| Description |
1 online resource (x, 564 pages) |
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text file |
| Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references and index. |
| Contents |
Introduction: The Changing Character of War; PART I: THE NEED FOR A HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE: WHAT HAS CHANGED?; 1. The Changing Character of War; 2. Had a Distinct Template for a 'Western Way of War' Been Established Before 1800?; 3. Changes in War: The French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars; 4. The Change from Within; 5. 'Killing is Easy': The Atomic Bomb and the Temptation of Terror; 6. The 'New Wars' Thesis Revisited; 7. What is Really Changing? Change and Continuity in Global Terrorism; PART II: THE PURPOSE OF WAR: WHY GO TO WAR?; 8. Humanitarian intervention; 9. Democracy and War in the Strategic Thought of Giulio Douhet; 10. Religion in the War on Terror; 11. The Changing Character of Civil Wars, 1800-2009; 12. Crime versus War; PART III: THE CHANGING IDENTITIES OF COMBATANTS: WHO FIGHTS?; 13. War Without the People; 14. The Changing Character of Private Force; 15. Who Fights?-A Comparative Demographic Depiction of Terrorists and Insurgents in the Twentieth and Twenty-first Centuries; 16. Warlords; 17. The European Union, Multilateralism, and the Use of Force; 18. Robots at War: The New Battlefield; PART IV: THE CHANGING IDENTITIES OF NON-COMBATANTS; 19. The Civilian in Modern War; 20. Killing Civilians; 21. The Status and Protections of Prisoners of War and Detainees; 22. The Challenge of the Child Soldier; PART V: THE IDEAS WHICH ENABLE US TO UNDERSTAND WAR; 23. American Strategic Culture: Problems and Prospects; 24. Morality and Law in War; 25. Target-selection Norms, Torture Norms, and Growing US Permissiveness; 26. he Return of Realism? War and Changing Concepts of the Political; 27. Strategy in the Twenty-first Century; Conclusion: Absent War Studies? War, Knowledge, and Critique. |
| Summary |
'The Changing Character of War' unites scholars from the disciplines of history, politics, law and philosophy to ask in what ways the character of war today has changed from war in the past and how the wars of today differ from each other. |
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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 programme at Oxford 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 Programme on the Changing Character of War. |
| Local Note |
eBooks on EBSCOhost EBSCO eBook Subscription Academic Collection - North America |
| Subject |
War.
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War. |
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War (Philosophy)
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War (Philosophy) |
| Genre/Form |
Electronic books.
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| Added Author |
Strachan, Hew.
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Scheipers, Sibylle.
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Askews and Holts Library Services.
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| Other Form: |
Print version: 9780199596737 |
| ISBN |
9780191618895 (electronic book) |
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0191618896 (electronic book) |
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9780191803543 |
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0191803545 |
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