The transformation of war revisited

As the title indicates, the purpose of the analysis is to revisit the main theses of The Transformation of War a little more than decade after it was published. The first section provides a brief recapitulation of the processes which, especially in view of 9-11, have caused large scale interstate warfare to go down and ‘non-trinitarian’ warfare to go up. The second takes an equally brief look at the most important problem that The Transformation of War has not addressed, that is, information warfare. The third asks whether war in fact is what Clausewitz says it is-a continuation of politics by other means. It concludes that, from the point of view of the vast majority of those who have to fight and die, the answer to that question is very often in the negative; and ends by serving a warning that those who ignore this fact do so at their peril.