Carnage & Connectivity: Landmarks in the Decline of Conventional Military Power

by David Betz

The burgeoning of global connectivity in recent decades is without historical parallel and the 'wiring up' of the world continues apace, even in the poorest regions. Flux and ever-quickening change are the leitmotifs of the 'information age' across a swathe of human enterprise from industry and commerce through to politics and social relations. This is no less the case for the patterns of war, where change has been disorientating for soldiers and statesmen whose confidence in the old, the traditional, and the known has been shaken.
David Betz's book explains the huge and disruptive implications of connectivity for the practice of warfare. The tactical ingenuity of opponents to confound or drop below the threshold of sophisticated weapons systems means war remains the realm of chance and probability. Increasingly, though, the conflicts of our time are less contests of arms than wars of hearts and minds conducted on a mass scale through multimedia communications networks. The most pernicious challengers to the status quo are not states but ever more powerful non-state actors.

Genres: War, History

264 pages, Hardcover

First published September 15, 2015

Reviews

[Alejo · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 This book is a great compendium and synthetization of all the trends in strategic studies, and true to its post-modern influences, manages to make everything synch together while explaining the challenges of strategy in our current interconnected world. Nonetheless, I found it lacking in how to exploit this interconnectedness for strategic purposes, but I guess this is the challenge this books posits.

[Eric Randolph · Rating 3 out of 5]

Breaking tradition for this genre, Betz can actually write, and does so engagingly and with some wit about the complexities of modern conflict and the simple-minded response of our leaders, though his refusal to play along with straight-forward narratives also means the book lacks a central organising idea to drive it along.