Transformations of Warfare in the Contemporary World

Today’s warfare has moved away from being an event between massed national populations and toward small numbers of combatants using high-tech weaponry. The editors of and contributors to the timely collection Transformations of Warfare in the Contemporary World show that this shift reflects changes in the technological, strategic, ideological, and ethical realms.

The essays in this volume discuss:

·the waning connection between citizenship and soldiering; 

·the shift toward more reconstructive than destructive activities by militaries; 

·the ethics of irregular or asymmetrical warfare; 

·the role of novel techniques of identification in military settings; 

·the stress on precision associated with targeted killings and kidnappings; 

·the uses of the social sciences in contemporary warfare. 

In his concluding remarks, David Jacobson explores the extent to which the contemporary transformation of warfare is a product of a shift in the character of the combatants themselves. 

Contributors include: Ariel Colonomos, Roberto J. González, Travis R. Hall, Saskia Hooiveld, Rob Johnson, Colonel C. Anthony Pfaff, Ian Roxborough, and the editors

John C. Torpey is Director of the Ralph Bunche Institute for International Studies at the Graduate Center, City University of New York, and author of Making Whole What Has Been Smashed: On Reparations Politics and The Invention of the Passport: Surveillance, Citizenship, and the State.
 

David Jacobson is the Founding Director of the Global Initiative on Civil Society and Conflict at the University of South Florida, and author of both Of Virgins and Martyrs: Women and Sexuality in Global Conflict and  Rights Across Borders: Immigration and the Decline of Citizenship.