the VDV. Airborne troops have traditionally been light infantry– once they’ve disembarked from their airplanes or their helicopters they tend to be light leg infantry with few vehicles and light weaponry. The Russians had other ideas– their airborne corps was fully mechanized. Their airborne troops had airborne counterparts of the BMP-1, for instance, in the form of the BMD-1. They also had fully mechanized fire-support vehicles, like the ASU-85 or the later 2S9 Nona.

The BMD-1, "Boyevaya Mashina Desanta."

Operationally, the Russian airborne had a similar mission to Western airborne– operations behind the frontline. However, the Russians mechanized theirs to enable them much greater mobility, thereby making them more effective in the Deep Operation doctrine of wreaking havoc in the enemy rear. It also made them tougher and more effective in a fight by the simple virtue of having armor and fire support. Finally, with later modifications to their vehicles, it made them more survivable in a nuclear environment.

The VDV isn’t the only example of Russian commitment to mechanization and armored warfare. Perhaps even better and more dramatic was the creation of the BMP, or the “Boyevaya Mashina Pekhoty” which was history’s first Infantry Fighting Vehicle, or IFV.

Up to that point, the mechanized transporters of infantry tended to be soft-skinned trucks, which were vulnerable to enemy fire and of limited use outside roads, or in armored personnel carriers, APCs, which tended to be battle-taxis, used to bring soldiers up to the front line (with protection from artillery fragments) whereupon their passengers debarked and fought on foot.

The Russians found this to be inadequate with their Deep Operations doctrine with the increasing lethality of the modern battlefield. What especially worried the Russians was the prospect of having to provide infantry support to their tanks (which is crucial) in a hostile NBC or Nuclear, Biological and Chemical environment. The solution they hit on was to create a vehicle from inside which the infantry could fight, and which was armed and mobile enough to be useful in an armored advance. So the BMP was built to provide NBC protection, with fire ports for the infantrymen’s rifles, and it was given a gun and missile system with which to engage enemy armor. It was also given enough mobility to accompany the current Russian tanks– the T-62 and T-64. It was not heavily armored since it was not expected to bear the brunt of enemy fire. Eventually, it was found that firing a rifle from inside a moving vehicle with limited visibility was not feasible, and that the firing ports compromised the BMP-1′s armor, so these were abandoned. The concept of the IFV remained, however. Today every major power operates IFVs for their mechanized infantry.

The tank, however, was the main vehicle and weapon of the Russian army. They were a tank power and still largely are. Russian tanks were designed around the concept of Deep Operations– they are fast, reliable, well armored and well-armed. Initially, less concern was given to firing on the move and sophisticated gunsights since doctrine specified they attack in waves, firing unaimed shots on the move to confuse the enemy. They were also built to have a low profile, with thick frontal armor to present a more difficult target from the front– Russian tanks made considerable sacrifices in crew comfort and post-penetration survivability in order to keep their small sizes. Since Deep Operations demanded LOTS of tanks, Russian tanks were also somewhat simpler and cheaper than their Western counterparts. They were also easier to maintain and extremely rugged. When it comes to tanks, the Russians know their shit. It was these tanks that Russia planned to overwhelm NATO, pouring out of the Russian steppe and defeating the West in armored battles in Germany– precisely what happened in World War Two.

There has been some misconception that Russian tanks were qualitatively inferior to NATO tanks. I find this premise to be flawed– Russian tanks probably maintained at least parity with NATO tanks– up until the mid-80s. The T-55, for instance, was at least equal to its contemporary, the American M-47 and M-48 Patton, possibly even better. However, this quality disparity may have shifted in NATO’s favor in the mid-80s with the new generation of NATO tanks like the Challenger, Leopard 2 and Abrams.

Mors Ab Alto

NATO– America– emerged from World War 2 with a very different kind of strength: America had an extremely effective and powerful air force, and it was this arm to which they devoted most of their scientific and industrial energies in World War 2. Air power fit in well with American society and culture: they were high-technology weapons that made good use of American scientific and industrial power by being able to inflict disproportionate damage to their numbers. Aircraft could also theoretically overfly enemy defenses and destroy, demoralize or simply render enemy armies ineffective without the need for a large army. During the Cold War, an air force was doubly attractive because it promised to cut down on friendly casualties and it also maximized the NATO strength in nuclear weapons.

