Military Review English Edition November December 2016 | Page 140

Huntington’s canonical post-Cold War work of the
same name in 1998.
Sacred Interests emphasizes three themes. First,
Walther builds on the works of Edward Said and Ussama
Makdisi, arguing that the United States was just as
complicit as Europe in propagating orientalism. Second,
she demonstrates brilliantly that the informal power of
transnational organizations, such as evangelical societies,
was highly successful in shaping public discourse and the
United States’ actions toward Islam despite a generally
noninterventionist foreign policy. Finally, Walther shows
that during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries,
American discourse on Islam ignored the complexities
taken for granted in Western identities, instead simplifying anything involving Islam to a “Muslim question.”
Walther organizes her work chronologically, with
three main sections. The first part explores the U.S.
foreign policy response to the Eastern Question as first
Greece and then other regions of the Ottoman Empire
sought independence partly based on newly imagined
visions of nationalism with Christianity serving as a
rallying cry for international support. The second part
focuses on U.S. diplomatic relations with the Moroccan
government regarding Morocco’s treatment of Jewish
subjects. The final section examines the United States’
initial experiment with settler colonialism and the
disparity in policies toward Christians and toward
Muslims in the Philippines at the turn of the twentieth
century. Throughout, Walther emphasizes the irony
of U.S. attitudes toward Islam in the world juxtaposed
with internal debates over slavery and minority populations. Ultimately, Walther concludes by suggesting
that these early experiences with Islam shaped attitudes and behaviors that endured through World War
I and the Cold War, becoming further entrenched globally as the nascent transnational organizations from
the nineteenth century became formal instruments of
power in the twentieth century.
Overall, Walther’s work is innovative in combining
a wide range of sources to narrate a complex history of
attitudes and beliefs about Islam in the nineteenth and
twentieth centuries. However, perhaps due to language
limitations, she does not provide the Ottoman Empire or
other nations’ reactions to American attitudes. Despite
this limitation, Sacred Interests reinforces the old adage
that while history does not repeat itself, it does often
rhyme. This is an important read for anyone trying to
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understand the relationship between public opinion and
strategic policy in the Middle East.

Maj. Christopher J. Kirkpatrick, U.S. Army,
Brooklyn, New York

FREDERICK THE GREAT
King of Prussia

Tim Blanning, Random House,
New York, 2016, 688 pages

W

hat happens to a military force when its
leadership changes from a straitlaced,
antiacademic, German man’s man to a
homosexual son of the French Enlightenment? In
Frederick II of Prussia’s case, that military force defeated the most powerful armies of Europe, conquered
key territories,
and changed the
balance of power
forever in the Holy
Roman Empire.
Tim Blanning, a
noted University of
Cambridge historian, has deftly
demonstrated great
skill in authoritatively writing about
a warrior king
full of talent and
contradictions. His
story about how
Berlin became the center of the Germanic world is
important reading for today’s military strategists even
if they think Carl von Clausewitz has already had the
last word.
Prussia had few apparent resources before
Frederick became sovereign in 1740. His father had
thought he was effeminate and unfit to rule. Frederick
was caught secretly slipping into a red silk dressing
gown with gold brocade for private flute practices.
Frederick William had his son’s favorite friend executed in front of Frederick as part of a plan to mold him
into a different sort of man. Upon gaining the throne,
Frederick gambled at war and invaded the Hapsburg
November-December 2016  MILITARY REVIEW