Customer Reviews

The Transformation of War: The Most Radical Reinterpretation of Armed Conflict Since Clausewitz

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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....

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.

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.

To understand the review is to first know the reviewer: My background is aesthetic and I'm a teacher of literature. I stumbled across this book almost by accident; I haven't been the same since.

Prophecy is a tough trade; Van Creveld passes the test. This work is the first and best study of what is now called "4th Generation War". Indeed, it is not only -- put plain and simple -- the best theoretical work on war since Clausewitz, but it also offers an astonishingly pellucid view into the future of war. In Chapter 6, Van Creveld reaches a level of insight and eloquence about the fighting man not seen since Homer. Anyone who grew up hating war during the Vietman period, or who formed his views on war from Paul Fussell, or who posted greazy posters about how "war is not healthy for children and other living things" needs to allow himself to be transformed by _The Transformation of War_, Chapter 6. It transformed me. I never understood _The Iliad_ until I had read Van Creveld.

Must reading for all citizens. This best book I read in the 1990s -- so good that now I give talks about it.

Martin Van Crevald is the greatest military thinker alive today; the proof of this is in the fact that the U.S. military is in a mad rush to come up with ways to combat sub-national conflicts and asymmetric warfare coming from non-Nation-State "Trinitarian" actors. The whole point of "scholarship" is to arrive at truth; its a means to an end, not an end unto itself. To those who are unwilling to let go of the skirt of von Clausewitz, no amount of "scholarship" is going to be enough, perhaps not even an American city in ashes from a backpack nuclear device planted there by a terrorist who works for no nation-state. There are many books out there that are "scholarly" and clueless about what is going on in the conflict arena, they should be discarded and ignored by those of us charged to defend freedom from real, not imagined armchair enemies. Van Crevald is right, he makes his point without pounding his intellect over your head with minutiae or academia that would distract the reader from the fact that he is talking about life and death of millions of actual, real living human beings (you and I) not some abstract bookworm debate.

The Transformation of War is a critical book to the survival of the West; it outlines that we are really in the 4th Generation of war, not the "Third Wave" of human ego-gratifying human progress as outlined by the Tofflers in War and Anti-War. Van Crevald looks into the human condition and admits the truth we do not want to accept that man likes to kill---and that it may have NOTHING to do with Clausewitz's "war is a continuation of [nation-state] policy by other means". Some groups even in an idealized, "New World Order" will simply fight because they want to fight; the blood lust of man runs in his own heart, and no amount of human technological gadgetry will change this basic condition--only divine intervention will do this. If we perpetuate bad nation-state warfare hoping to relive WWII-style 3d Generation warfare "Desert Storms" by safe, push-button warfare using air and missile strikes with digital means tacked on, or loudly sail around the world in surface ships to posture as being willing to fight (but not really on the ground far inland) when we are actually seen from space where we are easily targeted and destroyed---we will miss Van Crevald's sub-national state warrior who bypasses our irrelevant sea-based showboat military and strikes directly at the American people with subtle, psychological information warfare and Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD). Van Crevald should know--he's an Israeli and he has seen first hand how traditional nation-state war forms have been poor tools to fight 4th Generational wars like the Intifada and the insurgency at the order of Lebanon. The troubles Israel are facing are warnings to the west, and Van Crevald is trying to sound the alarm--if we are wise enough to hear him.

This is one of the best books that I have read on war. The book covers history, government, religion, economics, law (both domestic and international). All of these areas are apart of warmaking. The author writes the book with the assuption that the reader as an indepth understanding of all these areas. If you do not have a good understanding of each of these areas, then reasoning of this book will be lost on you.

The age of this book having been written in the early 90's is what caught my eye. That made this author not one of the current glut of the new trend of writting on counterinsurgency, Islam, and the current trends of warfare now. The author speaks of many of the same techniques as the new Army/Marine's counterinsurgency manual. Again this was written 16 years ago.

I only gave this four stars because with the obvious knowledge that the author has, the conclution that the modern state and its military is going to come crumbling down is completely wrong. Even given the date of this book I find the conclusion too large of a stretch, making it an emotional arguement and one not based on sound scholary work. Which completely surprizes me with it being set in the middle of such an amazing work.

