The future of war
Subtitle: a history
By: Lawrence Freedman
Edition: First edition.
Publisher: Public Affairs
Published: 2017
Language: eng
Number of pages: 376
ISBN-13: 9781610393058
Subjects: Forecasting; War; History
Description: Questions about the future of war are a regular feature of political debate, strategic analysis, and popular fiction. Where should we look for new dangers? What cunning plans might an aggressor have in mind? What are the best forms of defense? How might peace be preserved or conflict resolved? From the French rout at Sedan in 1870 to the relentless contemporary insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan, Lawrence Freedman, a world-renowned military thinker, reveals how most claims from the military futurists are wrong. But they remain influential nonetheless. Freedman shows how those who have imagined future war have often had an idealized notion of it as confined, brief, and decisive, and have regularly taken insufficient account of the possibility of long wars--hence the stubborn persistence of the idea of a knockout blow, whether through a dashing land offensive, nuclear first strike, or cyberattack. He also notes the lack of attention paid to civil wars until the West began to intervene in them during the 1990s, and how the boundaries between peace and war, between the military, the civilian, and the criminal are becoming increasingly blurred. Freedman's account of a century and a half of warfare and the (often misconceived) thinking that precedes war is a challenge to hawks and doves alike, and puts current strategic thinking into a bracing historical perspective.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (pages 289-361) and index.
Table of contents: title: Decisive battle; title: Indecisive battle; title: The house of strife; title: Victory through cruelty; title: Failures of peace; title: Total war; title: The balance of terror; title: Stuck in the nuclear age; title: A surprise peace; title: A science of war; title: Counting the dead; title: Democracy and war; title: New wars and failed states; title: Ancient hatreds and mineral curses; title: Intervention; title: Counter-insurgency to counter-terrorism; title: From counter-terrorism to counter-insurgency; title: The role of barbarism; title: Cure not prevention; title: Hybrid wars; title: Cyberwar; title: Robots and drones; title: Mega-cities and climate change; title: Coming wars; title: The future of the future of war.