It is of course true that many modern combat sports are extremely demanding in terms of physical force, skill, and endurance. Indeed many athletes are much fitter and better trained than the vast majority of soldiers. However, all those various kinds of sport are based on artificial rules as to what is and is not permitted. Furthermore, and with the exception of fencing, a highly ritualized form of combat to which we shall return, even the most violent ones do not permit the players to use weapons. In their absence, most of those skills are too specialized to be of much military relevance.
In combat sports as in war, and indeed in life in general, a connoisseur is in a much better position to appreciate the refinements of strategy than a layman is. What the latter sees as random and repetitive the former may understand as carefully planned and brilliantly executed movements involving high skill. Skill is also what enables the trained combatant to defeat the novice. Nevertheless, it is hard to deny that strategy in the form it is practiced in one-on-one combat sports is rudimentary. It is true that coaches, who in this respect act as commanders, do take care to study the opponent’s strengths and weaknesses by watching them in action. However, the one-on-one nature of the fights and the limited possibilities of the human body prevent their strategies from developing beyond mastering a few simple tricks and implementing them against the right opponent at the right moment; the small repertoire of punches used in boxing – just four in all, each capable of being delivered either by the right or the left hand – provides sufficient proof of this. A famous case in point is that of the 1930s German boxing champion Max Schmeling. Watching Joe Louis fight, he noticed that his future opponent sometimes briefly dropped his left arm after throwing a left jab. Doing so left him vulnerable for a split second to a well-placed right cross, which was Schmeling’s best punch.38 Surely this was good observation based on a sound understanding of the sport and implemented by lightning-fast reaction. But it was little more.
Modern contact sports do not allow as much violence as combat sports do, and fortunately so; or else surely many games would degenerate into one or more heaps of struggling, kicking, punching men with little thought for either the ball or scoring. Anybody who has ever witnessed a game of soccer deteriorating into a fistfight will know how flimsy the border between the two is and how real the danger of escalation. Thanks to the fact that they demand close cooperation between team members, though, such sports presuppose the existence of detailed, often quite complicated, rules. Both the rules and the need for cooperation mean that, considered from the point of view of strategy, they are much more sophisticated than individual combats can ever be.
As with wrestling, the earliest known contact sports date back to ancient Egypt where representations sometimes show groups of fishermen engaged in them. Standing in boats and using staves, they tried to push their opponents into the water; the fact that, in one of those reliefs, the fight takes place aboard a processional bark of the war-god Month must be significant, though unfortunately we do not know just what its significance is.39 Many other pre-modern civilizations were also familiar with contact sports. Their excellence at combat sports apart, the Spartans also developed “strategic” contact sports specifically designed to make not individuals but opposing teams fight one another. In one of those games two teams competed in snatching a piece of cheese placed upon the altar of the goddess Aphrodite. One is reminded of the custom, also much in evidence at other times and places, of having women hand out the prizes to the victor.
The other game involved a ball and may have been what Plato had in mind, though we do not know the rules of play. Compared with modern games of football or lacrosse, the difference was that kicking, punching, biting, and gouging were also allowed. Casualties, rather than being seen as accidental and regrettable by-products as in modern contact sports, were expected, even encouraged. So ferocious was the agog, or training course, Spartan youths underwent that Aristotle considered it more suitable for beasts than for men.40 It may also have played a role in the city’s decline after about 370 BC, when fewer and fewer entered it and completed it, but that is speculation. Aristotle did, however, approve of athletics in general as suitable training for war. Since we do not understand the details, we can only assume that, then as today, serious coaches and their teams did what they could to keep their own methods secret and also prepared an elaborate “game plan” before each play. Some coaches want to play an offensive game, others a defensive one, and so forth. Often each player, while obliged to stay within the rules, is assigned a role and told to do this and avoid that. Often strategies are changed in mid-game; for example, in order to keep an advantage one has to try and snatch it away from an opponent who seems to be approaching victory.
Strategies of the kind familiar from American football, in many ways the most complex contact sport of all, are quite numerous and sufficiently standardized to acquire names. Terms such as Shotgun formation, Wishbone formation, Option Offense, Smashmouth Offense, and of course the famous Hail Mary maneuver which General Norman Schwarzkopf used to explain what he did to Saddam Hussein’s army back in 1991, will ring a bell with many readers. Some of these maneuvers are deliberately designed to deceive the opponent. All require teamwork, with the result that players in training spend a lot of time learning how to cooperate with each other. Nevertheless, in truth they are so simple that they are perhaps better described as drills. One reason for this is because, though players certainly vary in strength and speed and also develop some individual skills such as those associated with quarterbacks, linebackers, cornerbacks, and the like, ultimately one human body is not too different from another. In the absence of offensive equipment, which might provide each player with very different capabilities, specialization and division of labor can only be carried so far. Thus there are definite limits on how sophisticated strategy may grow.
