| “War
no longer exists,” writes General Sir Rupert Smith,
powerfully reminding us that the clash of mass national armies
— the system of war since Napoleon — will never
occur again. Instead, he argues in this timely book, we must
be prepared to adapt tactics to each conflict, or lose the
ability to protect ourselves and our way of life.
General Smith draws
on his vast experience as a commander in the 1991 Gulf War,
in Bosnia, Kosovo and Northern Ireland, to give us a probing
analysis of modern war and to call for radically new military
thinking. Why, he asks, do we use armed force to solve our
political problems? And how is it that our armies can win
battles but fail to solve the problems?
From Iraq to the
Balkans, and from Afghanistan to Chechnya, Smith charts a
stream of armed interventions that have failed to deliver
on promises of resolution. He demonstrates why today’s
conflicts must be understood as intertwined political and
military events. He makes clear why the current one-size-fits-all
model of total war, fought out on battlefields, that politicians
still cling to must be abandoned in favor of new strategies
that take into account the fact that wars are now fought among
civilian populations. And he offers a compelling new model
for how to fight these battles — and secure our world.
Clear, incisive
and provocative, The Utility of Force will fundamentally
change the way we understand war.
General Rupert Smith spent forty years in
the British Army and senior international command before retiring
in 2002. He lives in London.
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