Americans therefore built and trained a large, effective air force in the post war period. They emphasized sophistication and technology and– a rarity– they also built long-range strategic bombers. While they may have built some of their successes on German experiments, it was really the Americans who pioneered or made wide-scale use of such air-to-air technology as supersonic flight, air-to-air refueling, air-to-air missiles and other such refinements. Much of American Cold War doctrine was built around fighting for and securing air superiority– if not supremacy– and then bombing the living hell out of the enemy.

NATO did have ground forces, of course, but the centerpiece remained the air force. One complaint voiced in the ’70s (which led to the AirLand War doctrine) was that ground forces were too passive, trained mainly to find the enemy and then call down fire support. This isn’t fair– Americans practiced sophisticated maneuver warfare in Korea and World War 2 even without having an official doctrine on it– but it is true that a disproportionate amount of American focus was given to its air planes. American tanks, artillery and APCs were probably only adequate or good during most of the Cold War, while its airplanes were some of the world’s best.

Americans also developed a sophisticated air doctrine for its use– they would wage a comprehensive air campaign against the Russians. Russian air power tended to be tactical– focused on winning local air superiority over a specific battlefield and supporting ground troops. There were “counters” in the Russian air mission or aircraft deliberately designed to counter a specific American strength– Tu-22M Backfires designed to overwhelm American carrier groups with anti-ship missiles, for instance– and they had strategic bombers. But Russians didn’t have the kind of multi-layered air power the Americans had. Americans had aircraft for air superiority missions, they had interceptors for bomber defense, they had tactical bombers over the battlefield, strike fighters for battlefield interdiction and strategic bombers for long range bombardment. They also created a whole suite of support aircraft, like tankers, AWACS and so on.

There were never doctrines as carefully worked out and integrated as the Russian commitment to Deep Operations, but in a potential World War 3 with Russia America would have unleashed its air armada on the Soviets. The Russians would have been hard pressed to stop this– strategic bombers would have been hitting their cities, marshalling yards, oil facilities and other deep rear assets while more tactical air power would have been hitting bridges, railroads, supply depots and columns, HQs and other BAI targets. At the very front, tactical air power would have been attacking Russian ground forces directly, although there was some complaint in the late ’70s and early ’80s that the USAF wasn’t taking this mission seriously. Above it all, the Americans would have theoretically tried to erect an umbrella of fighters and tried to gain air superiority, thus denying the enemy the ability to operate its own air force with much efficiency. The implications of air superiority go beyond combat– the force with air superiority can operate its recon aircraft, transports and other ancillaries with much more ease, giving it that much more of an advantage in a war. As Erwin Rommel said of trying to fight an enemy with air superiority: it’s like a savage trying to fight a European army with modern arms, and with about as much chance of success.

The Phabulous Phantom

An excellent example of American sophistication in the field of military aviation is the F-4 Phantom. The F-4 Phantom was a multi-role aircraft designed first to intercept enemy fighters for the Navy and then adapted as an interceptor and strike fighter for the air force. Eventually, it would become a creditable dogfighter, an anti-enemy air defense platform and a reconnaissance aircraft along with the bombing and interception mission. The Phantom could fulfill many roles, and it could do this because of its advanced (for its time) electronics and design. It was found that the electronics weren’t as advanced as was claimed– the Phantom had no internal gun, for instance, and it was found that its early missiles were unreliable– but it was improved consistently. The Phantom remained in service for over 30 years, only being retired from American service in the ’90s.

It's a love shack! The American B-52 bomber.

The B-52 Stratofortress is another good example of American Cold War air power. This aircraft was originally designed to be a high-flying nuclear bomber meant to penetrate Russian air space to drop nukes. In this role, it would have been able to haul the massive nuclear weapons then in service and it had the range to fly from American bases and back. It was also survivable, since it had (for its time) an extensive and sophisticated electronic warfare suite for self-defense. Eventually, it would be refitted to drop conventional bombs and was used to saturate enemy ground forces in Vietnam. The Arc Light missions were rightly feared by the Vietnamese and were extremely destructive. It might seem like overkill (and in retrospect, it was) but it shows the American commitment to airpower as a solution to its military problems.

The B-52 is such a good design that it is in service until today– 60 years since its introduction. Its “successors”– the B-1 and B-2– serve alongside it and it may even outlast them. Today, the B-52 still drops bombs conventionally, but it is also an aerial cruise missile launcher.

