THE TIKVAH FUND 165 E. 56th Street New York, New York 10022

War and Human Nature June 9, 2014 – June 20, 2014 Dean: Hillay Zmora Core Instructors: Frederick W. Kagan and Barry Strauss I.

Description:

War has always and inescapably been a defining part of the human condition. Courage and cowardice, heroism and tragedy, love of country and hatred of enemies, loss, blood, death, and memory—the human drama plays out, in sharp relief, on both ancient and modern battlefields. While many human beings are spared the direct and brutal agonies of war, everyone lives in a world shaped by the legacy of past conflicts and the possibility of future ones. This course will explore the place of war in human life from a variety of angles: what drives men to fight; what makes war moral or immoral; how soldiers and civilians live with the specter of killing and dying; what war means for statesmen and generals, for ordinary soldiers and passionate revolutionaries, for wives and children. In no small measure, our ideas about the meaning of war reveal who we are and what we value, in this life or the next. This course will draw on a mix of classical texts about war—from Homer to Thucydides, Clausewitz to Machiavelli. It will study specific wars—both ancient and modern—looking at how they were fought and what they meant for the nations, cultures, and citizens involved in them. It will explore the ways in which strategists of war think about the deeper human questions, and how our moral ideas about the meaning of war shape different war strategies. We will also look at what the new sciences of man—especially evolutionary biology and neuroscience—may teach us about the place of war in human life. And we will examine how new technologies—especially weapons of mass destruction and the use of drones—are shaping and re-shaping the human meaning of war, for better and perhaps, tragically, for much, much worse. The seminar will be led by two of the world’s leading scholars of war—classicist and historian Barry Strauss and historian and policy analyst Frederick W. Kagan. We will also be joined by various experts—including soldiers and statesmen—who have lived the dilemmas of war firsthand.

THE TIKVAH FUND 165 E. 56th Street New York, New York 10022 II.

Course Structure

The institute proceeds roughly from ancient to modern understandings of war, beginning in ancient Greece and Israel. The main course sequence will be taught by the Core Instructors: Barry Strauss in Week I and Frederick Kagan in Week II. These sessions will be punctuated by Visiting Speakers – Eric Cohen, Charles Hill, Stephen Rosen, and Eric Edelman – whose sessions are designed to have their own integrity and bring additional points of view to the overall course. The large movement of the course begins with three sessions on three different ancient views on the causes of war: 1. Honor, blind folly as the causes of war, to be controlled by marriage, family, the wisdom of the elders, and poetry; 2. Fear, honor, and self-interest as the causes of war, to be controlled by studying history and entrusting the government to a broad swathe of the propertied few; 3. Spiritedness and appetite as the causes of war, to be controlled but not abolished by reason and philosophy. Next we consider two different ancient takes on the relationship between the individual soldier and the group: 4. The subordination of the individual to the group in order to create a perfect army in Sparta, versus democratic freedom in Athens. Next come two sessions on war and justice: 5. The paradoxical relationship between justice and necessity in wartime; 6. On just war theory and the ancients. We then turn to two kinds of families, the nuclear family and the army: 7. The impact of war on women and children; 8. The general and his men. Next, a question about freedom and order: 9. Which is better: peace and assimilation under a well-governed empire or fighting until the death for freedom under a barbarian chieftain? Finally, we return to the question of justice and imperium, this time in one of the founding texts of modernity, one that turned classical virtue on its head and argued for injustice: 10. Machiavelli’s Revolution

THE TIKVAH FUND 165 E. 56th Street New York, New York 10022 Week II begins with Thomas Hobbes’ view of the natural condition of man and the causes of war, asking   

What are the elements of human nature that lead to conflict and war, according to Hobbes? What factors control or moderate human nature to make peace possible? Why is there still war, according to Hobbes, even when those conditions are met?

A contrary view of the natural condition of man and the causes of war is then taken up by JeanJacques Rousseau. In the session dedicated to his work, we ask:    

What are the differences between the state of nature described by Rousseau and that described by Hobbes? What are the causes of conflict and war, according to Rousseau? What factors control those causes? Is there anything, according to Rousseau, that could conduce to permanent or at least stable peace?

