- Hardcover: 254 pages
- Publisher: The Free Press (31 Mar 1991)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0029331552
- ISBN-13: 978-0029331552
- Product Dimensions: 24.1 x 16.3 x 2.6 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 64,994 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
Transformation of War
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Product Description
Product Description
At a time when uprecedented change in international affairs is forcing governments, citizens, and armed forces everywhere to re-assess the question of whether military solutions to political problems are possible any longer. Martin van Creveld has written an audacious searching examination of the nature of war and of its radical transformation in our own time.
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A ghost is stalking the corridors of general staffs and defense departments all over the "developed" world-the fear of military impotence, even irrelevance. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
A ghost is stalking the corridors of general staffs and defense departments all over the "developed" world-the fear of military impotence, even irrelevance. Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
Format:Kindle Edition
I used this book for my history project at A level and found it useful. Personally, I wouldn't have chosen this book to read outside of school purposes, but I guess it depends on what you want to read. It is very detailed and full of Creveld's personal opinions which, again, was very helpful when studying the changing nature of warfare for a level. I would recommend this book to anyone studying similar topics.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
17 reviews
29 of 32 people found the following review helpful
One of the better books on current military issues....
9 April 2001
Format:Hardcover
Martin van Crevald is truely one of the best strategic thinkers whom is writing today. In his more classic books like 'Supplying War: Logistics from Wallerstein to Patton' he wrote VERY credible military history that shook some of the foundations of less-sound strategic thought that was occuring concurrently; he has also written a powerful critique of people who have hopped on the shoulders of NGOs and non-state actors AND state-centered people in 'The Rise and Decline of the State'. Personally, these have over time become two of my favorite books: perhaps a couple years from now, this shall finish the trinity.
Van Crevald puts forth a case that the era of massed conventional wars have finished. For a variety of reasons, the Central-front type conflicts between the USSR and US of the fifties never happened and never will. The more conflicts have happened, the more correct he appears (this book is already eleven years old...) Trying to prepare for them is silly (much in the same way , he asserts, that National Missile Defense is....)
This is a must read for students of military strategy and affairs and international politics in general. Its quite a worthwhile book as general reading, though I think that it might be at present out of print. I highly recommend it-- and the other books listed at the beginning of this review....
35 of 40 people found the following review helpful
Amazing!!!
10 Dec 2004
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
When I finished reading this book I could hardly believe that a writer could prophesize the future war events in such a clear way. Van Creveld's thesis is that war as we know it in the last 3,5 centuries (waged between states and organized armies) has reached its end and is now in a process of radical tramsformation. Analyzing many examples from the military history he suggests that we are entering into an era where states lose the monopoly of waging war and confront non-state actors who do not embrace the same philosophical values.
Van Creveld overturns Clauzewitz's traditional views one by one, using very convincing arguments, and unfortunately he is confirmed by international events today. While reading the book there were many cases when I was dumbfounded by the fact that a writer completing his work near the end of the Cold War could see our era with such a clarity, and I was really amazed by the fact that the book was written in 1991. It is more modern than anything else I have read on the subject of modern war and surpasses even contemporary analysis. Van Creveld does not avoid to touch even hot topics, like the sheer joy of fighting (paraphrasing Clausewitz he states that war is more the continuation of sports by other means than politics) the taboo of introducing women in the armies, the role of religion in the motivation of war and the very important argument that war does not begin when someone is willing to kill but when he is willing to die for a cause.
The accuracy of his predictions is often so amazing that it becomes terrifying, especially when he states that in the future the war leaders will not be legitimate government officials but something like "The Old Man in the Mountains", meaninig the kind of warfare waged by assassins in the Middle Ages. He is also very critical against the current military-industrial complex and its super-expensive creations of high tech weapons, saying that all this paraphernalia of old war are like dinosaurs about to face extinction. This is a highly recommended book and it is sure that it will challenge many of your establised views on war.
Van Creveld overturns Clauzewitz's traditional views one by one, using very convincing arguments, and unfortunately he is confirmed by international events today. While reading the book there were many cases when I was dumbfounded by the fact that a writer completing his work near the end of the Cold War could see our era with such a clarity, and I was really amazed by the fact that the book was written in 1991. It is more modern than anything else I have read on the subject of modern war and surpasses even contemporary analysis. Van Creveld does not avoid to touch even hot topics, like the sheer joy of fighting (paraphrasing Clausewitz he states that war is more the continuation of sports by other means than politics) the taboo of introducing women in the armies, the role of religion in the motivation of war and the very important argument that war does not begin when someone is willing to kill but when he is willing to die for a cause.
The accuracy of his predictions is often so amazing that it becomes terrifying, especially when he states that in the future the war leaders will not be legitimate government officials but something like "The Old Man in the Mountains", meaninig the kind of warfare waged by assassins in the Middle Ages. He is also very critical against the current military-industrial complex and its super-expensive creations of high tech weapons, saying that all this paraphernalia of old war are like dinosaurs about to face extinction. This is a highly recommended book and it is sure that it will challenge many of your establised views on war.
31 of 37 people found the following review helpful
BRAVO!!!
24 July 2002
Format:Hardcover
Although this book was written in 1991 the scenarios and tendencies discussed in the book are now becoming reality in terrorism, civil wars in Africa and the Balkans, and the fruitless war in the Middle East between Israel and the Palestinians.
Creveld convincingly argues that the new conflicts will not neccessarily be fought between states, and that technology and military superiority are not neccessarily guarantees of victory. Creveld shows that while the militaries of the West has run away on a shopping spree to acqurie the new nifty things in the shape of fighter jets, submarines, and laser guided missiles the enemy in the shape of guerillas and terrorist have acquired other, less advanced means, to fight back. The US helicopters that were shot down in Somalia and Afghanistan were not taken down with high tech missiles - instead they were grounded by RPG-7s, a grenade launcher from the 1950s.
But Creveld does so much more with this book. Rather than being a book only about the future of war it is about the future of the international system. Creveld's book has greatly influenced other writers such as Robert Kaplan who wrote "The Coming Anarchy".
Believers in technology, the wonders of globalization, and the supremacy of the nation state should read this book and seriously consider it. The world as we know it might not be around in the future - and it doesn't look pretty.
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