With this air power, America has projected its military muscle throughout the Cold War. Air power, strategic and tactical, were keys to American warfighting in Korea and Vietnam. Bombings and air strikes were used to intimidate Gaddafi during El Dorado Canyon in the ’80s. It was American Cold War-trained and equipped air power that destroyed the Iraqi Army in Desert Storm.

During the early parts of the Cold War, America also proposed on using its air force to maximize its advantage in nukes. Many of America’s 50′s era bombers were nuclear bombers, tactical or otherwise. The idea was that nukes would be used to stop the Russian advance and some of America’s more famous aircraft began life as pure nuke droppers, like the F-105 Thunderchief and the A-5 Vigilante. This is not counting the huge fleet of heavy bombers that America initially used to carry nukes. Eventually, nuclear delivery shifted to ballistic missiles– safer and more reliable– and there was a shift away from tactical nukes when strategists realized that they might lead to escalation. Escalation was more acceptable when NATO had a nuke advantage, but it became less so over time. NATO never gave up on tactical nukes, and into the ’80s, they would be used to help stop Russia (which would involve dropping nukes on Western Germany– an ally) but with an improvement in American ground power, this reliance on tactical nuclear weapons tended to decline.

Down with the capitalist pigs!

Die, Commie scum!

Either way, the main confrontation below the nuclear sphere was Russian armor against American air power. In many ways the two cancel each other out, and in many ways each is vulnerable to the other. Air power would be hard pressed to stop a massed attack of armor–tanks are very difficult targets–and air power is vulnerable to having its bases overrun. On the other hand, while attacking tanks from the air might not necessarily be destructive, it is disruptive and demoralizing and might slow the momentum of an assault. Even worse, mechanized armies rely on large, vulnerable supply columns for ammunition, spares and especially, fuel. These are wonderful targets for air attack and a tank army facing an air force faces the unhappy prospect of having their support services bombed to pieces, thereby rendering them helpless.

The two sides realized the situation they faced and NATO and the Soviets naturally tried to find means to counter the other’s strengths.

Russia, for instance, began to build more and more ground-based anti-aircraft systems, many of them mobile enough to keep pace with its mechanized forces. Over time, the Russians would come to possess thousands of anti-aircraft guns and missiles, all meant to knock NATO out of the sky. The picture above is a ZSU-23-4, a mobile, radar-aimed anti-aircraft vehicle that served to defend Russian tanks. It was joined by a host of missiles, from the early SA-2 that gave the Americans such trouble in Vietnam, to the SA-6 that nearly cost the Israelis the air war in ’73, to the SA-11s, SA-13s, SA-300s of today. NATO aircraft were faced with the daunting prospect of having to press home their strikes while facing this massive air defense umbrella. Russia had fighters, and reasonably good ones, but Russia seems to have realized that it couldn’t match NATO in the air with just fighters and therefore built up a massive air defense network.

NATO had to respond–America experienced the strength of Russian air defenses in Vietnam, and it saw the havoc wrought on the Israelis in ’73. America would go on to create the so-called Wild Weasel mission, which is specifically tasked with SEAD or Suppression of Enemy Air Defenses. The Wild Weasel aircraft essentially baits enemy radar into targeting it, whereupon it will attempt to destroy the radar with an anti-radiation missile like the AGM-88 HARM or even just an ordinary cluster bomb. Needless to say, this is a ridiculously dangerous job, hence the delightful motto of the Wild Weasel mission: “You’ve Got To Be Shitting Me.”

Going a step further, NATO had to adapt its air tactics. From high-flying, high speed aircraft like the F-105 Thunderchief or XB-70 Valkyerie, NATO had to shift to so-called NOE or Nap Of the Earth tactics, where aircraft fly as low to the ground as possible in hopes of going under enemy radar, using hills and mountains to mask their approach. The B-1 Lancer bomber is a good example of this evolution: it started life as a high speed, high-altitude bomber, but when it entered service it had been redesigned and was now optimized for the low-altitude strike role.

Finally, America tried to get around the whole problem of enemy air defenses entirely: it fielded “stealth” aircraft. Ironically, the principles of stealth were worked out by a Russian physicist, but it was the Americans who put this into practice, first with the so-called “Have Blue” demonstrator, then with the F-117 Nighthawk, the Stealth Fighter, to today’s F-35 Lightning II and F-22 Raptors.

