Immaculate Warfare

This volume of essays-written by military officers who analyzed the intelligence, planned the missions, and flew the planes over Iraq, Kosovo, and Afghanistan-offers the most penetrating look to date at the realities of American precision air power. When the gun-camera footage from air strikes during the Gulf War reached America's television screens, people awoke to the astonishing accuracy and power of smart weapons. Yet ten years' experience has taught what these remarkable weapons can and cannot do, and now, as American policy makers look to them to win the global war on terrorism, it is essential to understand the promise and the limits of immaculate warfare. This volume of essays-written by military officers who analyzed the intelligence, planned the missions, and flew the planes over Iraq, Kosovo, and Afghanistan-offers the most penetrating look to date at the realities of American precision air power. Topics include: • The political context of using force from the air • The theoretical considerations involved in the use of air power to coerce an enemy • An insider's view from General Clark's headquarters as he commanded the Kosovo war effort • The tensions between civilian and military leaderships during the Kosovo war • Precision weapons and the paradoxes their use involves • The debate surrounding when precision weapons ought to be employed

By tracing the origins and evolution of the competing views on the political utility of force, this book sets the currently popular image of a new American way of war in its broader historical, cultural and political context, and provides an assessment of its future prospects.

"In this ethnographic study of time, place, and memory, Aseel Sawlha offers a fresh perspective on the rebuilding efforts of this city [Beirut] and explains how the residents of Beirut used individual and collective memories of their celebrated architectural past to compete and negotiate for the reinstatement of municipal services and the reconstruction of their environment."--Page 2 of cover.

Surrogate Warfare explores the emerging phenomenon of “surrogate warfare” in twenty-first century conflict. The popular notion of war is that it is fought en masse by the people of one side versus the other. But the reality today is that both state and non-state actors are increasingly looking to shift the burdens of war to surrogates. Surrogate warfare describes a patron's outsourcing of the strategic, operational, or tactical burdens of warfare, in whole or in part, to human and/or technological substitutes in order to minimize the costs of war. This phenomenon ranges from arming rebel groups, to the use of armed drones, to cyber propaganda. Krieg and Rickli bring old, related practices such as war by mercenary or proxy under this new overarching concept. Apart from analyzing the underlying sociopolitical drivers that trigger patrons to substitute or supplement military action, this book looks at the intrinsic trade-offs between substitutions and control that shapes the relationship between patron and surrogate. Surrogate Warfare will be essential reading for anyone studying contemporary conflict.

Examines the U.S. Marines’ visual culture of combat in the Iraq War. American military power in the War on Terror has increasingly depended on the capacity to see the enemy. The act of seeing—enhanced by electronic and digital technologies—has separated shooter from target, eliminating risk of bodily harm to the remote warrior, while YouTube videos eroticize pulling the trigger and video games blur the line between simulated play and fighting. Light It Up examines the visual culture of the early twenty-first century military. Focusing on the Marine Corps, which played a critical part in the invasion and occupation of Iraq, John Pettegrew argues that U.S. military force in the Iraq War was projected through an “optics of combat.” Powerful military technology developed in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars has placed war in a new posthuman era. Pettegrew’s interviews with marines, as well as his analysis of first-person shooter videogames and combat footage, lead to startling insights into the militarization of popular digital culture. An essential study for readers interested in modern warfare, policy makers, and historians of technology, war, and visual and military culture.

The first twenty years of post-Cold War US defense and diplomatic policies toward Asia have looked a good deal like the previous 50, namely: continued deterrence based upon overwhelming, offensive military predominance. In East Asia, all powers harbor common and divergent interests based on fragmented nationalist identities and complex economic interdependence. In this multipolar Asian system, new Chinese military capabilities could support both the wish to secure its own interests as well as a more expansive vision for regional leadership, which might harbor a destabilizing geopolitical agenda. How the United States addresses this reality via military procurements and employment concepts for the Asian theater could either detract from or enhance crisis stability. The US defense establishment must reorient its force posture to save money, manage conflicts of interest, and prevent future interstate crises. This analysis provides a framework for how the United States should ideally structure and use military power so as to best support the diplomatic resolution of conflicting interests without resorting to full-scale warfare. It also critiques the usual Western military focus on offensive strategic predominance in force postures, itself often fuelled by the unrealistic pursuit of the opponent’s complete submission via victory in decisive battles.