After Rousseau, we study Clausewitz.   

What are the causes of war, according to Clausewitz? Is Clausewitz’s notion of the relationship between war and human nature more akin to Rousseau’s or to Hobbes’? Clausewitz places great emphasis on emotion and chance (or probability). How do these concepts change the nature of the discourses Hobbes and Rousseau presented? What do they tell us about Clausewitz’s notions of the causes of war beyond what he explicitly writes?

Up until this point, early modern thinkers had relied on the “state of nature” to ground their views of war and human nature. Marx dismisses the concept. What takes its place in his analysis? Why do the crises and conflicts of bourgeois existence emerge, and where do they lead? Is war natural or avoidable? Following Marx, we turn to a Soviet text that articulates the Marxist-Leninist theory of the nature of war much more concisely than Marx or Lenin ever did. It also articulates the basis whereby the completion of the Communist revolution will end war by eliminating private property and the economic structures that cause war. For the session on Islam and War, we will study passages from the Quran and Hadith, as well as a later tract. Dr. Kagan will give guidance during Week II about what specific passages to study, but the conversation will range throughout the sources.

THE TIKVAH FUND 165 E. 56th Street New York, New York 10022 III.

A Note on Readings

A.

Language

Note that for the Thucydides, Machiavelli, and Hobbes readings, we have included Hebrew translations of the English sources. B.

Specification and Supplemental Reading

The reading for the session on “Islam and War,” scheduled for Thursday, June 19, will include selections from the Quran, Hadith, and Ibn Tamiyya’s Enjoining Right and Forbidding Wrong. Dr. Kagan will specify exactly what he would like you to prepare earlier that week. We will be sending you the specific edition of the Quran that we will use in the course, and you must bring it with you, expecting reading guidance when you get here. Additionally, we will announce and distribute Eric Edelman’s readings for his sessions on June 19-20 closer to the institute itself. C.

Reading Material in New York

We will not have additional copies of this reader or the Quran for you in New York. You must bring these with you to the institute.

THE TIKVAH FUND 165 E. 56th Street New York, New York 10022 IV.

Course Calendar Monday, June 9

Times

Lead Instructor Welcome Breakfast

8:30 am 9:15 Barry am – Strauss 12:15 pm 2:305:30 pm

Themes

Readings

The Causes of War, pt. 1: Honor, Folly, Poetry and the Past



Homer, Iliad, trans. Richmond Lattimore (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011), bk. 1.

The Causes of War, pt. 2: Fear, Honor, and SelfInterest



The Landmark Thucydides, ed. Strassler, ( New York: Free Press, 1998) I.1, 20-23, 66-88, 118, 139-146. [Hebrew Translation]: Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War, trans. A.A. Halevi (Jerusalem: Bialik Institute, 1959).

 6:308:30 pm

Dinner and Participant Introductions

THE TIKVAH FUND 165 E. 56th Street New York, New York 10022 Tuesday, June 10 Times 9:15 am – 12:15 pm 2:305:30 pm

Lead Instructor Barry Strauss

Themes

Readings

The Causes of War, pt. 3: Spiritedness and the Appetites



Plato, Republic, trans. G. M. Grube (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1992), 471c-474b, 484a-507a, 514a-521b.

The Relationship between the Soldier and the Group: Spartan Virtue vs. Athenian Liberty



Plutarch on Sparta, trans. Richard Talbert (London: Penguin Classic, 2005). o Plutarch, “Life of Lycurgus,” para. 10, 12-22, 25 o Xenophon, “Spartan Society,” para. 7-12, 15 Herodotus, History, trans. David Grene (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988) VII.101-105. Cicero, “On Duties” trans. Walter Miller (Cambridge, Ma.: Harvard University Press, 1913) I.36. Thucydides, II.34-46

  

THE TIKVAH FUND 165 E. 56th Street New York, New York 10022 Wednesday, June 11 Times 9:15 am – 12:15 pm 2:305:30 pm

