Abstract
Transformations of Warfare in the Contemporary World is an edited collection with chapters concerning recent changes to warfare. From the outset, the book sets out to discuss changes in contemporary warfare from a sociological perspective. Editors John C. Torpey and David Jacobson state that their book is a contribution to the discussion of the various factors transforming warfare, including technology, changes in strategy, ideologies, and ethical dimensions (p.ix).
The book offers contributions by John Torpey and Saskia Hooiveld, Rob Johnson, Ian Roxborough, Colonel C. Anthony Pfaff, Travis R. Hall, Ariel Colonomos, Roberto J. González, and David Jacobson. The contributions are of uneven quality, which is the usual case for an edited volume. The various authors address themes that have become characteristic of the changing face of war: private military contractors, non-state adversaries, special operations, cyber warfare, targeted killings, hostage-taking, asymmetrical warfare, and the use of drone vehicles. They also discuss some of the future possibilities of change, such as the use of lethal military robots.
Torpey and Hooiveld’s chapter addresses the demise of the citizen-soldier in the contemporary world. This is one of the stronger chapters in the book, although it disappoints in piquing the reader’s interest in the convergence of military and police work but not following through with more discussion. They conclude that the citizen-soldier in the United States has been pushed aside in favor of professional militaries, special forces, and robots.
Johnson discusses the clash between state actors and substate actors, such as clans or tribes. He finds that the media sanitize war by using phrases such as “armed conflict” instead of “war” to make the news more palatable. He also concludes that states with strong clans are susceptible to rejecting an imposed political system “weighted in favor of dominant states” (p.35).
Roxborough contributes a very detailed and informative chapter on state-building and insurgencies. The chapter provides a concise exploration of the subject while drawing on historical cases involving the United States in wars in the Philippines and Vietnam. Roxborough concludes that as a nation, the United States has cycles in which it alternately embraces and abandons the idea of state-building in other countries.
Pfaff analyzes the use of force against counterinsurgencies and argues for a counterinsurgency strategy that seeks to isolate insurgents from populations that might provide support for them. He concludes that nations that fight irregular wars need to reassess the norms of warfare as they are applied to hybrid wars.
Hall’s chapter discusses the use of biometrics on the battlefield and again raises the specter of police work and military work converging. Hall observes that the use of biometric technology is not an expression of technological dominance by the U.S. military, but it is rather a recognition that it cannot tell apart friend from foe in the population.
Colonomos contributes a chapter on asymmetrical warfare in which he makes the iconographic argument that asymmetric warfare is actually more symmetric than might be at first apparent, and that state actors (western countries) and nonstate actors (terrorist groups) both employ precision in carrying out acts of violence. Colonomos concludes that asymmetric warfare creates a moral dilemma for nations to address, such as determining the rights of hostages and whose responsibility it is to free them. Colonomos also states that nations need to address the systematic and glorified use of targeted killing as a panacea against terrorism.
González writes on the use and abuse of ethnography by the United States military, concluding that the social sciences in military settings serve public relations purposes while casting aside the humanistic goals of respect, empathy, and genuine relationships. Jacobson concludes the book by opining that the world is moving away from state-to-state wars and toward post-national wars fought along societal lines. Jacobson’s argument echoes Samuel Huntington’s observations. The book’s stronger chapters are those written by Torpey and Hooiveld, Roxborough, Hall, and González.
The book fills a niche in that it discusses many relevant and timely issues within one volume. Other books on the same subject of transformations to warfare have focused on one or a few issues. Some of the books that address similar topics include Preventive Force: Drones, Targeted Killing, and the Transformation of Contemporary Warfare, edited by Kerstin Fisk and Jennifer M. Ramos; New and Old Wars: Organized Violence in the Global Era by Mary Kaldor; Globalisation, Citizenship and the War on Terror, edited by Maurice Mullard and Bankole Cole; War and Society, by Miguel A. Centeno and Elaine Enriquez; and 4th Generation Warfare Handbook, by William S. Lind and Gregory A. Thiele.
While the book has moments of brilliant insight, it misses the mark in connecting the insights to sociological theory. This general lack of clearly stated sociological frameworks is a weakness in the book. More than once, there were lost opportunities to extend, amplify, or elaborate on existing observations. The book name-checks various sociologists, such as Ruth Benedict, Karl Marx, Norbert Elias, and Michel Foucault. However, after the name-checking, the various authors do not follow up with exploring concepts used in sociological theory in relation to their various subjects. For example, Norbert Elias and the “civilizing process” are mentioned in relation to a “decivilizing process” among terrorist groups and movements. A prolonged discussion of the civilizing process and an assumed decivilizing process does not take place, to the detriment of the reader. Another example is the provocative idea that Islamist movements have become “glocalized,” but the concept’s origins and meanings (first described by Roland Robertson) are not discussed.
In sum, Transformations of Warfare in theContemporary World lacks theoretical grounding. As such, many of the arguments and observations are difficult to evaluate in the context of existing social theory and accumulated knowledge in military sociology. The book makes a modest contribution to the subject despite having had the potential to be more.