Modern War and the Utility of Force
Challenges, Methods and Strategy
- 304 pages
- English
- ePUB (mobile friendly)
- Available on iOS & Android
Modern War and the Utility of Force
Challenges, Methods and Strategy
About this book
This book investigates the use and utility of military force in modern war.
After the Cold War, Western armed forces have increasingly been called upon to intervene in internal conflicts in the former Third World. These forces have been called upon to carry out missions that they traditionally have not been trained and equipped for, in environments that they often have not been prepared for. A number of these 'new' types of operations in allegedly 'new' wars stand out, such as peace enforcement, state-building, counter-insurgency, humanitarian aid, and not the least counter-terrorism. The success rate of these missions has, however, been mixed, providing fuel for an increasingly loud debate on the utility of force in modern war. This edited volume poses as its central question: what is in fact the utility of force? Is force useful for anything other than a complete conventional defeat of a regular opponent, who is confronted in the open field?
This book will be of much interest to students of strategic studies, war and conflict studies, counter-insurgency, security studies and IR.
Isabelle Duyvesteyn is an Associate Professor at the Department of History of International Relations, Utrecht University in the Netherlands.
Jan Angstrom is a researcher at the Swedish National Defence College.
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Information
Table of contents
- Cover
- Title
- Copyright
- Contents
- List of illustrations
- Notes on contributors
- Foreword
- Preface and acknowledgements
- 1 War, what is it good for?
- 2 From victory to success: the changing mission of Western armed forces
- 3 The international private security company: a unique and useful actor?
- 4 Great expectations: the use of armed force to combat terrorism
- 5 Why does peacekeeping succeed or fail? Peacekeeping in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Sierra Leone
- 6 Exploring the utility of armed force in peace operations: German and British approaches in northern Afghanistan
- 7 Counterinsurgency doctrine: the US experience
- 8 No simple formula: the use of military force in counterinsurgency
- 9 Adapting to counterinsurgency: the US Army in Iraq, July 2004–December 2006
- 10 Inviting the Leviathan: external forces, war and state-building in Afghanistan
- 11 Between reluctance and necessity: the utility of military force in humanitarian and development operations
- 12 War, what it is good for …
- Index