Humankind has always sought out innovative and new ways of waging war, establishing new forms of warfare. Set against a background of global strategic instability this process of innovation has, over the last two decades, produced a new and complex phenomenon, hybrid warfare. Distinct from other forms of modern warfare in several key aspects, it presents a unique challenge that appears to baffle policymakers and security experts, while giving the actors that employ it a new way of achieving their goals in the face of long-standing Western conventional, doctrinal, and strategic superiority. The Hybrid Age analyses the phenomenon of hybrid warfare through theoretical frameworks and a range global case studies from the 2006 Lebanon War to the Russian intervention in Ukraine in 2014. This book aims to establish a unified theory of hybrid warfare, which not only outlines what the term means, but also places it in its context, and provides the tools which enable an observer to identify and react to a future instance of hybrid warfare.

This book is amongst the first academic treatments of the emerging debate on autonomous weapons. Autonomous weapons are capable, once programmed, of searching for and engaging a target without direct intervention by a human operator. Critics of these weapons claim that 'taking the human out-of-the-loop' represents a further step towards the de-humanisation of warfare, while advocates of this type of technology contend that the power of machine autonomy can potentially be harnessed in order to prevent war crimes. This book provides a thorough and critical assessment of these two positions. Written by a political philosopher at the forefront of the autonomous weapons debate, the book clearly assesses the ethical and legal ramifications of autonomous weapons, and presents a novel ethical argument against fully autonomous weapons.

This important new book deals with the changing nature of war in the post-Cold War era and the emergence of new forms of warfare in which warlords, mercenaries and terrorists play an increasingly important role.

In the modern era, warfare came to play a crucial role in the formation of states, whereas the new wars emerging at the beginning of the 21st century have mostly gone together with the failure or collapse of states. The author draws out the key shifts involved in this process: from symmetrical conflicts between states to asymmetrical global relationships of force; from national armies to increasingly private or commercial bands of warlords, child soldiers and mercenaries; from pitched battles to protracted conflicts in which there is often little fighting and most of the violence is directed against civilians. Changes in weapons technology have combined with complex economic factors to make the prospect of endlessly simmering wars a real danger in the years to come.

Against this background, the author outlines the rise of a novel form of international terrorism, conceived more as a political method of communication than as an element in a military strategy. The resulting challenges faced by Western governments, and the costs and benefits associated with any response, are taken up in a concluding section that contrasts the characteristic European and American approaches and examines the implications for the future of international law.

This book will be of important to students of political science, international relations, war and peace studies, conflict studies and peace studies. It will also appeal to the general reader with an interest inthis topical subject.

In response to the September 11th terrorist attacks, Congress authorized "war" against al Qaeda in the statute known as the 2001 AUMF (Authorization for the Use of Military Force). Meant to be a temporary grant of powers to allow the President to retaliate against the perpetrators of the attack, two administrations have used the 2001 AUMF to justify controversial policies such as the indefinite detention of terrorist suspects at the Guantanamo Bay prison facility, domestic surveillance without a warrant by the National Security Agency, and the lethal targeting of terrorist suspects using drone strikes in countries with which the United States is not at war. Shoon Murray explores the debate that has emerged about whether it is time to repeal the 2001 AUMF. She documents how the Bush and Obama administrations have used this "war" authority and warns against the sources of inertia--organizational interests, psychological biases, and political incentives--that could make it permanent.

Contemporary security has expanded its meaning, content and structure in response to globalisation and the emergence of greatly improved world-wide communication. The protocols of modern warfare, including targeted killing, enhanced interrogations, mass electronic surveillance and the virtualisation of war have changed the moral landscape and brought diverse new interactions with politics, law, religion, ethics and technology. This book addresses how and why the nature of security has changed and what this means for the security actors involved and the wider society. Offering a crossdisciplinary perspective on concepts, meanings and categories of security, the book brings together scholars and experts from a range of disciplines including political, military studies and security studies, political economy and international relations. Contributors reflect upon new communication methods, postmodern concepts of warfare, technological determinants and cultural preferences to provide new theoretical and analytical insights into a changing security environment and the protocols of war in the 21st century. A useful text for scholars and students of security studies, international relations, global governance, international law and ethics, foreign policy, comparative studies and contemporary world history.