Over all this an excellent work and is a must read for those who want to learn about war and how it is wage. It is also superior to most of all the new books that have been published in the last five years.

What this book is about is described by the title: The Transformation of War. The book is an examination of the factors which influenced the development of military practice in the West. There are two main factors:(a)the development of technology, particularly as it applies to weapons and their use in war and (b)the influence of Karl von Clausewitz and his theories of war on Western military establishments. The importance of technology and of Clausewitz came about as a result of the pre-eminence of the Prussian military in Europe in the latter part of the 19th century. They were one of the first military establishments to successfully use new technologies in the development of artillery, communications (the telegraph) and especially the railroad to help them fight wars. As a result armies in other countries adopted many of their ideas and practices, including Clausewitz's theories on the nature of war.
Van Creveld argues that in today's world, reliance upon technology alone to solve military problems, simply will not work. There is no all-purpose technological solution to the problems that modern armies face. To support his argument he cites the experiences of the Israeli Army during the invasion of Lebanon in 1983. The Israeli Army which invaded was the best equipped, most powerful military force in Israel's history. Yet it ended by becoming bogged down in Lebanon against a foe armed mainly with Kalashnikovs and RPG's. He also argues that Clausewitz and his theories about the nature of war, and how it should be fought are no longer applicable. For example, Clausewitz believed that the essence of war involved a climatic final battle in which opposing armies fought until one was destroyed or surrendered. Only in this way could victory be guaranteed to the winner. The problem is, he doesn't have much to say about terrorist attacks or fighting and defeating an insurgency. As a consequence you have armies which are created, trained, and equipped to fight conventional wars trying to defeat terrorists or insurgents who have absolutely no intention of fighting that kind of war. What these armies are looking for is an opposing army that they can engage in battle. But the enemy that they're fighting doesn't fight that way, so a battle such as Clausewitz describes is never going to take place. Basically, these armies are trained to fight the wrong kind of war.
In light of events which are now taking place in Iraq the insights and analysis that the book provides are especially relevant. If you want to get some understanding of why things are going the way going in Iraq, you should read this book.

Mr Van Creveld has written a compelling arguement that violence and war have existed throughout human history. He further asserts that conventional war as we know it is an anachronism that will soon dissapear to be replaced by insurgencies and terrorism. I agree with all of the points. The one conclusion that I must disagree with however, is his assertion the the compulsion to war in human society isn't biological. This assertion contradicts his entire arguement. Human Social Behvaior is a result of our biological evolution and should not be seperated from our understanding of ourselves. To say that war has no biological compulsion is akin to saying that lemmings toss themselves into the sea becuase they enjoy swimming.

A wise man he is, but he's got to have a little more courage in following through his ideas to their logical conclusions

In this work, Van Creveld discusses the future of armed conflict in the Post Cold War world. While not the best scholarship ever,(on some points he fails to elaborate thoroughly in supporting his assertions)he presents a grand thesis for the the "postulated breakdown" of conventional warfare that he anticipates to occur in the near future. His theories on the development of informal, unconvnetional warfare in the post Clausewitzian, 21st century seems to have been vindicated (a least in part) part informal insurgencies in places such as Somalia and Palestine. A must read for any military history buff who is willing to read a tex that challenges he theories of Clausewitz and Jomini.

read this book with very high expectations based on the reviews. There is a lot in it. Some of it is right, some is not (e.g. the workings of the Roman Army are oversimplified). My major gripe is that it equates the modern state to a war making organization: when classic armies disappear, the state disappears too. The modern state probably was born as the most effective warmaking organization of his time but others could argue that it was born as the most efficient task collecting organization of his time. In any case today it does a lot more than putting armies in the field and collecting taxes. Plus it has infinite resources compared to a small group of, say, terrorists. A state that is well led and aware of the dangers of low-intensity conflicts can survive by
adopting the same techniques and exporting the conflict as much as possible. Unfortunately, on one thing van Creveld may be right, that this will force the state to adopt terrorists' techniques.