Furthermore, the fields on which both football and all other contact sports are played are set aside especially for the purpose. On one hand, they come with all kinds of artificial marks, lines, circles, and the like, whose function is to tell players what may and may not be done on each of their parts. On the other, they tend to be level, symmetrical – every effort is made to ensure that no side obtains an advantage in respect to which side of the field it plays on – and relatively small. They are also incomparably simpler than the terrain on which real-life warfare is waged. There are no rivers, lakes, mountains, vegetation, or man-made structures of any kind that obstruct movement and/or provide shelter. Not only does this fact simplify strategy, but normally the players on each side can easily and instantly observe what their opponents are doing. The only exception is when players momentarily form some kind of wall to conceal what is happening to the ball. Consequently modest room is left for those vital instruments of war, deception, surprise, and, above all, intelligence (except intelligence of the kind that is gathered before the game starts) and reconnaissance.
Though hand-to-hand combat has become rare, much modern warfare continues to involve physical strain such as those who have not engaged in it can scarcely imagine. Thirst, hunger, heat, cold, discomfort, exhaustion, sleep deprivation, fear, and often pain and suffering as well all remain exactly what they have been since time immemorial. Any commander worth his salt will make sure his troops will get habituated to them, as far as possible, before he leads them on campaign. However, to speak with Epaminondas, the place to achieve this is the field and not the gym or the playing court. The members of football teams do not enter the field hungry; should they suffer a serious injury, they expect to be evacuated and taken care of immediately.
On the whole, changes introduced since ancient times have tended to make combat sports and contact sports less violent than they used to be. For example, the English scholar and diplomat Sir Thomas Elyot (1490–1546) wrote that soccer, a game whose origins seem to go back to the Middle Ages, was “nothing but beastly fury and extreme violence.”41 Though some attempts were made to mitigate it even then, apparently the
y did not get very far. Even three centuries later players were still permitted not merely to trip and hold opponents but to throttle them and kick them in the shin (hacking, as it was called). Contemporaries sometimes spoke of “mob football.”
Things only changed in 1863 when the fledgling Football Association that had just been formed in London outlawed these practices. Even so, it was an uphill struggle. Some teams preferred the old rules and refused to join the Association; one official even insisted that “if you do away with it [hacking] you will do away with all the courage and pluck of the game, and I will be bound to bring over a lot of Frenchmen who could beat you with a week’s practice.”42 American football, also known as collegiate football because it was the colleges that first set up a league with regular matches, was more violent still. Players were regularly carried away on stretchers. Crippling injuries were frequent; in 1905 alone nineteen fatalities were incurred. Thereupon US President Theodore Roosevelt, himself no mean sportsman, intervened and ordered the colleges to clean up their play, or else he would have it prohibited.43 In response, mass formations and gang tackling were banned and some other changes introduced as well. Thus the gap between contact sports and war has grown, not diminished.
All in all sports, including unarmed combat sports and “strategic” team sports that allow the use of some physical contact such as football, can help maintain a general degree of physical fitness. At their best, they also represent useful aids in developing character, encouraging a competitive spirit, and building group cohesion among participants and spectators alike. Some consider them a sublimated form of warfare and a substitute for it, one that can easily be diverted for military purposes if so desired; to that extent, if it is true that the Duke of Wellington never said that the Battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton, he should have done so. This explains why sports are often practiced in military academies all over the world and also why many of those academies maintain their own teams. Nevertheless, whether because they do not allow the use of weapons (all the different kinds of sports discussed so far), or because the rules prohibit players from deliberately injuring their opponents, they are too different from war to play a very great role in preparing for it.
Whereas sportsmen have been known to volunteer for the military, it would take an odd recruiter to judge prospective cannon fodder simply by looking at their prowess at football or, for that matter, cage fighting. The larger the scale on which warfare was waged, the more organized it became, the more powerful and more sophisticated the weapons in use, and the longer the logistic “tail” as opposed to the fighting “teeth,” the weaker the links became between it and every kind of sport, combat sports and “strategic” contact sports included. Which is why no attempt will be made here to trace the development of such sports, and such links, in any detail; between them, Lucian and Plutarch appear to have said everything there is to say on the subject.
Still, the fact that the analogy between combat sports and “strategic” contact sports on one hand and war on the other can only be carried so far does not mean that the former two are without broader social significance. A mere look at the “stars” they breed, the vast crowds they draw, and the sums of money that are spent on them and earned in them will disprove any such claim. If anything, that was even truer in Lucian’s day than it is at present; throughout the millennium or so that the ancient Olympic Games were held, few men could compete with the victorious athletes for glory and fame. Officially the winner’s prize consisted of a simple crown of laurel. However, behind the scenes successful athletes, those specializing in combat sports included, could earn fabulous sums of money for themselves and for those who had financed and supported them. What is more, side by side with combat sports and contact sports there also existed other kinds of games whose similarity to war was much more pronounced.