In the same way that the Russians had to develop a plethora of anti-aircraft weapons, NATO would eventually devote a large part of its scientific expertise in coming up with anti-tank weapons. NATO would come to pin most of its hopes on the anti-tank missile. This weapon tended to use a HEAT warhead, or high-explosive anti-tank, which uses chemical energy rather than the brute force of kinetic energy that a solid armor-piercing shot uses. A HEAT warhead has an inverted cone of metal inside, surrounded by explosive. Upon hitting a target, the explosive detonates, melting the metal and projecting it forward at extremely high velocity. Contrary to the name, the stream of metal acts as a solid penetrator, and does not “melt” its way through armor. It is still a stream or jet of liquid, however, and this is important to remember.

One advantage of HEAT warheads is that they do not need to be shot from powerful guns. Instead, relatively low-velocity missiles and rockets can be used, which means that far more items can be equipped with effective anti-tank weapons. So the individual infantryman can be given a disposable anti-tank rocket launcher, a small jeep can be equipped with an effective anti-tank missile, or– as seen above– helicopters and aircraft can now be more reliably used against tanks. Tank busting is in fact notoriously difficult and in World War II, most aircraft were not very successful at it– but guided missiles with HEAT warheads promised to change this.

NATO also fielded other anti-tank weaponry and the battlefield was soon inundated with weapons dangerous to tanks. For instance, NATO made large-scale use of cluster munitions, which spray an area with small submunitions, thereby obviating the need for precision– difficult to achieve when trying to hit an armored, mobile target like a tank. Weapons like the MLRS rocket artillery system, or even ordinary howtizers like the M-1-09 were given shells that made it rain bomblets. NATO also focused heavily on more innovative systems like the SADARM– which combines artillery with explosively formed penetrators and smart weapons, and other devious and clever weapons.

Obviously, the West wasn’t the only country to use missiles and other such weapons for anti-tank duties. The first dramatic outing of the anti-tank missile was against Western equipment in the Yom Kippur War, after all. However, it was Russia that stood to suffer the most from this. Enough anti-tank weapons in NATO hands could completely defeat the Deep Operation stress on momentum and mobility. So Russia had to extensively update its tanks to account for this threat.

For every action, a reaction.

One way that Russia did so was by coating its tanks with so-called reactive armor. Instead of designing new tanks with expensive and difficult to manufacture composite armor like Chobham, Russia decided to improve existing tanks instead. Reactive armor is basically a brick filled with explosives with a metal face. Upon being hit by a HEAT warhead, the explosive detonates, propelling the steel face into the path of the HEAT warhead’s particle stream and either deflecting it away or weakening it. Nowadays, it’s become an almost signature feature of Russian tanks to be covered with reactive armor and Russia also claims that their reactive armor can defend against solid kinetic penetrators as well.

Iron Eagle.

By the mid to late ’80s, the whole balance of Cold War strategy and technology began to shift yet again. Up until the ’70s, I would hazard a guess that barring an all out nuclear exchange, Russia stood a pretty good chance of winning a conventional war in Europe. Its expertise in tank warfare was nearly unmatched and its training, strategy and equipment were very good. America held a regular exercise called Reforger, or Redeploy for Germany, whose mission was to train US troops in rapidly deploying to meet a Russian strike. This must have been an incredibly dangerous task– the Americans had to cross an ocean patrolled by Russian submarines and airplanes, and upon arriving would be facing wave after wave of tanks.

In the ’70s, American commanders were eager to look away from Vietnam and counterinsurgency, and they decided to focus on a European war. What they found was not reassuring– contrary to the belief that Russians were stereotypical and scripted in behavior, they found that Russians had a frighteningly well-thought out operational theory and their equipment was well suited to the role. American qualitative advantage was not that high either– in tanks, it was perhaps even at best, and in air power, Vietnam showed how elderly MiG-17s could shoot down advanced F-4s.

Two things came to NATO’s rescue. First, they developed an actual, established doctrine of mobile warfare that also happened to integrate air operations to a far greater degree than Deep Operations did. This became the AirLand Battle doctrine that stressed speed, mobility, and initiative. In other words, it was a mirror image of Russian Deep Operations.

The second was the solid-state revolution. By the ’80s, the American lead in solid state technology became nearly insurmountable. Microchips made American weapons– from aircraft to tanks– incredibly “smart.” Computers, composite material technology, and other scientific discoveries were also being brought to bear ever more successfully. American weapons became incredibly sophisticated. Take for instance the F-16.

