Transformations of Warfare in the Contemporary World,Torpey, John C.and David Jacobson, (eds). (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2016). |
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| Authors: | Siniša Malešević |
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| Institution: | Hence, instead of “letting facts speak for themselves,” as Colin advises, there has been a pronounced tendency to proclaim that one’s time is historically unparalleled and unique, and that what is happing to warfare today is exceptional. To properly assess the social dynamics of war, however, it is crucial to take a longue durée view and explore how exactly warfare changes through the long periods of time. Of course, in a trivial sense, all wars are different, and all war experiences are unique. This also applies to the historical timeline of warfare—just as any other social institution, wars undergo change and transformation. Nevertheless, to gauge how profound some of these changes are, it is necessary to maintain a degree of historical distance so as not to proclaim hastily yet another exceptional moment in war history. For one thing, as Stephen Biddle shows in Military Power, such grandiose statements cannot be properly corroborated without adequate in-depth historical comparisons, which usually take a lot of time. For another thing, such rushed judgments usually have a very short expiry date and generally do not age well. |
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