Understanding Modern Warfare

This book focuses on modern warfare. It examines the conduct of war in its different environments and forms and provides an introduction to the issues, ideas, concepts, context and vocabulary necessary to develop an understanding of the subject. It is not a history book, although relevant historical examples are used throughout to illustrate the analysis. Rather, the book is designed to equip the reader with a sophisticated introduction to the concepts, issues and debates that will help them to understand current concerns and future possibilities and also to unpick past campaigns.

This subject is an important one. War and warfare have had a pervasive and often a pernicious influence on human affairs throughout history. Optimistic claims that we are evolving towards a less violent international system do not appear to be entirely borne out by recent events. Despite this, the conduct of war as an academic field of enquiry is not a subject that everyone is comfortable with. It requires one to study a phenomenon that many disapprove of and to think about things that some prefer to ignore. That such study is often encouraged or supported by armed forces eager to derive ‘lessons’ intended to improve future performance has done little to endear it to liberal academics. Insofar as they study war at all most Western universities prefer to focus on ‘war and society’, examining the impact that war has had on wider society rather than focusing explicitly on warfare. The result has been a demilitarisation of the topic within much of academia, what Michael Howard called a ‘flight to the suburbs’. This is not a suburban book. It self-consciously focuses on the central activity of armed forces and on the urban centre of the subject, on warfare. It does so in recognition that this does not address the totality of war, which is about more than just warfare, but is based on the notion that one cannot understand modern war unless one also understands modern warfare.

The book is also based on the judgement that such understanding is important. To paraphrase Sun Tzu, the conduct of war is of such importance, quite literally the province of life and death, it is vital that it be studied carefully.