The F-16 was one of the first aircraft to use fly by wire technology, and it was also a “relaxed stability” design. Basically, an F-16 is intentionally “unstable” in flight, and will crash without constant computer intervention which automatically trim the airplane’s control surfaces. The result is a highly agile airplane– since it isn’t designed to fly “stable” it can change direction more readily than an aircraft that “naturally” reverts back to level flight. American advantages in digital technology meant the F-16 was also multi-role, with advanced sensors that enabled it to drop bombs accurately and fire missiles. The American lead in radar technology and electronic warfare became very great.

NATO also finally began paying attention to tanks and what emerged was a generation of Western tanks that became game changers. These vehicles were extremely well-protected, whether with advanced composite armor or with spaced armor, had fire control systems that let them fire accurately on the move, had advanced night vision, were fast and mobile, had excellent communications and were ergonomic. These were the M-1, the Challenger and the Leopard II. These tanks also promised to overthrow the traditional lead Russia had in armored warfare.

This combination of new doctrine, better training and better weapons made the ’80s a critical time for Russia. While it had finally achieved nuclear parity, the irony was that the risk of conventional war became greater. Because both sides now faced nuclear destruction, the odds of a war staying purely non-nuclear were higher, and in this field Russia was losing its lead. Robert O’Connell and other Cold War warfare historians have even theorized that this technological imbalance helped topple Russia, since Russia felt it had to respond in kind– through both technology and numbers, and this “broke the bank.”

I would hesitate to argue that Russian weapons and strategy fell behind greatly enough for NATO to guarantee a win. Russian strategy and military readiness did drop, it is true. Economic woes, political turmoil and internal problems meant that the Russian army of Glasnost and Perestroika was probably less operationally ready than the Russian army of the ’60s. Performance in Afghanistan and later in Chechnya are indicative of the Russian Army’s decline. However, Russia still had a rich history of military science to draw on and its equipment was still good. Rather ironically, Russia actually began to match American quality in the late ’80s. Russian aircraft like the MiG-29 Fulcrum and the Su-27 Flanker were extremely good, and nowadays, an upgraded Su-27 (the Su-33) is almost the benchmark of fighter performance.

An Su-27 demonstrating a high alpha maneuver. Possibly even the famous Pugachev Cobra?

What this means is that to the very end, the result of an East-West conventional showdown was still in doubt. Fundamentally, despite improvements from either party the balance stayed much the same as well: Russia was (and is) a tank power and American power is still predominantly based on its air force. This has continued to influence operations today. Whenever Russia intervened in recent history, it still relied on tanks– sometimes imprudently, like in Grozny– but sometimes with more success, like the recent Ossetian War. America still relies on its air power to project its strength, with the ongoing Libyan intervention being an excellent example.

Another legacy is that Cold War weaponry and tactics still dominate military thinking. America still uses Cold War era fighters, and even its next-generation aircraft, the F-22 and F-35 are largely designed to meet Cold War threats, like a Soviet-style air defense network. I’ve heard it argued enough times that it makes little sense to build $150 million F-22s to fight insurgents with $100 AK-47s– why not deploy cheaper aircraft like turboprop powered OV-10 Broncos for a fraction of the price and probably with more efficiency?

Russia is not immune to this Cold War hangover. To make its weapons more attractive to the world market, it has tried (and succeeded in many cases) to match Western developments. Its air defense systems are still some of the best in the world. America has seemingly given up on SAMs and AAA vehicles, feeling secure enough to abort the half-hearted M-247 Sgt York or to even retire the M-6 Linebacker, but Russia continues to develop SAMs. It also continues to sell them to anybody willing to pay.

Other countries who cannot match Russian or American Cold War-style military power often try to get around the problem by not fighting in the “conventional manner.” Signal successes have been achieved in this way by groups like the Viet Cong, the Chechnyan guerrillas, or even the IRA.

However, such is the influence of Cold War weaponry and military thinking that “conventional” military power is still the benchmark of military strength. Up and coming countries like China and India feel a need to match the Cold War arsenals of Russia and America in order to be taken seriously as powers. This ought to be especially remarkable given that China was a pioneer of Cold War guerrilla warfare. China has largely  abandoned this style of warfare in an effort to emulate NATO and Russia.

So despite the fact that these Russian tanks and American aircraft never actually fought in the war for which they designed– their legacy lives on today.