This edited collection examines the changing character of military professionalism and the role of ethics in the twenty-first-century military. The authors, who range from uniformed military to academics to non-uniformed professionals on the battlefield, delve into whether the concepts of Samuel Huntington, Morris Janowitz, and Sir John Hackett still apply, how training and continuing education play a role in defining a profession, and if a universal code of ethics is required for the military as a profession. Redefining the Modern Military puts a significant emphasis on individual agency for military professionalism as opposed to broad organizational or cultural change. Redefining the Modern Military works to understand the role of ethics in the military, as well as how to better develop individuals in this often-lethal profession. This book is perfect for the faculty and students in our nation's military academies, ROTC programs, officer commissioning programs, staff schools, and war colleges as they pursue professional military education and develop their own understanding of modern professionalism. Additionally, those that are interested in the military and the development of professionals--both in uniform and out--will find this work engaging and valuable.

The U.S. military spends more than 14 countries combined and possesses state-of-the art weapons and equipment, yet after 13 years of effort, $1.4 trillion, and some 6,000 casualties, it still has been unable to defeat its enemies in Afghanistan and Iraq. The book explains why and how it can be remedied. It first demonstrates the negative effects of four factors that are prerequisites for military success and that have undermined U.S. military performance since the end of the Cold War. These include uneven civil-military relations; an inability to formulate and execute sound campaign plans; a mistaken approach to counter-insurgency, irregular warfare, and stability operations; and inattention to military options other than regime change. It also acknowledges that other factors often also intervene, and that the enemy plays a decisive role in military outcomes. Still, if the United States is to preserve the use of military force as a reasonable (albeit last resort) policy option, it must develop the means to maintain healthy, reliable civil-military relations, design and execute sound campaign plans appropriate to the adversary in question and the threat it poses to U.S. interests, conduct effective counter-insurgency and irregular warfare campaigns suitable given the size and capabilities of today's all volunteer armed forces, and develop a menu of military options beyond regime change. The intent is to bring attention to the under-performance of the U.S. armed forces in Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere and prescribe remedies. These solutions cannot be left solely in the hands of the Department of Defense and congressional action and oversight will be essential to favorable outcomes. This is a timely survey as the military is facing downsizing in response to budget pressure that will constrain defense and counter-terrorism spending.

This interdisciplinary study provides an original account of the US-led wars in Afghanistan and Iraq to show how, why and with what consequences, twenty-first century wars became seen as policing wars.
Holmqvist starts from the assumption that wars always reflect the societies that wage them and combines the analysis of western strategic thinking with a philosophical examination of the core ideas that structure the contemporary liberal imagination. She argues that the US-led interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq were characterised by a widespread understanding of war as 'policing' - that is, waged against opponents deemed 'criminal' rather than political, and directed at the creation and maintenance of a certain type of 'order'. Holmqvist turns to themes of social theory and philosophy to offer new perspectives on why the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were waged in the way they were, and why the fantasy of policing wars came to resonate so widely amongst policy makers and academics alike.
This unique contribution to the study of war and international politics will appeal to scholars of the philosophy and sociology of war, military strategy and international relations.

In 1894-1895, after suffering defeat against Japan in a war primarily fought over the control of Korea, the Qing government initiated fundamental military reforms and established "New Armies" modeled after the German and Japanese military. Besides reorganizing the structure of the army and improving military training, the goal was to overcome the alleged physical weakness and lack of martial spirit attributed to Chinese soldiers in particular and to Chinese men in general. Intellectuals, government officials, and military circles criticized the pacifist and civil orientation of Chinese culture, which had resulted in a negative attitude towards its armed forces and martial values throughout society and a lack of interest in martial deeds, glory on the battlefield, and military achievements among men. The book examines the cultivation of new soldiers, officers, and civilians through new techniques intended to discipline their bodies and reconfigure their identities as military men and citizens. The book shows how the establishment of German-style "New Armies" in China between 1895 and 1916 led to the re-creation of a militarized version of masculinity that stressed physical strength, discipline, professionalism, martial spirit, and "Western" military appearance and conduct. Although the military reforms did not prevent the downfall of the Qing Dynasty or provide stable military clout to subsequent regimes, they left a lasting legacy by reconfiguring Chinese military culture and re-creating military masculinity and the image of men in China.