Lead Instructor Barry Strauss

Themes

Readings

War and Justice, pt. 1: Justice and Necessity



Thucydides, III.1-19; 25-50

War and Justice, pt. 2: On Just War

 

Thucydides, III.9; IV.84-116 Livy, The Early History of Rome: Books 1-5, trans. Aubrey De Selincourt (London: Penguin Classics, 2002), I.24,32. Livy, Rome and Italy: Books 6-10, trans. Betty Radice (London: Penguin Classics, 1982), IX.9. Joshua 1-11

 6:308:30

Eric Cohen Joshua and the Stones of War



THE TIKVAH FUND 165 E. 56th Street New York, New York 10022 Thursday, June 12 Times 9:00 am – 11:45 am 1:002:30 pm 4:006:30

Lead Instructor Barry Strauss Charles Hill Barry Strauss

Themes

Readings

War and the Bonds of Family, pt. 1: The Impacts of War on Women and Children War and Human Consciousness

 

Homer, Iliad, Book VI Homer, Iliad, Book XXIV

War and the Bonds of Family, pt. 2: The General and his Men



Julius Caesar, The Gallic War, trans. Carolyn Hammond (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), II.16-27.

THE TIKVAH FUND 165 E. 56th Street New York, New York 10022 Friday, June 13 Times 9:1511:30 am 12:302:30 pm

Lead Instructor Barry Strauss

Themes

Readings

Freedom and Order



Justice and Order at the Dawn of Modernity: The Revolution of Niccolò Machiavelli

 

Tacitus, Agricola, ed. James Rives and trans. Harold Mattingly (London: Penguin Classics, 2010), sec. 1-5, 18-21, 29-38. Machiavelli, Prince, trans. Harvey Mansfield (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998), ch. 12-18. [Hebrew Translation]: Machiavelli, Prince, ed. Hillay Zmora (Jerusalem: Shalem Press with Dvir Press, 2003).

THE TIKVAH FUND 165 E. 56th Street New York, New York 10022 Monday, June 16 Times 9:15 am – 12:15 pm 2:305:30 pm

Lead Instructor Frederick Kagan

Themes War and the Condition of Man in Thomas Hobbes’ Political Thought

Readings  

War and the Condition of Man in Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Political Thought



Hobbes, Leviathan, ed. Richard Tuck (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996) Ch. 18 and 19 [Hebrew Translation]: Hobbes, Leviathan, ed. Menachem Lorberbaum and trans. Aharon Amir (Jerusalem: Shalem Press, 2009). Rousseau, The First and Second Discourses, ed. Roger D. Masters and trans. Roger D. and Judith R. Masters (Bedford/St. Martin’s, 1964) pp. 141-181.

THE TIKVAH FUND 165 E. 56th Street New York, New York 10022 Tuesday, June 17 Times 9:15 am – 12:15 pm 2:305:30 pm

Lead Instructor Frederick Kagan

Themes Carl von Clausewitz and the Causes of War, pt. 1 Carl von Clausewitz and the Causes of War, pt. 2

Readings 

Carl von Clausewitz, On War, ed. and trans. Michael Howard and Peter Paret (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989) Bk. 1, Ch. 1.

THE TIKVAH FUND 165 E. 56th Street New York, New York 10022 Wednesday, June 18 Times 9:15 am – 12:15 pm 2:305:30 pm 6:308:30 pm

Lead Instructor Frederick Kagan

Stephen Rosen

Themes

Readings

Karl Marx: War and the Movement of History



The Marxist-Leninist View

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Decision Making and Fear: A Biological View



Marx, Readings from The Marx-Engels Reader, ed. Robert C. Tucker (New York and London: W.W. Norton & Company, 1978). o Economic and Political Manuscripts of 1844, pp. 70-81 o Communist Manifesto, pp. 473-483 Marxism-Leninism on War and Army (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1972) pp. 5-21 and 3139. Stephen P. Rosen, War and Human Nature, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005), pp. 135-178.

