The Utility of Force
From a highly decorated general, a brilliant new way of understanding war and its role in the twenty-first century.Drawing on his vast experience as a commander during the first Gulf War, and in Bosnia, Kosovo, and Northern Ireland, General Rupert Smith gives us a probing analysis of modern war. He demonstrates why today's conflicts must be understood as intertwined political and military events, and makes clear why the current model of total war has failed in Iraq, Afghanistan, and other recent campaigns. Smith offers a compelling contemporary vision for how to secure our world and the consequences of ignoring the new, shifting face of war.From the Trade Paperback edition.
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2018–2021years
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What Hacker News says
- A more recent example would be the book "The Utility of Force" by General Rupert Smith. He argues that conventional militaries and tactics revolve around a concept of war that was made obsolete by nuclear weapons, and goes in depth regarding recent failings of NATO and the Iraq invasion, and how the conflicts should be handled in the age of instant global communication and media coverage.
- > At the core of Patrikarakos’s book is the idea that narrative war has become far more important than physical war due to new technologies that shape public perceptions of conflicts in real time, regardless of what is actually happening on the battlefield.
In The Utility of Force: The Art of War in the Modern World, General Sir Rupert Smith repeatedly makes the point that victory in war is about achieving a condition in the mind of the adversary. An opponent who doesn't accept his defeat is still an active opponent. E.g. Japan was defeated at Midway in June 1942, but didn't surrender until August 1945: the U.S. had to convince Japan's government that it had lost.
In this sense, then, digital war is the same as pre-digital war: what matters is public perception. One can only win by convincing the victor and the vanquished alike that one has won.