The International Society for First World War Studies' ninth conference, 'War Time', drew together emerging and leading scholars to discuss, reflect upon, and consider the ways that time has been conceptualised both during the war itself and in subsequent scholarship. War Time: First World War Perspectives on Temporality, stemming from this 2016 conference, offers its readers a collection of the conference's most inspiring and thought-provoking papers from the next generation of First World War scholars. In its varied yet thematically-related chapters, the book aims to examine new chronologies of the Great War and bring together its military and social history. Its cohesive theme creates opportunities to find common ground and connections between these sub-disciplines of history, and prompts students and academics alike to seriously consider time as alternately a unifying, divisive, and ultimately shaping force in the conflict and its historiography. With content spanning land and air, the home and fighting fronts, multiple nations, and stretching to both pre-1914 and post-1918, these ten chapters by emerging researchers (plus an introductory chapter by the conference organisers, and a foreword by John Horne) offer an irreplaceable and invaluable snapshot of how the next generation of First World War scholars from eight countries were innovatively conceptualising the conflict and its legacy at the midpoint of its centenary.

This book investigates the uses of crusader medievalism - the memory of the crusades and crusading rhetoric and imagery - in Britain, from Walter Scott's The Talisman (1825) to the end of the Second World War. It seeks to understand why and when the crusades and crusading were popular, how they fitted with other cultural trends of the Victorian and Edwardian eras, how their use was affected by the turmoil of the First World War and whether they were differently employed in the interwar years and in the 1939-45 conflict. Building on existing studies and contributing the fruits of fresh research, it brings together examples of the uses of the crusades from disparate contexts and integrates them into the story of the rise and fall crusader medievalism in Britain.

"Islam in the Balance: Ideational Threats in Arab Politics" is an analysis of how ideas, or political ideology, can threaten states and how states react to ideational threats. It examines the threat perception and policies of two Arab, Muslim majority states, Egypt and Saudi Arabia, in response to the rise and activities of two revolutionary "Islamic states," established in Iran (1979) and Sudan (1989).
Using these comparative case studies the book provides important insight about the role of religious ideology for the international and domestic politics of the Middle East and, in doing so, advances our understanding of how, why, and when ideology affects threat perception and state policy.
Rubin makes clear that transnational ideologies may present a greater and more immediate national security threat than shifts in the military balance of power: first because ideology, or ideational power, triggers threat perception and affects state policy; second because states engage in ideational balancing in response to an ideological threat.
The book has significant implications for international relations theory and engages important debates in comparative politics about authoritarianism and Islamic activism. Its findings about how an Islamist regime or state behaves will provide vital insight for policy creation by the US and its Middle East allies should another such regime or state emerge.

This book provides a novel analysis of the military campaign of Rafael Carrera during the popular insurrection of 1837-1840 in Guatemala. Over the course of three years Carrera, a semi-literate farmer, and his army of peasants established Conservative control over Guatemala and accelerated the disintegration of the Central American Federation. Although Carrera's rise has been analyzed from a political and socio-economic perspective, the present work shows that Carrera's vertiginous success is the product of a peculiar and misunderstood approach to warfare that combines guerrilla recruiting practices and rural insurgency logistics with conventional combat tactics and operations. Gilmar Visoni-Alonzo argues that Carrera's hybrid warfare was made possible because of the conditions created by the militarization of Latin American society following the administrative reforms of the Bourbon monarchy in the late eighteenth century. The concept of hybrid warfare is offered as an alternative model to understand the success of other insurgencies.

