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The Transformation of War: The Most Radical Reinterpretation of Armed Conflict Since Clausewitz by Martin Van Creveld
Shipped from UK, please allow 10 to 21 business days for arrival. Good, First UK Edition, 1991 A very good, clean and sound copy in black cloth boards with a very good dust jacket.
Unknown Binding
First published March 31, 1991
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1196 people want to read
About the author
Martin van Creveld
65 books128 followersMartin Levi van Creveld is an Israeli military historian and theorist.
Van Creveld was born in the Netherlands in the city of Rotterdam, and has lived in Israel since shortly after his birth. He holds degrees from the London School of Economics and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where he has been on the faculty since 1971. He is the author of seventeen books on military history and strategy, of which Command in War (1985), Supplying War: Logistics from Wallenstein to Patton (1977, 2nd edition 2004), The Transformation of War (1991), The Sword and the Olive (1998) and The Rise and Decline of the State (1999) are among the best known. Van Creveld has lectured or taught at many strategic institutes in the Western world, including the U.S. Naval War College.
- wikipedia.org
Van Creveld was born in the Netherlands in the city of Rotterdam, and has lived in Israel since shortly after his birth. He holds degrees from the London School of Economics and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where he has been on the faculty since 1971. He is the author of seventeen books on military history and strategy, of which Command in War (1985), Supplying War: Logistics from Wallenstein to Patton (1977, 2nd edition 2004), The Transformation of War (1991), The Sword and the Olive (1998) and The Rise and Decline of the State (1999) are among the best known. Van Creveld has lectured or taught at many strategic institutes in the Western world, including the U.S. Naval War College.
- wikipedia.org
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Displaying 1 - 26 of 26 reviews
April 11, 2014
There is some good analysis of terrorism and how non state actors interact with state actors. Unfortunately his analysis of Clausewitzian warfare is fundamentally flawed.
He seems to think that the Clausewitzian trinity is a state based interaction between the people, the army and the government. If he had read a decent translation of 'On War' he would have found that it is hatred and enmity, mostly associated with the people, chance and probability, mostly associated with the army and sublimation to rational policy/politics mostly associated with the government.
This trinity can also be applied to non state actors just as much as it can to the state based system that has been, for the most part, the main paradigm since the treaty of Westphalia.
Overall a good but flawed analysis of modern conflict.
He seems to think that the Clausewitzian trinity is a state based interaction between the people, the army and the government. If he had read a decent translation of 'On War' he would have found that it is hatred and enmity, mostly associated with the people, chance and probability, mostly associated with the army and sublimation to rational policy/politics mostly associated with the government.
This trinity can also be applied to non state actors just as much as it can to the state based system that has been, for the most part, the main paradigm since the treaty of Westphalia.
Overall a good but flawed analysis of modern conflict.
November 2, 2017
This, along with The Coming Anarchy: Shattering the Dreams of the Post Cold War by Robert Kaplan, was a leading early-1990s analysis of the post-Soviet world, and spot-on in its conclusions. In essence, he predicted future conflicts that would be far more chaotic, low-tech and complicated than what had happened before. The comparisons to Clausewitz are, in part, because the separation of state, army and people as entities in conflicts, one that went back from the 20th Century all the way to the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, was breaking down. This was starting to be manifest in the Balkans even when this book first published, and has been more and more apparent. Book's conclusions and analysis are still timely.
October 23, 2010
A book that moves beyond the Clausewitzian framework. Basically states that war as it is traditionally known will no longer work. In a sense it will no longer occur. Nuclear weapons ended the idea of armies facing off in the field. Now the greatest threat to a nation are non-state entities. Organizations that with few resources can prevent the victory of states. They can't beat states. But they can keep them at a standstill indefinitely.
Traditional militaries are now largely irrelevant.
Much better than his other book The Rise and Fall of the Nation State.
Goes very well with The War Nerd.
Quotes:
"Contemporary "strategic" thought about every one of these problems is fundamentally flawed; and, in addition, is rooted in a "Clausewitzian" world picture that is either obsolete or wrong. We are entering an era, not of peaceful economic competition between trading blocks, but of warfare between ethnic and religious groups. Even as familiar forms of armed conflict are sinking into the dustbin of the past, radically new ones are raising their heads ready to take their place. Already today the military power fielded by the principal developed societies in both "West" and "east" is hardly relevant to the task at hand; in other worlds, it is more illusion than substance. Unless the societies in question are willing to adjust both thought and action to the rapidly changing new realities, they are likely to reach the point where they will no longer be capable of employing organized violence at all. Once this situation comes about, their continued survival as cohesive political entities will also be put in doubt."
"Over the last forty-five years it would be difficult to point out even a single case when a state possessing nuclear arms was able to change the status quo by threatening their use, let alone by using them; in other words, their political effect, if an, has been merely to enforce caution and freeze existing borders. The most important reason behind this state of affairs is, of course, that nobody has yet figured out how to wage a nuclear war without risk of global suicide."
"Thus the effect of nuclear weapons, unforeseen and perhaps unforeseeable, has been to push conventional war into the nooks and crannies of the international system; or, to mix a metaphor, into the faults between the main tectonic plates, each dominated by the superpowers."
"If conventional forces (in the form of the "Pentomic" Army) were to stand the slightest chance of surviving a nuclear war they would have to disperse and hide. If hide and disperse they did, discarding much of their heavy equipment in the process, they would no longer be capable of waging conventional war. Thus the effect of nuclear weapons, tactical ones in particular, was to threaten the continued existence of conventional forces, especially ground forces."
