A fascinating treatise on modern warfare, The Utility of Force should be read not merely in every military staff college but in the halls of Westminster, Brussels and Washington. Conflict now permeates international relations: the last twenty years have seen military interventions by Western powers in the former Yugoslavia, Somalia, Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as the intifada in Palestine and a spilling-over of that conflict into Lebanon.
General Smith argues that our failure to resolve these situations owes much to our shortsightedness about the very nature of warfare: that the paradigm of industrial warfare is dead, and that we live in an era of “war amongst the people”. Force must now be employed not as a solution in itself but as one component of a holistic approach including elements appropriate to the specific circumstances at hand, whether they be humanitarian, administrative or diplomatic.
Reviewing the history of warfare from Napoleon onwards, the book demonstrates the links between the emerging paradigm of industrial war and the formation of the modern nation-state. One classic example is the alliance of nationalistic politics and military service which empowered Prussia during the German wars of unification. By handing the people a stake in their own future, the state was able to swell the ranks of its military with conscript soldiers without inciting revolution.
A fascinating treatise on modern warfare, The Utility of Force should be read not merely in every military staff college but in the halls of Westminster, Brussels and Washington. Conflict now permeates international relations: the last twenty years have seen military interventions by Western powers in the former Yugoslavia, Somalia, Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as the intifada in Palestine and a spilling-over of that conflict into Lebanon.
General Smith argues that our failure to resolve these situations owes much to our shortsightedness about the very nature of warfare: that the paradigm of industrial warfare is dead, and that we live in an era of “war amongst the people”. Force must now be employed not as a solution in itself but as one component of a holistic approach including elements appropriate to the specific circumstances at hand, whether they be humanitarian, administrative or diplomatic.
Reviewing the history of warfare from Napoleon onwards, the book demonstrates the links between the emerging paradigm of industrial war and the formation of the modern nation-state. One classic example is the alliance of nationalistic politics and military service which empowered Prussia during the German wars of unification. By handing the people a stake in their own future, the state was able to swell the ranks of its military with conscript soldiers without inciting revolution.