THE TIKVAH FUND 165 E. 56th Street New York, New York 10022 Thursday, June 19 Times

Lead Instructor Frederick Kagan

9:15 am – 12:15 pm 2:305:30 pm 6:30- Eric 8:30 Edelman pm

Themes Islam and War

Readings   

The Human Experience of Wartime Leadership: A View from the Front



Selections from Quran – TBD. Selections from Hadith - TBD. Selections from Ibn Tamiyya, Enjoining Right and Forbidding Wrong, trans. Salim Abdallah Ibn Morgan – TBD. Robert M. Gates, Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War (New York: Knopf, 2014), selections TBD.

THE TIKVAH FUND 165 E. 56th Street New York, New York 10022 Friday, June 20 Times

Lead Instructor Eric Edelman

9:1511:30 am 12:30- Frederick 2:30 Kagan pm

Themes War and Human Nature in TBD. the Nuclear Age Summary and Recapitulation

Readings

THE TIKVAH FUND 165 E. 56th Street New York, New York 10022 V.

Faculty Biographies

Core Instructors Frederick W. Kagan Frederick W. Kagan, author of the 2007 report “Choosing Victory: A Plan for Success in Iraq,” is one of the intellectual architects of the successful “surge” strategy in Iraq. He is the director of AEI’s Critical Threats Project and a former professor of military history at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. His books range from Lessons for a Long War (AEI Press, 2010), coauthored with Thomas Donnelly, to the End of the Old Order: Napoleon and Europe, 1801-1805 (Da Capo, 2006). He holds a Ph.D. from Yale University in Russian and Soviet military history. Barry Strauss Barry Strauss, the Bryce and Edith M. Bowmar Professor in Humanistic Studies at Cornell University, is a military historian with a focus on ancient Greece and Rome. He teaches courses on the history of ancient Greece, war and peace in the ancient world, history of battle, introduction to military history, and specialized topics in ancient history. His book, Battle of Salamis: The Naval Encounter That Saved Greece—and Western Civilization was named one of the best books of 2004 by the Washington Post. His latest book, Masters of Command: Alexander, Hannibal, Caesar and the Genius of Leadership (Simon & Schuster, May 2012), was named one of the best books of 2012 by Bloomberg. Strauss is editor of The Princeton History of the Ancient World, a series of books from Princeton University Press. He sits on the editorial boards of MHQ: The Quarterly Journal of Military History, Historically Speaking: The Bulletin of the Historical Society, The International Journal of the Classical Tradition, and Strategika. He has published op-ed pieces in the Washington Post, L.A. Times, USA Today, and Newsday, been interviewed on NPR and the BBC, and has been quoted on the front page of the Wall Street Journal and in other major newspapers. Dean Hillay Zmora Hillay Zmora is professor of history at Ben-Gurion University in Be’er-Sheva, Israel. He is currently a Visiting Scholar at The Graduate Center, CUNY. His main areas of research are late medieval and early modern Germany, state formation in Europe 1300-1800, the European nobility, and the political thought of Machiavelli. He is the author of State and Nobility in Early Modern Germany: The Knightly Feud in Franconia, 1440-1567 (Cambridge University Press, 1998); Monarchy, Aristocracy, and the State in Europe, 1300-1800 (Routledge, 2001); The Feud in Early Modern Germany (Cambridge University Press, 2011). He edited the Hebrew editions of Machiavelli, The Prince (Dvir and Shalem Press, 2003) and Discourses (Shalem Press, 2010). He has published his work on the nobility and on Machiavelli in scholarly journals in history and political thought, including Past and Present, The Historical Journal, and History of Political Thought.