"The purpose of flexible response, namely safeguarding the continued existence of conventional forces, was achieved. The doctrine led to massive investments as successive generations of surface ships, submarines, tanks, armored personnel carriers, artillery tubes, fighter bombers, and attack helicopters were phased out while others, newer and much more expensive, took their place. Each such change gave rise to a flood of studies, but classified and public, struggling to understand the implications of the new weapons and the work out esoteric doctrines for their use."
"The numbers of platforms needed to wage nuclear war--if that is the name for a unilateral massacre against which there is no defense--is smaller by perhaps two orders of magnitude than that required for conventional war."
"It gradually dawned on the Israelis that their tanks, aircraft, artillery, missiles, and remotely piloted vehicles--including the most modern models ever deployed by any army--were of no use against the kind of opposition which, to their cost, they now confronted. For thee years the floundered about in "the Lebanese swamp," trying to maintain themselves amid a bewildering array of different militias who butchered each other even as they hounded the Israel Defense Forces."
"The cold, brutal fact is that much present-day military power is simply irrelevant as an instrument for extending or defending political interests over most of the globe; by this criterion, indeed, it scarcely amounts to "military power" at all."
"In fact, there are solid military reasons why modern regular forces are all but useless for fighting what is fast becoming the dominant form of war in our age. Perhaps the most important reason is the need to look after the technology on which the forces depend; between maintenance and logistics and sheer administration this ensure that the number of troops in the "tails" will be far too large, and the number in the fighting "teeth" far too small. For example, even the most pessimistic intelligence estimates never doubted that, throughout the war, the Americans and the Army of the Republic of Vietnam outnumbered the Vie Cong/North Vietnamese forces confronting them and indeed that they did so by a considerable margin. The catch was that, among the American troops in particular, more than three quarters served in an enormous variety of noncombat jobs from guarding bases to welfare. At the place where it mattered, in the jungle, the number of "maneuver battalions" actually available was about equal on both sides."
"My basic postulate is that, already today, the most powerful modern armed forces are largely irrelevant to modern war--indeed that their relevance stands in inverse proportion to their modernity."
"They killed, burned, and looted with little or no restraint, entire districts into deserts and calling it peace."
"Under such circumstances, to speak of war, in modern Clausewitzian terms as something made by the state for political ends is to misrepresent reality. For a thousand years after the fall of Rome armed conflict was waged by different kinds of social entities. Among them were barbarian tribes, the Church, feudal barons of every rank, free cities, even private individuals. Nor were the "armies" of the period anything like those we know today."
"From Herodotus through Xenophon and all the way to Polybios, it is always "the Athenians" or "the Lacedaemonians" who declare war, fight, and conclude treaties, never "Athens" or "Sparta" as such."
"The fact that these people were warlike did not mean that they were familiar with the state or that they fought on its behalf. On the contrary, tribal warriors often found it hard to understand why anybody should fight for anybody by himself, his family, his friends, or allies."
"The term for "warrior" simply means "young man.""
"One reason why the bow was disliked was precisely because it was cheap, hence accessible to anyone and hardly worth bothering with as a status symbol."
"The tighter the kind of coordination on which efficiency depends, the more flawlessly each part meshes with another, the greater the danger that the failure of any one will lead to the failure of all the rest. As anybody who has ever been caught in a traffic jam knows, the delays created by a single broken-down car are not limited to its immediate vicinity but reverberate throughout the system. They also tend to be self-reinforcing, since the need to maintain safety-margins means that each successive delay has to be a little greater than the on that preceded it."
"Though nothing is more important in war than unity of command, it is impossible for one man to know everything. The larger and the more complex the forces that he commands, the more true this becomes."
"Where there is no state, as was the case during most of human history, politics will be so mixed in with other factors as to leave room neither for the term nor for the reality behind it."
"Fighting as they did for national existence, the amount of punishment that the Algerians could take was almost unlimited."
"He who fights for existence has another advantage on his side. Necessity knowing no rules, he feels entitled to violate the war convention and use unlimited force, something that the other side, fighting in the name of policy, cannot do without suffering the consequences."
"Those who stare death in the face have entered a realm where they are beyond human ability to influence them, and where they are no longer subject to anything but their own free will."
"Thus, conventional strategic thought has put the cart in front of the horse. Danger is much more than simply the medium in which war takes place; from the point of view of participants and spectators alike, it is among the principal attractions, one would almost say its raison d'etre. Had war not involved braving danger, coping with it, and overcoming it, then not only would there have been no point in fighting but the activity itself would have become impossible. Coping with the danger calls forth qualities such as boldness, pride, loyalty, and determination. It is thus able to cause people to transcend themselves, become more than they are. Conversely, it is only in the face of danger that determination, loyalty, pride, and boldness make sense and manifest themselves. In short, danger is what makes war go round. As in any sport, the greater the danger the greater both the challenger of braving it and the honor associated with doing so."
"War's unique nature consists precisely in this: it has always been, and still remains, the only creative activity that both permits and demands the unrestricted commitment of all man's faculties against an opponent who is as strong as oneself."
"Necessity knows no bounds; hence he who is weak can afford to go to the greatest lengths, resort to the most underhand means, and commit every kind of atrocity without compromising his political support and, more important still, his own moral principles. Conversely, almost anything that the strong does or does not do is, in one sense, necessary and, therefore, cruel."
"During most of history, the opportunity to engage in wholesale rape was not just among the rewards of successful war but, from the soldier's point of view, of the cardinal objectives for which he fought."
