| The Transformation of War - The Most Radical Reinterpretation of Armed Conflict Since Clausewitz
(1991)
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| Front Cover |
Book Details |
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| Genre |
Non-Fiction |
| Subject |
Military art and science - History - 19th century; Military art and science - History - 20th century; Military history, Modern - 19th century; Military history, Modern - 20th century; War; World politics - 19th century; World politics - 1900-1945; World politics - 1945-1989 |
| Publication Date |
3/31/1991 |
| Format |
Hardcover (9.2
x
6.2
mm)
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| Publisher |
Free Press |
| Language |
English |
| Extras |
Dust Jacket; Dust Jacket Cover |
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| Description |
| At a time when unprecedented change in international affairs is forcing governments, citizens, and armed forces everywhere to re-assess the question of whether military solutions to political problems are possible any longer, Martin van Creveld has written an audacious searching examination of the nature of war and of its radical transformation in our own time.For 200 years, military theory and strategy have been guided by the Clausewitzian assumption that war is rational - a reflection of national interest and an extension of politics by other means. However, van Creveld argues, the overwhelming pattern of conflict in the post-1945 world no longer yields fully to rational analysis. In fact, strategic planning based on such calculations is, and will continue to be, unrelated to current realities.Small-scale military eruptions around the globe have demonstrated new forms of warfare with a different cast of characters - guerilla armies, terrorists, and bandits - pursuing diverse goals by violent means with the most primitive to the most sophisticated weapons. Although these warriors and their tactics testify to the end of conventional war as we've known it, the public and the military in the developed world continue to contemplate organized violence as conflict between the super powers.At this moment, armed conflicts of the type van Creveld describes are occurring throughout the world. From Lebanon to Cambodia, from Sri Lanka and the Philippines to El Salvador, the Persian Gulf, and the strife-torn nations of Eastern Europe, violent confrontations confirm a new model of warfare in which tribal, ethnic, and religious factions do battle without high-tech weapons or state-supported armies and resources. This low-intensity conflict challenges existing distinctions between civilian and solder, individual crime and organized violence, terrorism and war. In the present global atmosphere, practices that for three centuries have been considered uncivilized, such as capturing civilians or even entire communities for ransom, have begun to reappear.Pursuing bold and provocative paths of inquiry, van Creveld posits the inadequacies of our most basic ideas as to who fights wars and why and broaches the inevitability of man's need to "play" at war. In turn brilliant and infuriating, this challenge to our thinking and planning current and future military encounters is one of the most important books on war we are likely to read in our lifetime. |
| Personal Details |
| Store |
Red Letter Secondhand Books |
| Purchase Price |
$11.38 |
| Condition |
Fine/Very Good |
| Rating |
0 |
| Links |
Library of Congress
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| Product Details |
| LoC Classification |
U42 .V36 1991 |
| Dewey |
355.020904 |
| ISBN |
9780029331552 |
| Cover Price |
$22.95 |
| No. of Pages |
254 |
| First Edition |
No |
| Rare |
No |
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| Notes/Review |
$17.50 less trade - $10.50 + tax
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The book is subtitled "The Most Radical Reinterpretation of Armed Conflict Since Clausewitz". I have no idea if this is a true statement or not. I have not read Clausewitz, and I haven't read much on the philosophy of war.
This book is primarily a critique of Clausewitz. Van Creveld does a very thorough job of telling us how Clausewitz was correct, but only for 300 years - between the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648 and the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima in 1945. He makes his case by telling us about war throughout mankind's history without giving us the history of any of these wars. There are no descriptions of specific battles, campaigns, or wars; no strategies or tactics; no analysis of weapons systems.
It is a philosophical work - who fights wars, how wars are fought. Why wars are fought and what wars are fought for (not the same things!). He begins at the end, so to speak - telling us how and why the atomic bomb has fundamentally ended conventional war. He makes the case that conflict since 1945 isn't conventional war, but "low intensity conflict". He explains the difficulties of the strong fighting the weak in these LIC's (the US in Vietnam, the USSR in Afghanistan).
I even enjoyed reading the bibliography. For about half the entries he provides a one line summary. He describes Clausewitz's "On War" as "the second best work on war ever written." (Sun Tzu's he rates number one.) I was surprised to find an entry for Martin Middlebrook, one of my favorite WWII authors: He says of Middlebrook's Falkland Islands book "having finished the book, you still wonder why the British had to fight." I didn't even know Middlebrook wrote a Falkland Islands book. |
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