THE TIKVAH FUND 165 E. 56th Street New York, New York 10022 Visiting Speakers Eric Cohen Eric Cohen has been the Executive Director of the Tikvah Fund since 2007. He was the founder and remains editor-at-large of the New Atlantis, serves as the publisher of the Jewish Review of Books and Mosaic, and currently serves on the board of directors of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, the Witherspoon Institute, and National Affairs and on the Editorial Advisory Board of First Things. Mr. Cohen has published in numerous academic and popular journals, magazines, and newspapers, including the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, Weekly Standard, Commentary, The New Republic, First Things, and numerous others. He is the author of In the Shadow of Progress: Being Human in the Age of Technology (2008) and co-editor of The Future is Now: America Confronts the New Genetics (2002). He was previously managing editor of the Public Interest and served as a senior consultant to the President’s Council on Bioethics. Eric Edelman Eric S. Edelman is Distinguished Fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, a Visiting Scholar at the Philip Merrill Center for Strategic Studies at Johns Hopkins, and a senior associate at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard. Before retiring from the U.S. Foreign Service in May 2009, he held senior positions at the Departments of State and Defense as well as the White House, including U.S. Ambassador to Finland and Turkey, Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, Principal Deputy Assistant to the Vice President for National Security Affairs, Special Assistant to the Secretary of State George Shultz, Chief of Staff to the Deputy Secretary of State and Special Assistant to the Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs. He also served as a member of the U.S. Middle East Delegation to the West Bank/Gaza Autonomy Talks. Among his awards are the Presidential Distinguished Service Award and the Légion d’Honneur conferred by the French government. Charles Hill Charles Hill is a diplomat-in-residence and lecturer in international studies at Yale University. He is a Career Minister in the U.S. Foreign Service, having served in roles including Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for the Middle East at the State Department, Chief of Staff of the State Department, and Executive Aide to Secretary of State George P. Shultz. Mr. Hill has been a fellow at the Harvard University East Asia Research Center and a Clark fellow at Cornell University; he is currently a research fellow at the Hoover Institution. He served as special consultant on policy to the Secretary-General of the United Nations from 1992 to 1996. Mr. Hill collaborated with former UN Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali on the books Egypt’s Road to Jerusalem, a memoir of the Middle East peace negotiations, and Unvanquished, about U.S. relations with the UN in the post– Cold War period. He is also the editor of the three-volume Papers of United Nations Secretary-General Boutros-Ghali, published by Yale University Press. His books include Grand Strategies: Literature, Statecraft and World Order (Yale University Press) and Trial of a Thousand Years: Islamism and World Order (Hoover Press). He received an A.B. degree from Brown University in 1957, a J.D. degree from the University of Pennsylvania in 1960, and an M.A. degree in American studies from the University of Pennsylvania in 1961.

THE TIKVAH FUND 165 E. 56th Street New York, New York 10022 Stephen Rosen Stephen Peter Rosen is the Beton Michael Kaneb Professor of National Security and Military Affairs at Harvard University. He was the civilian assistant to the director of Net Assessment in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, the Director of Political-Military Affairs on the staff of the National Security Council, and a professor in the Strategic Department at the Naval War College. He participated in the President’s Commission on Integrated Long Term Strategy, and in the Gulf War Air Power Survey sponsored by the Secretary of the Air Force. He has published articles on ballistic missile defense, the American theory of limited war, and on the strategic implications of the AIDS epidemic, and wrote the book, Winning the Next War: Innovation and the Modern Military which won the 1992 Funriss Prize for best first book on national security affairs awarded by the Merchon Center at Ohio State University. His second book, Societies and Military Power: India and its Armies, was published by Cornell University Press in 1995. His next project is on the non-rational aspects of deterrence entitled “Fear and Dominance in International Politics.”

THE TIKVAH FUND 165 E. 56th Street New York, New York 10022 VI.

Our Mutual Commitment

Our pledge to you is that the program will be excellent and that the teachers are, in every case, among the best people in the world teaching the subjects they are teaching. Your pledge to us is that you will invest yourselves in the texts and the seminars, and do the work to the fullest extent of your talents. You have put your everyday work on hold to join us, so we know you come to us with great interest and commitment. We will insist that you continue that commitment—a commitment to attending each and every session, a commitment to coming to class on time, a commitment to doing all the readings—throughout the duration of the Institute. If anyone fails to honor his or her commitment, he or she will be dismissed from the Institute.