"Things are considered important because, and to the extent that, they are the province of men."
"As the second millennium A.D. is coming to an end, the state's attempt to monopolize violence in its own hands is faltering. Brought face to face with the threat of terrorism, the largest and mightiest empires that the world has ever known have suddenly begin falling into each other's arms. Should the present trends continue, the the kind of war that is based on the devision between government, army, and people seems to be on its way out. The rise of low-intensity conflict may, unless it can be quickly contained, end up destroying the state. Over the long run, the place of the state will be taken by warmaking organizations of a different type."
"In the future, war will not be waged by armies but by groups whom we today call terrorists, guerrillas, bandits, and robbers, but who will undoubtedly hit on more formal titles to describe themselves. Their organizations are likely to be constructed on charismatic lines rather than institutional ones, and to be motivated less by "professionalism" than by fanatical, ideologically-based loyalties. While clearly subject to some kind of leadership will be hardly distinguishable from the organization as a whole; hence it will bear greater similarity to "The Old Man of the Mountains" than to institutionalize government as the modern world has come to understand that term. While rooted in a "population base" of some sort, that population probably will not be clearly separable either from its immediate neighbors or from these, always the minority, by whom most of the active fighting is done."
"Its frontiers--itself a modern term--will not be marked by a clear line on a map. Instead there will be the occasional roadblock cropping up at unexpected places, manned by ruffians out to line their own pockets as well as those of their bosses."
"The most important single demand that any political community must meet is the demand for protection. A community which cannot safeguard the lives of its members, subjects, citizens, comrades, brothers, or whatever they are called is unlikely either to command their loyalty or to survive for very long."
"Over the last three centuries or so attempts to assassinate or otherwise incapacitate leaders were not regarded as part of the game of war. In the future there will be a tendency to regard such leaders as criminals who richly deserve the worst fate becoming intermingled in the new forms of organization, neither the leaders' families nor their private property can expect to enjoy immunity. Instead they will be subject to attack, or the threat of attack, as a means of bringing pressure to bear. Hence, many leaders will probably decide to remain unattached and lead a semi-nomadic, semi-underground life, as Yasser Arafat already does."
"Much of the day-to-day burden of defending society against the threat of low-intensity conflict will be transfered to the booming security business; and indeed the time may come when the organizations that comprise that business will, like the condottieri of old, take over the state."
"Most modern crew-operated weapons--including specifically the most powerful and sophisticated among them--are dinosaurs. Like them, they are doomed to disappear, and, the process is already well underway."
"The research and development process is in large part an empty game whose main purpose is to provide employment and serve as a welfare system for engineers."
"Toys, particularly those that look powerful and dangerous, may have their attractions for generals in and out of uniform. However, from the point of view of society at large it simply makes no sense to produce weapons that are too expensive, too fast, too indiscriminate, too big, too unmaneuverable and too powerful to use in real-life war."
"Much of the modern heavy weapons industry is, militarily speaking, a house of cards. It supports itself through exporting its own uselessness."
"This does not mean that new technology has no role to play in the military future. What it does mean is a move away from today's large, expensive, powerful machines toward small, cheap gadgets capable of being manufactured in large numbers and used almost everywhere, much as, in the past, firearms replaced the knight and his cumbersome armor."
"The problem of subversion is likely to be serious. In the recent past, military establishments, so long as the fought each other, were able to take national loyalties more or less for granted. However, this will be decreasingly the case."
"Judging by the experience of the last two decades, the visions of log-range, computerized, high-tech warfare so dear to the military-industrial complex will never come to pass. Armed conflict will be waged by men on earth, not robots in space. It will have more in common with the struggles of primitive tribes than with large scale conventional war of the kind that the world may have seen for the las time in 1973 (the Arab-=Israeli War), 1982 (the Falklands), and 1980-88 (the Iran-Iraq War). In so far as the belligerents will be intermingled with each other and the civilian population, the normal concepts of Clausewitzian strategy will not apply. Weapons will become less, rather than more, sophisticated. War will not be waged at one remove by neatly uniformed men in air conditioned rooms sitting behind screens, manipulating symbols, and pushing buttons: indeed the "troops" may well have more in common with policemen (or with pirates) than with defense analysts. War will not take place in the open field, if only because in many places around the world there no longer is an open field. Its normal mise en scene will be complex environments, either those provided by nature or else the even more complex ones created by man. It will be a war of listening devices and of car-bombs, of men killing each other at close quarters, and of women using their purses to carry explosives and the drugs to pay for them. It will be protracted, bloody and horrible."
"The fastest growing religion in the world is Islam. While there are many reasons for this, perhaps it would not be so far fetched to say that its very militancy is one factor behind its spread. By this I do not mean to say merely that Islam strives to achieve its aims by fighting; rather, that people in may parts of the world--including downtrodden groups in the developed world--are finding Islam attractive precisely because it is prepared to fight."
"However unpalatable the fact, the real reason why we have wars is that men like fighting, and women like those men who are prepared to fight on their behalf."
"Over the last few decades, regular armed forces--including some of the largest and the best--have repeatedly failed in numerous low-intensity conflicts where they seemed to hold all the cards. This should have caused politicians, the military, and their academic advisers to take a profound new look at the nature of war in our time; however, by and large no such attempt at reevaluation was made. Held captive by the accepted strategic framework, time and time again the losers explained away their defeat by citing mitigating factors. Often they invoked an alleged stab in the back , blaming the politicians who refused them a free hand or else the home public which did not give them the support to which they felt entitled. In other cases they thrust their head in the sand and argued that they were defeated in a political war, psychological war, propaganda war, guerrilla war, terrorist war, in short anything but war properly speaking."