This book calls into question the commonly held contentions that central governments are the most important or even the sole sources of a nation's stability, and that subnational and transnational nonstate forces are a major source of global instability.
By assessing recent real-world trends, Mandel reveals that areas exist where it makes little sense to rely on state governments for stability, and that attempts to bolster such governments to promote stability often prove futile. He demonstrates how armed nonstate groups can sometimes provide local stability better than states, and how power-sharing arrangements between states and armed nonstate groups may sometimes be viable. He concludes that these trends in the international setting call for major shifts in our understanding of what constitutes stable governance--proposing that we adopt a fluid "emergent actor" approach. And he calls for significant deviation from standard policy responses to the opportunities and dangers posed by nontraditional sources of national authority.

This book uses an historical body of knowledge, Just War Theory, as the basis for analyzing modern conflicts involving Armed Non-State Actors who employ force against states. As the global community faces the challenges of globalization, terrorism, 24-hour international news coverage, super power collapse, weapons of mass destruction, and failed states, the author explores whether the historic bodies of knowledge governing decision makers during conflict remain relevant. Tracing the evolution of Just War Theory, he analyzes circumstances involving Armed Non-State Actor (ANSA) groups possessing powerful and destructive capabilities and a desire to use them, and pursues answers to the central research question: how does Just War Theory apply in modern scenarios involving ANSA groups who challenge the state and international institution's monopoly on use of force? The study finds that Just War Theory still has the capacity to accommodate modern day statecraft and application in scenarios involving Armed Non-State Actors. This book will be of great interest to those researching and studying in the fields of political theory, security studies, international relations, war and conflict studies, and public ethics.

What does it mean to be a spectator to war in an era when the boundaries between witnessing and perpetrating violence have become profoundly blurred? Arguing that the contemporary dynamics of military spectatorship took shape in Napoleonic Europe, "Watching War" explores the status of warfare as a spectacle unfolding before a mass audience. By showing that the battlefield was a virtual phenomenon long before the invention of photography, film, or the Internet, this book proposes that the unique character of modern conflicts has been a product of imaginary as much as material forces.
Warfare first became total in the Napoleonic era, when battles became too large and violent to be observed firsthand and could only be grasped in the imagination. Thenceforth, fantasies of what war was or should be proved critical for how wars were fought and experienced. As war's reach came to be limited only by the creativity of the mind's eye, its campaigns gave rise to expectations that could not be fulfilled. As a result, war's modern audiences have often found themselves bored more than enthralled by their encounters with combat. Mieszkowski takes an interdisciplinary approach to this major ethical and political concern of our time, bringing literary and philosophical texts into dialogue with artworks, historical documents, and classics of photojournalism.

Providing easily accessible factual material, and covering the whole geographical area of medieval Europe, including Eastern Europe, this comprehensive volume is the perfect companion to all aspects of medieval warfare.

Setting the Companion in themed, illustrated sections, each preceded by a narrative outline offering a brief introduction, Jim Bradbury presents clear information on battles and sieges, and generals and leaders.

Practical topics examined include:

• castle architecture, with examinations of specific castles
• ship building techniques
• improvements in armour
• specific weapons
• developments in areas such as arms and armour fortifications, tactics and supply.

Readable and engaging, this detailed volume provides students with an excellent collection of archaeological information and clear discussions of controversial issues.

Clausewitz's On War has, at least until very recently, been regarded as the most important work of theory on its subject. But since the end of the Cold War in 1990, and even more since the 9/11 attacks on the United states in 2001, an increasing number of commentators have argued that On War has lost its analytical edge as a tool for understanding war. They have argued that Clausewitz was concerned solely with inter-state war and with properly defined armies, and that the sorts of conflicts which he discussed are therefore part of a historical pattern which dominated Europe between 1648, the end of the Thirty Years War, and 1990 itself. Some have gone further, and suggested that Clausewitz's best known aphorism, that war is a continuation of policy by other means, is not only irrelevant today but also inapplicable historically. Clausewitz in the Twenty-First Century reconsiders the principal themes in Clausewitz's writings from a contemporary perspective, and finds in them much more inspiration and insight than these generalisations allow. Embracing the perspectives of history, philosophy and political science, the book reconsiders both the text and its current implications. Traditional interpretations of On War are put into fresh light; neglected passages are re-examined; and new insights are derived from the conjunction between Clausewitz's text and today's challenges. This book is a project of the Oxford Leverhulme Programme on the Changing Character of War.

