The Changing Character of War

by Hew Strachan (Editor), Sibylle Scheipers (Editor)

Over the last decade (and indeed ever since the Cold War), the rise of insurgents and non-state actors in war, and their readiness to use terror and other irregular methods of fighting, have led commentators to speak of 'new wars'. They have assumed that the 'old wars' were waged solely between states, and were accordingly fought between comparable and 'symmetrical' armed forces. Much of this commentary has lacked context or sophistication. It has been bounded by norms and theories more than the messiness of reality. Fed by the impact of the 9/11 attacks, it has privileged some wars and certain trends over others. Most obviously it has been historically unaware. But it has also failed to consider many of the other dimensions which help us to define what war is--legal, ethical, religious, and social.
The Changing Character of War, the fruit of a five-year interdisciplinary program at Oxford Univeresity of the same name, draws together all these themes, in order to distinguish between what is really changing about war and what only seems to be changing. Self-evidently, as the product of its own times, the character of each war is always changing. But if war's character is in flux, its underlying nature contains its own internal consistency. Each war is an adversarial business, capable of generating its own dynamic, and therefore of spiralling in directions that are never totally predictable. War is both utilitarian, the tool of policy, and dysfunctional. This book brings together scholars with world-wide reputations, drawn from a clutch of different disciplines, but united by a common intellectual goal: that of understanding a problem of extraordinary importance for our times.
This book is a project of the Oxford Leverhulme Program on the Changing Character of War.

Genres: War, History, Military Fiction, Politics

576 pages, Hardcover

First published July 2, 2011

About the author

Hew Strachan was born and brought up in Edinburgh, and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh 2003 and awarded an Hon. D.Univ., (Paisley) 2005. He is also Life Fellow of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, where he was successively Research Fellow, Admissions Tutor and Senior Tutor, 1975-92. From 1992 to 2001 he was Professor of Modern History at the University of Glasgow, and from 1996 to 2001 Director of the Scottish Centre for War Studies.

Reviews

[Cgcang · Rating 3 out of 5]

While the CCW program is alive and kicking, this book itself has not lent itself to the future as successfully. Despite the presence of truly impressive articles, the overall sum is sadly underwhelming. If the frame had been set particularly to define and analyze the changes within warfare through the 90's and the 2000's it would have made much more sense. Now the book seems like it was outdated even 2-3 years after its initial release. And if it was strictly a historical work this wouldn't have been a problem of course, but even the name implies actuality or timeliness, whichever word works best.

Glad to have read it, have not enjoyed it.

[goddess · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great collection of articles that center on how war is changing. I didn't necessarily read them all (this book was used for a class) but I read a good majority of them. Interesting insights and analyses.