Traditional militaries are now largely irrelevant.
Much better than his other book The Rise and Fall of the Nation State.
Goes very well with The War Nerd.
Quotes:
"Contemporary "strategic" thought about every one of these problems is fundamentally flawed; and, in addition, is rooted in a "Clausewitzian" world picture that is either obsolete or wrong. We are entering an era, not of peaceful economic competition between trading blocks, but of warfare between ethnic and religious groups. Even as familiar forms of armed conflict are sinking into the dustbin of the past, radically new ones are raising their heads ready to take their place. Already today the military power fielded by the principal developed societies in both "West" and "east" is hardly relevant to the task at hand; in other worlds, it is more illusion than substance. Unless the societies in question are willing to adjust both thought and action to the rapidly changing new realities, they are likely to reach the point where they will no longer be capable of employing organized violence at all. Once this situation comes about, their continued survival as cohesive political entities will also be put in doubt."
"Over the last forty-five years it would be difficult to point out even a single case when a state possessing nuclear arms was able to change the status quo by threatening their use, let alone by using them; in other words, their political effect, if an, has been merely to enforce caution and freeze existing borders. The most important reason behind this state of affairs is, of course, that nobody has yet figured out how to wage a nuclear war without risk of global suicide."
"Thus the effect of nuclear weapons, unforeseen and perhaps unforeseeable, has been to push conventional war into the nooks and crannies of the international system; or, to mix a metaphor, into the faults between the main tectonic plates, each dominated by the superpowers."
"If conventional forces (in the form of the "Pentomic" Army) were to stand the slightest chance of surviving a nuclear war they would have to disperse and hide. If hide and disperse they did, discarding much of their heavy equipment in the process, they would no longer be capable of waging conventional war. Thus the effect of nuclear weapons, tactical ones in particular, was to threaten the continued existence of conventional forces, especially ground forces."
"The purpose of flexible response, namely safeguarding the continued existence of conventional forces, was achieved. The doctrine led to massive investments as successive generations of surface ships, submarines, tanks, armored personnel carriers, artillery tubes, fighter bombers, and attack helicopters were phased out while others, newer and much more expensive, took their place. Each such change gave rise to a flood of studies, but classified and public, struggling to understand the implications of the new weapons and the work out esoteric doctrines for their use."
"The numbers of platforms needed to wage nuclear war--if that is the name for a unilateral massacre against which there is no defense--is smaller by perhaps two orders of magnitude than that required for conventional war."
"It gradually dawned on the Israelis that their tanks, aircraft, artillery, missiles, and remotely piloted vehicles--including the most modern models ever deployed by any army--were of no use against the kind of opposition which, to their cost, they now confronted. For thee years the floundered about in "the Lebanese swamp," trying to maintain themselves amid a bewildering array of different militias who butchered each other even as they hounded the Israel Defense Forces."
"The cold, brutal fact is that much present-day military power is simply irrelevant as an instrument for extending or defending political interests over most of the globe; by this criterion, indeed, it scarcely amounts to "military power" at all."
"In fact, there are solid military reasons why modern regular forces are all but useless for fighting what is fast becoming the dominant form of war in our age. Perhaps the most important reason is the need to look after the technology on which the forces depend; between maintenance and logistics and sheer administration this ensure that the number of troops in the "tails" will be far too large, and the number in the fighting "teeth" far too small. For example, even the most pessimistic intelligence estimates never doubted that, throughout the war, the Americans and the Army of the Republic of Vietnam outnumbered the Vie Cong/North Vietnamese forces confronting them and indeed that they did so by a considerable margin. The catch was that, among the American troops in particular, more than three quarters served in an enormous variety of noncombat jobs from guarding bases to welfare. At the place where it mattered, in the jungle, the number of "maneuver battalions" actually available was about equal on both sides."
"My basic postulate is that, already today, the most powerful modern armed forces are largely irrelevant to modern war--indeed that their relevance stands in inverse proportion to their modernity."
"They killed, burned, and looted with little or no restraint, entire districts into deserts and calling it peace."
"Under such circumstances, to speak of war, in modern Clausewitzian terms as something made by the state for political ends is to misrepresent reality. For a thousand years after the fall of Rome armed conflict was waged by different kinds of social entities. Among them were barbarian tribes, the Church, feudal barons of every rank, free cities, even private individuals. Nor were the "armies" of the period anything like those we know today."
"From Herodotus through Xenophon and all the way to Polybios, it is always "the Athenians" or "the Lacedaemonians" who declare war, fight, and conclude treaties, never "Athens" or "Sparta" as such."
"The fact that these people were warlike did not mean that they were familiar with the state or that they fought on its behalf. On the contrary, tribal warriors often found it hard to understand why anybody should fight for anybody by himself, his family, his friends, or allies."
"The term for "warrior" simply means "young man.""
"One reason why the bow was disliked was precisely because it was cheap, hence accessible to anyone and hardly worth bothering with as a status symbol."
"The tighter the kind of coordination on which efficiency depends, the more flawlessly each part meshes with another, the greater the danger that the failure of any one will lead to the failure of all the rest. As anybody who has ever been caught in a traffic jam knows, the delays created by a single broken-down car are not limited to its immediate vicinity but reverberate throughout the system. They also tend to be self-reinforcing, since the need to maintain safety-margins means that each successive delay has to be a little greater than the on that preceded it."