While many scholars agree that Clausewitz's On War is frequently misunderstood, almost none have explored his methodology to see whether it might enhance our understanding of his concepts. This book lays out Clausewitz's methodology in a brisk and straightforward style. It then uses that as a basis for understanding his contributions to the ever growing body of knowledge of war. The specific contributions this study addresses are Clausewitz's theories concerning the nature of war, the relationship between war and politics, and several of the major principles of strategy he examined.
These theories and principles lie at the heart of the current debates over the nature of contemporary conflict. They also underpin much of the instruction that prepares military and civilian leaders for their roles in the development and execution of military strategy. Thus, they are important even in circles where Clausewitz is only briefly studied. While understanding On War is no more a prerequisite for winning wars than knowledge is a requirement for exercising power, Clausewitz's opus has become something of an authoritative reference for those desiring to expand their knowledge of war. By linking method and concept, this book contributes significantly to that end.

What does it mean to be a spectator to war in an era when the boundaries between witnessing and perpetrating violence have become profoundly blurred? Arguing that the contemporary dynamics of military spectatorship took shape in Napoleonic Europe, "Watching War" explores the status of warfare as a spectacle unfolding before a mass audience. By showing that the battlefield was a virtual phenomenon long before the invention of photography, film, or the Internet, this book proposes that the unique character of modern conflicts has been a product of imaginary as much as material forces.
Warfare first became total in the Napoleonic era, when battles became too large and violent to be observed firsthand and could only be grasped in the imagination. Thenceforth, fantasies of what war was or should be proved critical for how wars were fought and experienced. As war's reach came to be limited only by the creativity of the mind's eye, its campaigns gave rise to expectations that could not be fulfilled. As a result, war's modern audiences have often found themselves bored more than enthralled by their encounters with combat. Mieszkowski takes an interdisciplinary approach to this major ethical and political concern of our time, bringing literary and philosophical texts into dialogue with artworks, historical documents, and classics of photojournalism.

With contributions from leading experts, Culture and National Security in the Americas examines the most influential historical, geographic, cultural, political, economic, and military considerations shaping national security policies throughout the Americas. In this volume, contributors explore the actors and institutions responsible for perpetuating security cultures over time and the changes and continuities in contemporary national security policies.

This book explores and analyses the various factors that affected the formulation of the common EU policy towards the Middle East Peace Process (MEPP), as well as the specifics of the process by which the EU created EUPOL COPPS and EUBAM Rafah. It answers two central questions: firstly, why and how did the EU decide to create and deploy these missions? Secondly, where do these two missions fit into the general EU approach to the conflict in the Middle East? Based on confidential interviews with various actors in the process, uniquely granted to the author, it reveals the mechanics of decision-making behind the scenes and argues that the EU decision to expand its role in the MEPP, through the creation of the two missions, was closely related to the EU's defined common interests in the Middle East. Further it shows, the missions were, mainly, the result of the EU's already established approaches to further its role in the international political arena. This text will be of key interest to scholars and students of European foreign policy, EU Politics, Middle East politics and studies, foreign policy analysis, and more broadly to international relations.

How are militarism and militarisation embodied and why is it important to study these concepts together? This volume highlights a lack of research into people's emotions, bodies and experiences in global politics, and brings these important dimensions to bear on how we study militarism and process of militarisation. This collection showcases innovative research that examines people's everyday lived experience and the multiple ways militarism is enshrined in our societies. Emphasising the benefits of interdisciplinary thinking, its chapters interrogate a range of methodological, ethical, and theoretical questions related to embodiment and militarism from a range of empirical contexts. Authors from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds reveal the myriad of ways in which militarism is experienced by gendered, raced, aged, and sexed bodies. The volume covers a wide range of topics, including the impact of social media; gender, queer, and feminist research on the military; the challenges of writing about embodied experience; and the commercialisation of military fitness in civilian life. This book fills a gap in the study of militarism and militarisation and will be of interest to students and scholars of critical military studies, security studies, and war studies. It was originally published as a special issue of the journal Critical Military Studies.

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.