Book Review - The Ashgate Research Companion to Modern Warfare by George Kassimeris and John Buckley (eds)
The Ashgate Research Companion to Modern Warfare,
Written by: George Kassimeris and John Buckley (eds),
Ashgate, Farnham, 2010,
ISBN 9780754674108, 468pp,
Reviewed by: Gary Sheffield, Professor of War Studies, University of Birmingham, UK
Recently I had the privilege of leading a party of British army officers on a battlefield study to France to examine the 1940 campaign. As we stood overlooking the places where Guderian’s XIX Panzer Corps crossed the Meuse and where the French armoured counterstroke fizzled out in a bitter but ultimately irrelevant struggle for the village of Stonne, I was struck that the operations of 1940 were essentially straightforward. The military experiences of the men and women in the party were largely concerned with highly complex operations. Almost all were veterans of the current operations in Afghanistan, and the sheer complexity of modern warfare was a frequent theme of our discussions. From some I detected a feeling bordering on envy for the simplicity of the tasks assigned to the men of 1940. Cross that river; counterattack that lodgement. The stakes at issue were huge, but the tasks were straightforward, if not easy.
The complexity of contemporary war is well reflected in Kassimeris and Buckley’s generally excellent collection of essays. The editors are to be congratulated on commissioning such an eclectic mix of chapters. Some such deal with very traditional topics. Leading experts such as Andrew Lambert, John Buckley and Antulio J Echevarria II demonstrate their expertise in chapters on, respectively, ‘Sea Power’ ‘Land Warfare: Attrition and Manoeuvre’ and ‘Strategic Thought: The Relevance of Clausewitz’. Each of these pieces, and others like them, can be recommended as concise discussions of key topics, each bearing the imprint of the deep knowledge and insights of their authors. Others, such as John Ferris’s article ‘After the RMA: Contemporary Intelligence, Power and War’ and Myriam Dunn Cavelty, ‘Cyberwar’ examine subjects that have established themselves in the mainstream in the last two decades, as a reflection of the emergent complexity of the post-Cold War world.
A representative chapter that deals with a very recent phenomenon is Chris Kinsey’s valuable chapter ‘Turning War into Business: Private Security Companies and Commercial Opportunism. The re-emergence of mercenaries is perhaps one of the more surprising military developments in recent years, although given the trends of ideologically-driven politics and economic trends since the early 1980s, with an emphasis on shrinking the state and its corollary of privatisation, it is entirely logical. Kinsey argues that it was as recently as the 2003 Iraq War that private security companies demonstrated to governments how useful they could be, while simultaneously flagging the obvious problems. ‘The question’, Kinsey argues, is no longer should governments be employing them, ‘but what roles governments should allocate them, when operating in the battle-space. Working alongside mercenaries, it seems, will become an increasingly common aspect of the military experience in the years to come. Perhaps fighting against them will as well.
But there are other chapters which strike off in very different directions. I suspect that many military professionals will glance at the contents pages and reject some articles as being too esoteric, or at least of less obvious use to busy military operators. In that sense, both Tony Shaw’s ‘Cinema and the Cold War: An International Perspective’ and Jonathan Pieslak’s ‘Music as an Inspiration for Combat among American Soldiers in Iraq’ suffer in comparison to the two pieces that follow: Stephen Badsey on ‘Media War and Media Management’ and Philip M Taylor on ‘From Psychological Warfare to Information Operations and Back Again. Yet one of the gems of the book has the apparently unpromising title ‘Forgetful Warriors: Neglected Lessons on Leadership from Plato’s Republic’.
In this chapter George R Lucas, drawing on Socrates’ discourse, makes a simple, elegant but vital point: soldiers can forget themselves, in the sense that a witness to the My Lai massacre, which he was instrumental in halting, said that the US soldiers murdering civilians ‘had forgotten what we had come here to do. Similar comments are cited about those involved in the maltreatment of Iraqi prisoners in Abu Ghraib. Socrates’ views on the need to ‘practice justice with knowledge in all we do’ directly concern leadership and the maintenance of core values. These insights get to the very heart of successful counterinsurgency. This eleven-page, accessible chapter should be required reading for all officers.
According to the blurb on the dust jacket, The Ashgate Research Companion to Modern Warfare intends ‘to offer scholars and graduate students a comprehensive and authoritative state-of-the art review of current research in a particular area. One can quibble about whether it is truly comprehensive—there are a lot of topics missed out—but it is certainly authoritative in the areas that it covers. Unfortunately it is expensive (£75 in the UK), and is yet another example of a book that will miss a large part of its potential audience because of its price. That would be a great shame. One review of the book goes as far as to say that ‘It is an essential tool for both the student and practitioner of modern warfare across it full spectrum... One copy please on every staff college student’s bedside table...’
I agree. Military people at every level will benefit from reading this book, even if some chapters are more marginal than others. It is a challenging book, but we live in challenging times. The relative simplicity of campaigns like France 1940 is unlikely to return any time soon. Kassimeris and Buckley have provided a very useful instrument for getting grips with the multifaceted nature of modern conflict.