"Though nothing is more important in war than unity of command, it is impossible for one man to know everything. The larger and the more complex the forces that he commands, the more true this becomes."
"Where there is no state, as was the case during most of human history, politics will be so mixed in with other factors as to leave room neither for the term nor for the reality behind it."
"Fighting as they did for national existence, the amount of punishment that the Algerians could take was almost unlimited."
"He who fights for existence has another advantage on his side. Necessity knowing no rules, he feels entitled to violate the war convention and use unlimited force, something that the other side, fighting in the name of policy, cannot do without suffering the consequences."
"Those who stare death in the face have entered a realm where they are beyond human ability to influence them, and where they are no longer subject to anything but their own free will."
"Thus, conventional strategic thought has put the cart in front of the horse. Danger is much more than simply the medium in which war takes place; from the point of view of participants and spectators alike, it is among the principal attractions, one would almost say its raison d'etre. Had war not involved braving danger, coping with it, and overcoming it, then not only would there have been no point in fighting but the activity itself would have become impossible. Coping with the danger calls forth qualities such as boldness, pride, loyalty, and determination. It is thus able to cause people to transcend themselves, become more than they are. Conversely, it is only in the face of danger that determination, loyalty, pride, and boldness make sense and manifest themselves. In short, danger is what makes war go round. As in any sport, the greater the danger the greater both the challenger of braving it and the honor associated with doing so."
"War's unique nature consists precisely in this: it has always been, and still remains, the only creative activity that both permits and demands the unrestricted commitment of all man's faculties against an opponent who is as strong as oneself."
"Necessity knows no bounds; hence he who is weak can afford to go to the greatest lengths, resort to the most underhand means, and commit every kind of atrocity without compromising his political support and, more important still, his own moral principles. Conversely, almost anything that the strong does or does not do is, in one sense, necessary and, therefore, cruel."
"During most of history, the opportunity to engage in wholesale rape was not just among the rewards of successful war but, from the soldier's point of view, of the cardinal objectives for which he fought."
"Things are considered important because, and to the extent that, they are the province of men."
"As the second millennium A.D. is coming to an end, the state's attempt to monopolize violence in its own hands is faltering. Brought face to face with the threat of terrorism, the largest and mightiest empires that the world has ever known have suddenly begin falling into each other's arms. Should the present trends continue, the the kind of war that is based on the devision between government, army, and people seems to be on its way out. The rise of low-intensity conflict may, unless it can be quickly contained, end up destroying the state. Over the long run, the place of the state will be taken by warmaking organizations of a different type."
"In the future, war will not be waged by armies but by groups whom we today call terrorists, guerrillas, bandits, and robbers, but who will undoubtedly hit on more formal titles to describe themselves. Their organizations are likely to be constructed on charismatic lines rather than institutional ones, and to be motivated less by "professionalism" than by fanatical, ideologically-based loyalties. While clearly subject to some kind of leadership will be hardly distinguishable from the organization as a whole; hence it will bear greater similarity to "The Old Man of the Mountains" than to institutionalize government as the modern world has come to understand that term. While rooted in a "population base" of some sort, that population probably will not be clearly separable either from its immediate neighbors or from these, always the minority, by whom most of the active fighting is done."
"Its frontiers--itself a modern term--will not be marked by a clear line on a map. Instead there will be the occasional roadblock cropping up at unexpected places, manned by ruffians out to line their own pockets as well as those of their bosses."
"The most important single demand that any political community must meet is the demand for protection. A community which cannot safeguard the lives of its members, subjects, citizens, comrades, brothers, or whatever they are called is unlikely either to command their loyalty or to survive for very long."
"Over the last three centuries or so attempts to assassinate or otherwise incapacitate leaders were not regarded as part of the game of war. In the future there will be a tendency to regard such leaders as criminals who richly deserve the worst fate becoming intermingled in the new forms of organization, neither the leaders' families nor their private property can expect to enjoy immunity. Instead they will be subject to attack, or the threat of attack, as a means of bringing pressure to bear. Hence, many leaders will probably decide to remain unattached and lead a semi-nomadic, semi-underground life, as Yasser Arafat already does."
"Much of the day-to-day burden of defending society against the threat of low-intensity conflict will be transfered to the booming security business; and indeed the time may come when the organizations that comprise that business will, like the condottieri of old, take over the state."
"Most modern crew-operated weapons--including specifically the most powerful and sophisticated among them--are dinosaurs. Like them, they are doomed to disappear, and, the process is already well underway."
"The research and development process is in large part an empty game whose main purpose is to provide employment and serve as a welfare system for engineers."
"Toys, particularly those that look powerful and dangerous, may have their attractions for generals in and out of uniform. However, from the point of view of society at large it simply makes no sense to produce weapons that are too expensive, too fast, too indiscriminate, too big, too unmaneuverable and too powerful to use in real-life war."
"Much of the modern heavy weapons industry is, militarily speaking, a house of cards. It supports itself through exporting its own uselessness."
"This does not mean that new technology has no role to play in the military future. What it does mean is a move away from today's large, expensive, powerful machines toward small, cheap gadgets capable of being manufactured in large numbers and used almost everywhere, much as, in the past, firearms replaced the knight and his cumbersome armor."
"The problem of subversion is likely to be serious. In the recent past, military establishments, so long as the fought each other, were able to take national loyalties more or less for granted. However, this will be decreasingly the case."
