The Conduct Of War In The 21st Century

This book examines the key dimensions of 21st century war, and shows that orthodox thinking about war, particularly what it is and how it is fought, needs to be updated. Accelerating societal, economic, political and technological change affects how we prepare, equip and organise for war, as well as how we conduct war – both in its low-tech and high-tech forms, and whether it is with high intensity or low intensity. The volume examines changes in warfare by investigating the key features of the conduct of war during the first decades of the 21st century. Conceptually centred around the terms ‘kinetic’, ‘connected’ and ‘synthetic’, the analysis delves into a wide range of topics. The contributions discuss hybrid warfare, cyber and influence activities, machine learning and artificial intelligence, the use of armed drones and air power, the implications of the counterinsurgency experiences in Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria, as well as the consequences for law(fare) and decision making. This work will be of much interest to students of military and strategic studies, security studies and International Relations. Chapters 1, 2, 5, and 19 of this book are freely available as downloadable Open Access PDFs at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

This book explores the ethical implications of war in the contemporary world. It explains why it is of crucial importance that western countries should continue to apply traditional ethical rules and practices, even when engaging with terrorist groups.

This book examines the importance of "military ethics" in the formulation and conduct of contemporary military strategy. Clausewitz’s original analysis of war relegated ethics to the side-lines in favor of political realism, interpreting the proper use of military power solely to further the political goals of the state, whatever those may be. This book demonstrates how such single-minded focus no longer suffices to secure the interest of states, for whom the nature of warfare has evolved to favor strategies that hold combatants themselves to the highest moral and professional standards in their conduct of hostilities. Waging war has thus been transformed in a manner that moves beyond Clausewitz’s original conception, rendering political success wholly dependent upon the cultivation and exercise of discerning moral judgment by strategists and combatants in the field. This book utilizes a number of perspectives and case studies to demonstrate how ethics now plays a central role in strategy in modern armed conflict. This book will be of much interest to students of just war, ethics, military strategy, and international relations.

Warfare has migrated into cities. From Mosul to Mumbai, Aleppo to Marawi, the major military battles of the twenty-first century have taken place in densely populated urban areas. Why has this happened? What are the defining characteristics of urban warfare today? What are its military and political implications? Leading sociologist Anthony King answers these critical questions through close analysis of recent urban battles and their historical antecedents. Exploring the changing typography and evolving tactics of the urban battlescape, he shows that although not all methods used in urban warfare are new, operations in cities today have become highly distinctive. Urban warfare has coalesced into gruelling micro-sieges, which extend from street level – and below – to the airspace high above the city, as combatants fight for individual buildings, streets and districts. At the same time, digitalized social media and information networks communicate these battles to global audiences across an urban archipelago, with these spectators often becoming active participants in the fight. A timely reminder of the costs and the horror of war and violence in cities, this book offers an invaluable interdisciplinary introduction to urban warfare in the new millennium for students of international security, urban studies and military science, as well as military professionals.

This book interrogates the philosophical backdrop of Clausewitzian notions of war, and asks whether modern, network-centric militaries can still be said to serve the 'political'. In light of the emerging theories and doctrines of Network-Centric War (NCW), this book traces the philosophical backdrop against which the more common theorizations of war and its conduct take place. Tracing the historical and philosophical roots of modern war from the 17th Century through to the present day, this book reveals that far from paralyzing the project of re-problematisating war, the emergence of NCW affords us an opportunity to rethink war in new and philosophically challenging ways. This book will be of much interest to students of critical security studies, social theory, war studies and political theory/IR. Manabrata Guha is Assistant Professor (ISSSP) at the National Institute of Advanced Studies, Bangalore, India.

Throughout history, military practitioners, philosophers, and historians have struggled to comprehend the complexities of warfare.1 Most of these efforts produced long, complicated treatises that did not lend themselves to rapid or easy understanding.2 This, in turn, spurred efforts to condense the "lessons" of war into a short list of aphorisms that practitioners of the military art could use to guide the conduct of warfare.3 The culmination of these labors, from the perspective of the U.S. Armed Forces, may be found in what are called the principles of war.4 (See Appendix A.) Currently contained in Joint and Service doctrines, "the principles of war guide warfighting at the strategic, operational, and tactical levels. They are the enduring bedrock of US military doctrine."5 But, how solid is that foundation? While the principles have been thoroughly scrutinized at the tactical and operational levels of warfare, the study of their applicability at the strategic level has been less exhaustive.6 Moreover, the principles of war were derived predominantly from the study of Napoleonic and Industrial Age warfare.7 Whether or how these principles apply at the strategic level of war under the conditions of rapid technological change that many are calling the "Information Age" and its military offspring, the Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA), is an open-ended question.8 Because war at the strategic level is an intellectual process9 and the development and implementation of strategy is a creative activity, some form of intellectual framework is required to shape the strategist's thought processes. The principles of war provide such a structure. At the same time, because theory and creativity have limits, they offer a guide to understanding those restrictions. A good strategist-possessed of a comprehensive understanding of the principles-will be able, therefore, to expand creatively upon them, and will also be able to determine if one or more of them can or must be disregarded.10 Finally, a thorough grasp of the intent behind each principle 2 allows the crafting of strategies that reflect the best possible balance among the principles for a particular strategic challenge.11 Once thoroughly understood, the principles of war also may be used as a decisionmaking aid during formulation, planning, and execution of strategy. They can be used to assess current strategic plans, or as an analytic tool to shape new strategies and plans as they are developed. Further, they can be used to examine past strategic activities to derive insights from success or failure, and to extract the pertinent "lessons" that can be applied to future endeavors. It is, of course, always easier to use the principles in retrospect to critique plans and activities than to incorporate them when creating strategies--but those who can do the latter will be hailed as geniuses by future historians. In fact, the principles of war are important exactly because, short of war, it is difficult to identify potential "Napoleons" in our midst. A proper focus on the linkages and tensions among the principles can avoid the stultifying, dogmatic, pro forma use of "checklists" which inevitably creates vulnerabilities to be exploited by a more imaginative opponent. At the same time, innovative application of the principles in simulations and war games can provide a useful education for future generals and strategists, who may be called upon to practice their craft with little or no notice. They are aids, too, in the life-long development of patterns of thought found in the true strategist.