Great fights, nothing fights
Let it be said at once: whatever Rousseau and his latter-day followers may have written, life among hunter-gatherers, slash and burn horticulturists, and fishing cultures is not all peaceful fun and games. Not only do the great majority of the peoples in question engage in warfare, here understood in the sense of collective violence directed against the members of another group or tribe, but that warfare is often exceedingly murderous.44 The most common causes of war are disputes over possessions and women – a commodity which, owing to the widespread combination of polygamy and female infanticide, is often in short supply.45 Another is insults; these, unless they are avenged, will lead to more insults, and ultimately to the loss of property and life as well. On pain of coming to be treated as “nothing men,”46 members of the tribe are forced into frequent feuding that can last for years, even decades. Men are killed as a matter of course, women – such as pleased the warriors, as one scholar puts it47 – and children captured and incorporated into the victor’s families. In almost all regions where tribal societies engage in armed conflict, entire villages are known to have been wiped out by such means. Over time, and considering population size, tribal warfare can be quite as deadly as that waged by more advanced societies.48
“Operationally” speaking, the most common forms of war were the treacherous banquet on one hand and the predawn raid on the other. Concerning the former, not much needs to be said. The proceedings started when some pretext, such as the need to forget old grievances and make peace, was used to invite the enemy warriors to a feast. Often assisted by “friendly” women who acted as bait, they were made to drink more than was good for them and, if they carried weapons, disarmed. Next, the doors were shut, the guests were locked inside four walls, and, in their helpless state, cut to pieces. Should any of them escape, they might be ambushed while trying to make their way home. The practice, of course, is far from new. Herodotus describes an episode when Alexander (not the Great, but one of his ancestors, c. 520–454 BC), son of Amyntas and heir to the Macedonian throne, tricked some Persian envoys and had them massacred.49 If the Greek historian is to be believed, on that occasion it was the Persians who, by molesting their hosts’ women, brought their fate upon themselves. Be that as it may, the treacherous banquet, indicative of extreme hostility though it was, had more in common with murder than with war, let alone strategy as defined in this volume. Trusting in the enemy’s promises, one side was put into a position where it could not possibly fight back. The only interaction, if that is the correct term, consisted of one side assaulting and butchering the other. Gangsters in New York, Chicago, and other cities around the world also occasionally employ the tactic.
The other common form of tribal warfare was the predawn raid, often directed at people who were not close neighbors but lived several days’ march away. Though the scale on which the raids were conducted was necessarily small, typically they represented fairly sophisticated operations. Absent a permanent military organization, first it was necessary to elect a commander and invest him with authority. Preparations, both magical-religious and practical, had to be made. Next, routes had to be selected and a division of labor instituted. Some warriors might act as scouts, others as rearguards, and one, a shaman, as a medic. Since hardly any of the peoples discussed in this chapter had beasts of burden, a couple of women might be taken along to act as food-gatherers, porters, and cooks. To find out the enemy’s whereabouts, number, and degree of preparation, reconnaissance was used. As the party approached its objective, its movements were increasingly limited to night-time.
The final jumping-off point having been reached, it was often considered necessary to resort to some ruse so as to outwit the enemy and mislead him concerning the direction from which the attack was about to come. For example, some warriors might raise a clamor while the others made their approach by stealth. Another way to divert the victims’ attention was to set some neighboring vegetation on fire. Some warriors might be tasked with stirring up the enemy warriors, others with shooting or axing them as they emerged from their quarters. All this demanded careful advance planning. Both during the
approach march and during the retreat the raiders might find themselves involved in ambushes and counter-ambushes. In cases when these resulted in a pitched battle, the outcome could be quite deadly to one side or both.
What all these various forms of organized violence – the treacherous banquet, the predawn raid, and of course the ambush and the counter-ambush – have in common was their reliance on surprise. The role played by surprise in war cannot be overestimated. By greatly reducing the ability of the enemy to respond, it sometimes enables a victory to be won with relatively little fighting; so well established is the principle that it hardly requires elaboration. By contrast, the outstanding characteristic of the form of “war” we are discussing here, and also of a great many types of wargames, is precisely that encounters were pre-arranged in respect to both time and place.
Time and place having been determined, surprise, notwithstanding that it is perhaps the most important “principle of war” of all, was deliberately sacrificed. Along with surprise went reconnaissance and many, if not most, forms of deception. So did the means normally used to guard against surprise, i.e. security in the form of physical obstacles, lookouts, sentries, and the like. Another factor that very largely lost its role was taking the initiative, meaning the ability to make the enemy dance to one’s own pipe instead of the other way around; this might be carried to the point where the combatants took turns trying to hit the opponent. Strategies such as choosing the terrain one wants to fight on and taking advantage of its features also went by the board.
Clearly none of this was done because of ignorance, an idea that is at once offensive and rendered ridiculous by the simultaneous existence of other forms of war. Nor was it due to the force of circumstances, as quite often happens in warfare between more sophisticated armies too;50 as late as the third decade of the nineteenth century Clausewitz could write that battles took place by a sort of tacit consent between the opposing sides. Instead it was done purposefully on the basis of an explicit agreement openly made between the leaders of the two sides. Given the decentralized nature of the tribes’ decision-making apparatus, indeed, it is hard to see how else it could be done.51 Another reason for this was the low density of the population and the large distances that often separated one tribe from another. Had the encounters not been fixed in advance, quite possibly they could not have taken place at all.
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