"Judging by the experience of the last two decades, the visions of log-range, computerized, high-tech warfare so dear to the military-industrial complex will never come to pass. Armed conflict will be waged by men on earth, not robots in space. It will have more in common with the struggles of primitive tribes than with large scale conventional war of the kind that the world may have seen for the las time in 1973 (the Arab-=Israeli War), 1982 (the Falklands), and 1980-88 (the Iran-Iraq War). In so far as the belligerents will be intermingled with each other and the civilian population, the normal concepts of Clausewitzian strategy will not apply. Weapons will become less, rather than more, sophisticated. War will not be waged at one remove by neatly uniformed men in air conditioned rooms sitting behind screens, manipulating symbols, and pushing buttons: indeed the "troops" may well have more in common with policemen (or with pirates) than with defense analysts. War will not take place in the open field, if only because in many places around the world there no longer is an open field. Its normal mise en scene will be complex environments, either those provided by nature or else the even more complex ones created by man. It will be a war of listening devices and of car-bombs, of men killing each other at close quarters, and of women using their purses to carry explosives and the drugs to pay for them. It will be protracted, bloody and horrible."
"The fastest growing religion in the world is Islam. While there are many reasons for this, perhaps it would not be so far fetched to say that its very militancy is one factor behind its spread. By this I do not mean to say merely that Islam strives to achieve its aims by fighting; rather, that people in may parts of the world--including downtrodden groups in the developed world--are finding Islam attractive precisely because it is prepared to fight."
"However unpalatable the fact, the real reason why we have wars is that men like fighting, and women like those men who are prepared to fight on their behalf."
"Over the last few decades, regular armed forces--including some of the largest and the best--have repeatedly failed in numerous low-intensity conflicts where they seemed to hold all the cards. This should have caused politicians, the military, and their academic advisers to take a profound new look at the nature of war in our time; however, by and large no such attempt at reevaluation was made. Held captive by the accepted strategic framework, time and time again the losers explained away their defeat by citing mitigating factors. Often they invoked an alleged stab in the back , blaming the politicians who refused them a free hand or else the home public which did not give them the support to which they felt entitled. In other cases they thrust their head in the sand and argued that they were defeated in a political war, psychological war, propaganda war, guerrilla war, terrorist war, in short anything but war properly speaking."
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
February 11, 2023
Någonstans mellan historia, sociologi och sociologisk spekulation. Creveld har beskrivits för mig som en av Israels viktigare militärhistoriker, och oaktat hur stor den klubben eventuellt är, är det ett högt betyg. Det är alltså värt att förutsätta att han har en poäng, till dess motsatsen är bevisad.
Som jag förstår hans tes, är den att krig ett slags ritualiserat socialt fenomen varigenom män kan utplåna sig själva och varandra, där segrarna får tillgång till fler kvinnor och högre status. Därigenom är det en följd av mänsklig biologi, och då främst ur det psykosociala trycket bland män att rättfärdiga sin existens, både genom bekräftelse av tillhörighet och äreberättigande, och genom att omfördela de resurser som man annars inte kom åt. Han skiljer på krig som denna typ av ritual, och krig som utplåning genom bakhåll, och ger en typologi på hur olika krigsorsaker resulterar i olika typer av beteenden. Han konstaterar också att separationen mellan statligt och privat krig, och den ur det följande distinktionen mellan civilister och militärer är ett ungt fenomen, och en följd ur upplysningens försök att avmänskliggöra mänskligheten genom bildning och därmed genom omdöme.
En del saker blir klarare genom att läsa denna bok, och den är tillräckligt välskriven för att vara läsvärd bara som nöje. Däremot har jag svårt att säga att den är mer läsvärd jämfört med andra i sitt slag, och kan därmed inte rekommendera den bortom att den är just relativt gott men inte exceptionellt hantverk.
Som jag förstår hans tes, är den att krig ett slags ritualiserat socialt fenomen varigenom män kan utplåna sig själva och varandra, där segrarna får tillgång till fler kvinnor och högre status. Därigenom är det en följd av mänsklig biologi, och då främst ur det psykosociala trycket bland män att rättfärdiga sin existens, både genom bekräftelse av tillhörighet och äreberättigande, och genom att omfördela de resurser som man annars inte kom åt. Han skiljer på krig som denna typ av ritual, och krig som utplåning genom bakhåll, och ger en typologi på hur olika krigsorsaker resulterar i olika typer av beteenden. Han konstaterar också att separationen mellan statligt och privat krig, och den ur det följande distinktionen mellan civilister och militärer är ett ungt fenomen, och en följd ur upplysningens försök att avmänskliggöra mänskligheten genom bildning och därmed genom omdöme.
En del saker blir klarare genom att läsa denna bok, och den är tillräckligt välskriven för att vara läsvärd bara som nöje. Däremot har jag svårt att säga att den är mer läsvärd jämfört med andra i sitt slag, och kan därmed inte rekommendera den bortom att den är just relativt gott men inte exceptionellt hantverk.
December 5, 2013
For a critique of Clausewitz 'On War' one would imagine that this book be somewhat turgid and unwieldy. Alas it is not. It is infact very very readable. Very concise. And very forcefully argued. I would imagine that this is the book that Rupert Smith wanted to emulate when he wrote 'Utility of Force'. And whereas Smiths book is quite profound and forceful in its arguement it is a little on the grand sweeping side, and it is also written in the grandiloquent fashion found in 'On War'. Van Creveld in a matter of 230 pages gives both depth and scope which far outweigh that expected of a book of this size. Interestingly he is able to use lessons from modernity and antiquity in a manner that is fluid and effective. This is very useful for those undertaking military history courses to see that fallacy of such view points as that of the 'fouth generation of warfare' which seems to hold some currency.
