Michael Howard (historian)

Quotes

The system-builders, from Hegel to Toynbee, selected facts from history to prove an a priori thesis, and presented subjective works of art as objective statements of fact. But the old positivist belief in the possibility of a truly scientific and objective history is no longer held even by the most fanatical members of the Institute of Historical Research.
- 'An Academic's Apology', The New Statesman (14 July 1956), p. 50
- Review of Debates with Historians and Use and Abuse of History by Pieter Geyl

The gravamen of Geyl’s charge against Toynbee is not that he makes sense of the past: it is that to do so he resorts to quite ludicrous distortions, selecting evidence to conform to his views and ignoring all that does not. The abuse of history in fact lies less often in the motives of the historian than in his methods. It was after all the most honourable loyalties and affections which led Cardinal Gasquet to attempt the vindication of the monastic orders against the charges of Protestant historians; the formidable Coulton may have been inspired merely by acrimonious anti-Popish spite; but Coulton was an honest scholar, and Gasquet, one is forced to conclude, was not.
- 'An Academic's Apology', The New Statesman (14 July 1956), p. 50

"Covenants without swords are but words." Thus did Hobbes sum up, typically, one of the more elementary and depressing truths of political science. At the root of save all the most primitive or the most celestial of social organizations there must lie the sanction of force: force not to create right but to uphold it; force to assure order, to cow rebellion at home and to subdue enemies abroad. That it is not in itself the foundation of society, that it is only the one factor out of many which go to constitute a political community, has been emphasized by political thinkers at least since the days of St Augustine. But as yet no community of any degree of complexity has succeeded in existing without force, and the manner in which that force is organized and controlled will largely determine the political structure of the State.
- Introduction to Soldiers and Governments: Nine Studies in Civil-Military Relations, ed. Michael Howard (1959), p. 11

The collapse at Sedan, like that of the Prussians at Jena sixty-four years earlier, was the result not simply of faulty command but of a faulty military system; and the military system of a nation is not an independent section of the social system but an aspect of it in its totality. The French had good reason to look on their disasters as a judgment. The social and economic developments of the past fifty years had brought about a military as well an industrial revolution. The Prussians had kept abreast of it and France had not. Therein lay the basic cause of her defeat.
- The Franco-Prussian War: The German Invasion of France, 1870–1871 (1960), p. 1

Hobbes's ideas seemed at least as relevant to the middle decades of the twentieth century as they had been to those of the seventeenth. (Happy the generation now growing up in our universities whose natural affinity appears to be rather with Rousseau!) A situation in which recourse to force is such an imminent probability that one's whole life and policy has to be adjusted to it is not, save in the most formal sense, a state of peace. It is for that reason that I equate peace with that unfashionable term 'Order'; an emphasis which probably brands me as a temperamental Tory rather than a temperamental Whig.
- Studies in War and Peace (1970), p. 14

So long as the conventional balance remains so uneven, the Western strategy of relying on the first use of nuclear weapons to defend ourselves is not only morally dubious but politically incredible. But the responsibility for this strategy does not lie with the United States. It lies with the governments and peoples of Western Europe who have, for the last thirty years, refused to take the necessary measures to provide for their own conventional defence.
That is where the CND is so dangerous. Their present campaign is sending a signal both to Moscow and to the United States, not simply that the peoples of Western Europe are not prepared to defend themselves with nuclear weapons, but that they are not prepared to defend themselves at all: a signal that could create a quite terrifying degree of instability by presenting the leaders of the Soviet Union with options that hitherto have been firmly closed to them.
- Letter to The Times (3 November 1981), p. 13

Many Christians, of whom I am one, see no moral dilemma inherent in the possession, and if necessary the use, of nuclear weapons to deter their use against our own peoples by a Soviet state whose leaders are explicitly unconstrained by those considerations of "bourgeois morality" which so properly worry us. It is the initiation of the use of these weapons that causes so many of us such profound concern; and we have come to depend on that initiation because we have acquiesced in a decision to maintain a standard of living far higher than that of our adversaries, rather than provide the resources needed for a convincing defence by non-nuclear means of the territories of Western Europe.
- Letter to The Times (8 February 1983), p. 11

The Foreign Secretary's [Malcolm Rifkind] apologia for Nato enlargement is strong on dogmatic assertion but weak on reasoned argument... "Neither the new Nato nor its expansion poses a threat to Russia". That surely is for the Russians to say. After all, we were taught during the Cold War to base our policies on the capabilities of our adversaries rather than their intentions.
To take account of Russian susceptibilities is not to accept their veto over our policies. It is simply to recognise that there can never be stability in Europe unless the Russians feel secure, and to ride roughshod over their susceptibilities is not a very sensible way to guarantee the security of their neighbours to the west.
- Letter to The Times (14 March 1997), p. 21

Michael Howard is an excellent and succinct writer and his book is very easy to read.
- Rab Butler, 'One side of the story', The Times (6 July 1972), p. 10
- A review of The Continental Commitment

An elegance of style which, since his much esteemed early work The Franco-Prussian War, has always distinguished his writing has not been achieved by a sacrifice of accuracy or relentless extension of his "wide learning", and his critical judgments – sometimes feline, sometimes ruthless – are usually cogent. More than that. I suppose that during recent decades nobody on either side of the Atlantic has so effectively brought military studies securely within the domain of the humane disciplines. If he has not civilized Bellona single-handed, he is primus inter pares.
- Ronald Lewin, 'Civilizing Bellona', The Times (12 May 1983), p. 11
- A review of The Causes of War

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Michael Howard (historian)