In taking aim at the grand master of strategic thought, it is arguable that Van Creveld is attempting to have modern theorists and students of the discipline remove the so called 'strategic straightjacket' this being the way states operate in modern war in a manner that is counter intuitive to what combat actually is. Further more the over reliance on Clausewitzian thought itself can be seen as a straight jacket when one considers the state centric view of 'On War' Van Creveld takes aim at this and in a straight forward (and somewhat prophetic) manner highlights the threat posed by non state actors of the islamic world.
As far as books go this has been possibly the best work on strategic thought I have read in a long time and ranks up there with Micheal Howards 'War in European History' as one of the most surprising short books I have ever read.
In taking aim at the grand master of strategic thought, it is arguable that Van Creveld is attempting to have modern theorists and students of the discipline remove the so called 'strategic straightjacket' this being the way states operate in modern war in a manner that is counter intuitive to what combat actually is. Further more the over reliance on Clausewitzian thought itself can be seen as a straight jacket when one considers the state centric view of 'On War' Van Creveld takes aim at this and in a straight forward (and somewhat prophetic) manner highlights the threat posed by non state actors of the islamic world.
As far as books go this has been possibly the best work on strategic thought I have read in a long time and ranks up there with Micheal Howards 'War in European History' as one of the most surprising short books I have ever read.
August 9, 2011
The book is subtitled "The Most Radical Reinterpretation of Armed Conflict Since Clausewitz". I have no idea if this is a true statement or not. I have not read Clausewitz, and I haven't read much on the philosophy of war.
This book is primarily a critique of Clausewitz. Van Creveld does a very thorough job of telling us how Clausewitz was correct, but only for 300 years - between the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648 and the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima in 1945. He makes his case by telling us about war throughout mankind's history without giving us the history of any of these wars. There are no descriptions of specific battles, campaigns, or wars; no strategies or tactics; no analysis of weapons systems.
It is a philosophical work - who fights wars, how wars are fought. Why wars are fought and what wars are fought for (not the same things!). He begins at the end, so to speak - telling us how and why the atomic bomb has fundamentally ended conventional war. He makes the case that conflict since 1945 isn't conventional war, but "low intensity conflict". He explains the difficulties of the strong fighting the weak in these LIC's (the US in Vietnam, the USSR in Afghanistan).
I even enjoyed reading the bibliography. For about half the entries he provides a one line summary. He describes Clausewitz's "On War" as "the second best work on war ever written." (Sun Tzu's he rates number one.) I was surprised to find an entry for Martin Middlebrook, one of my favorite WWII authors: He says of Middlebrook's Falkland Islands book "having finished the book, you still wonder why the British had to fight." I didn't even know Middlebrook wrote a Falkland Islands book.
This book is primarily a critique of Clausewitz. Van Creveld does a very thorough job of telling us how Clausewitz was correct, but only for 300 years - between the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648 and the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima in 1945. He makes his case by telling us about war throughout mankind's history without giving us the history of any of these wars. There are no descriptions of specific battles, campaigns, or wars; no strategies or tactics; no analysis of weapons systems.
It is a philosophical work - who fights wars, how wars are fought. Why wars are fought and what wars are fought for (not the same things!). He begins at the end, so to speak - telling us how and why the atomic bomb has fundamentally ended conventional war. He makes the case that conflict since 1945 isn't conventional war, but "low intensity conflict". He explains the difficulties of the strong fighting the weak in these LIC's (the US in Vietnam, the USSR in Afghanistan).
I even enjoyed reading the bibliography. For about half the entries he provides a one line summary. He describes Clausewitz's "On War" as "the second best work on war ever written." (Sun Tzu's he rates number one.) I was surprised to find an entry for Martin Middlebrook, one of my favorite WWII authors: He says of Middlebrook's Falkland Islands book "having finished the book, you still wonder why the British had to fight." I didn't even know Middlebrook wrote a Falkland Islands book.
December 1, 2015
Not terrible, but not what I was hoping for either. Having just finished van Creveld's Rise and Decline of the State, I was expected a similarly-researched historical work detailing low-intensity conflicts since 1945 in support of construction of some challenging theses. Unfortunately, The Transformation of War is primarily a philosophical work which draws on some historical data to support its conclusions rather than a strongly-supported historical work. TToW's primary argument is that the Western rationalist tradition of strategy (as embodied for van Creveld by Clauswitz) is deficient, particularly in this era of the decline of the state. As others have pointed out, however, his reading of Clauswitz is not particularly accurate. While TToW does have some worthwhile insights, it's also frustratingly unpolished. Structurally speaking, the introduction and conclusion were strong and direct, but the remaining chapters lacked rigor, often meandered, and didn't really support each other; it reads almost more like a collection of essays that a book. The editing was also subpar, and the chapter and subchapter headings were quite opaque.
It was interesting, I don't regret having read it, and I think its positive predictions are mostly sound (and in progress), but I also think it could've reached those same positive predictions without laboring to destroy a straw Clauswitz and would've been better had it done so.
It was interesting, I don't regret having read it, and I think its positive predictions are mostly sound (and in progress), but I also think it could've reached those same positive predictions without laboring to destroy a straw Clauswitz and would've been better had it done so.
October 25, 2023
Although some of Martin van Creveld's predictions about the Transformation of War did not come to fruition, I still found this book to be an insightful analysis on the evolution of warfare (particularly how international law pertains to it) & relevant in an era where state-on-state conflict seems increasingly likely.
Taking Clausewitz head on, van Creveld attacks the notion that "trinitarian" war (government or state, army, and people) will remain dominant into the 21st century. Instead, questioning the foundation of why & how wars are fought, van Creveld argues that the next chapter of warfare will feature terrorism, non-state actors, & individuals at the center of power, rather than traditional institutions that historically maintained a monopoly on violence.
While his prediction held true through the turn of the century & 20+ years of U.S. military operations in the Middle East, history did not play out with the complete erosion of states & other traditional institutions as he hypothesized.
Regardless, van Creveld's explanation about the evolution of warfighting & the development of international law is still relevant today, penetrating the fog of a dangerous & uncertain world.
Taking Clausewitz head on, van Creveld attacks the notion that "trinitarian" war (government or state, army, and people) will remain dominant into the 21st century. Instead, questioning the foundation of why & how wars are fought, van Creveld argues that the next chapter of warfare will feature terrorism, non-state actors, & individuals at the center of power, rather than traditional institutions that historically maintained a monopoly on violence.
While his prediction held true through the turn of the century & 20+ years of U.S. military operations in the Middle East, history did not play out with the complete erosion of states & other traditional institutions as he hypothesized.
Regardless, van Creveld's explanation about the evolution of warfighting & the development of international law is still relevant today, penetrating the fog of a dangerous & uncertain world.
November 8, 2019
I would suggest readers read A History of Strategy from Sun Tzu to William S. Lind after reading this book.
This book is excellent and lucid but not very systematic. The latter book is on strategy is well-organized and loosely based on the Transformation of War.
This book is excellent and lucid but not very systematic. The latter book is on strategy is well-organized and loosely based on the Transformation of War.
February 26, 2019
Datato ma ancora fondamentale.
Ottimo lo svolgimento sulle armi nucleari.
Ottimo lo svolgimento sulle armi nucleari.
Currently reading
February 20, 2020Great study material indeed.
October 22, 2023
Creveld's attempt to discuss the future of warfare by looking into the past. A very interesting read. Was written in 1991 and some of his predictions have come to pass.
March 2, 2017
van Creveld is assigned reading everywhere from West Point to the Army War College, so a bit academic, but required reading for anyone with an interest in military affairs.
van Creveld's bold prediction in the early 1990s - "We are entering an era, not of peaceful economic competition between trading blocks, but of warfare between ethnic and religious groups."
claims Clausewitz no longer applies because he only envisioned state vs. state battles, and now we will see unconventional warfare
van Creveld's bold prediction in the early 1990s - "We are entering an era, not of peaceful economic competition between trading blocks, but of warfare between ethnic and religious groups."
claims Clausewitz no longer applies because he only envisioned state vs. state battles, and now we will see unconventional warfare
December 17, 2016
This book was part of the mandatory books for a course on geopolitics and war history, so I spent a lot of time analysing it.
I really liked it as it is pretty easy to read and it comes back to the same ideas over and over again. The author brings a lot of historical examples to the table and he's also quite sarcastic which is always refreshing.
Overall lovely book.
I really liked it as it is pretty easy to read and it comes back to the same ideas over and over again. The author brings a lot of historical examples to the table and he's also quite sarcastic which is always refreshing.
Overall lovely book.
January 28, 2017
A very concise summary of military structures from the 19th century through the 20th. The author clearly defines how conflict has radically changed, with nuclear weapons making large scale warfare between states impossible. The massive military power of the west has led to a scenario where low intensity conflict, almost unrecognizable from crime, is the norm. The author details how modern military establishments are completely unprepared and improperly structured and organized to fight these battles.
December 29, 2007
Uncomfortably prescient for a publication 17 years old. While I don't necessarily agree with standing armies as monolithic, the case for the evolution of splintered organisations using harassing strategies involving the min/max of pain--be it physical, emotional, mental and any combination therein--is straight out of Sun-Tzu.
So too are the counter-measures--something Van Creveld unforgivably doesn't explore.
So too are the counter-measures--something Van Creveld unforgivably doesn't explore.
April 5, 2015
The book written at the beginning of the nineties is impressive, due to the fact that it describes some of the evolutions of warfare in the last 25 years. However the book lacks some larger historical backing and has a bit of philosophical feel to it introduction rather good. Even though van creveld brings up some interesting points on Clausewitz, his continuing pounding is annoying. I still am convinced that it is a must read to understand the paradigma change at the end of the Cold War
January 13, 2010
Classic book. Must read for those wishing to understand our present and future. It is not just about war, but also about politics and human nature. It also shows how the current state system will be obsolete.
July 24, 2013
The author postulates that the changes in the way war is now conducted make Carl von Clausewitz's theories on war obsolete. He explains, with dry wit, how and why this occurred, and offers an alternative. Stimulating and entertaining.
August 10, 2015
Una obra maestra, una lectura obligatoria. Un texto que predijo a cabalidad los hechos y la forma de ejercer la violencia política desde la descolonización hasta ahora. ¿Quieres entender los conflictos modernos y sus razones? Lee este libro. No hay desperdicio.
September 29, 2007
how our adherence to outdated notions of warfare cripples us in the coming century. and why nuclear weapons are more a liability than an asset.
February 22, 2012
Remarkably prescient [more to come].
January 5, 2012
Contains many insightful observations, but at times lacks analytical rigor. Still, the final chapter (on "Future War," written in 1991) is worth the price of the book.
January 15, 2016
Very thorough, and it managed to portrait how war is mutating even 20 years after its first publishing
December 30, 2015
If you only read ONE book about war this is THE book!
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