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Martin L. Van Creveld

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The Transformation of War: The Most Radical Reinterpretation of Armed Conflict Since Clausewitz Hardcover – March 31, 1991

by Martin Van Creveld (Author)

4.3 106 ratings

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At a time when unprecedented 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.

For 200 years, military theory and strategy have been guided by the Clausewitzian assumption that war is rational—a reflection of national interest and an extension of politics by other means. However, van Creveld argues, the overwhelming pattern of conflict in the post-1945 world no longer yields fully to rational analysis. In fact, strategic planning based on such calculations is, and will continue to be, unrelated to current realities.

Small-scale military eruptions around the globe have demonstrated new forms of warfare with a different cast of characters - guerilla armies, terrorists, and bandits—pursuing diverse goals by violent means with the most primitive to the most sophisticated weapons. Although these warriors and their tactics testify to the end of conventional war as we've known it, the public and the military in the developed world continue to contemplate organized violence as conflict between the super powers.

At this moment, armed conflicts of the type van Creveld describes are occurring throughout the world. From Lebanon to Cambodia, from Sri Lanka and the Philippines to El Salvador, the Persian Gulf, and the strife-torn nations of Eastern Europe, violent confrontations confirm a new model of warfare in which tribal, ethnic, and religious factions do battle without high-tech weapons or state-supported armies and resources. This low-intensity conflict challenges existing distinctions between civilian and solder, individual crime and organized violence, terrorism and war. In the present global atmosphere, practices that for three centuries have been considered uncivilized, such as capturing civilians or even entire communities for ransom, have begun to reappear.

Pursuing bold and provocative paths of inquiry, van Creveld posits the inadequacies of our most basic ideas as to who fights wars and why and broaches the inevitability of man's need to “play” at war. In turn brilliant and infuriating, this challenge to our thinking and planning current and future military encounters is one of the most important books on war we are likely to read in our lifetime.

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Most wars since 1945 have been low-intensity conflicts and, according to the author, incomparably more significant than conventional wars in terms of casualties suffered and political results achieved. Citing the dismal record of regular forces vs. irregulars in Vietnam, Lebanon, Afghanistan and elsewhere, he suggests that as small-scale wars proliferate, conventional armed forces will shrink and the burden of protecting society will shift to the booming security business. Van Creveld, who teaches history at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, argues that the theories of Karl von Clausewitz, which form the basis for Western strategic thought, are largely irrelevant to nonpolitical wars such as the Islamic jihad and wars for existence such as Israel's Six-Day War. In the future, he prophesies, wars will be waged by groups of terrorists, guerrillas and bandits motivated by fanatical, ideologically-based loyalties; conventional battles will be replaced by skirmishes, bombings and massacres. Weapons will become less, rather than more, sophisticated and the high-tech weapons industry (which "supports itself by exporting its own uselessness") will collapse like a house of cards. A bold, provocative, frightening book.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About the Author

Martin van Creveld is widely acknowledged as one of the world's leading experts on military history and strategy.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Free Press; First Edition (March 31, 1991)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 272 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0029331552
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0029331552
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 15.2 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 9.48 x 6.42 x 1.04 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #993,874 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #2,447 in Naval Military History
- #17,983 in Engineering (Books)
- #35,244 in Politics & Government (Books)

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4.3 106 ratings

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Martin L. Van Creveld

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Martin van Creveld is widely acknowledged as one of the world’s leading experts on military history and strategy. He is the author of 27 books, which between them have been published in 20 languages. The best known one is The Transformation of War, which back in 1991 predicted the ongoing shift from large-scale conventional warfare to insurgency and terrorism.

In addition to military affairs, van Creveld has written extensively about political history (The Rise and Decline of the State), Israel history, American history, and women’s history.

He lives near Jerusalem with his wife, Dvora Lewy.

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Alastair MacAndrew
Helps understand the changing face of violence in the modern world.
Reviewed in the United States on March 20, 2020
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This book is very enlightening, if that is the word one should use to describe a book about the subject of war, violence, assault, systematic rape, mass killing and everything that goes with it. Others have outlined very well the subject of the book and given a similar rating to mine. Max Weber said that the state was the only one authorized to the legitimate use of violence. In a rather long-winded and sometimes tedious argumentation, Van Creveld explains how this is no longer the case, and how the nice tidy little distinction mad by Von Clausewitz of state, govt and people no longer holds: violence is now dispersed and in the hands of many groups whose war-mongering is very different from that of standing armies with the latest military equipment. Modern armies and their weapons are not well suited to this kind of war of "low-intensity conflict", as he describes it. Before emigrating to the US, I saw how this happened in my native Ireland: the Irish Republican Army was a very effective force against a sophisticated modern British Army. Thank God ( and timely American intervention ) that bloody struggle seems over, but the IRA said that its strategy, while not always successful, broughtt its opponents to the negotiating table.
I have also seen it in Mexico (I have a home there) where the drug cartels are now more like a military insurgency than a band of organized bandidos. Witness what happened in recent months. Government soldiers arrested the son el "El Chapo" Guzman (now in a US prison), and after a day-long standoff with the Narcos, his captors were forced to hand him over. That particular day, the Narcos called in firepower from the surrounding mountains which rushed to the scene and took over the city of Culiacan, using guerilla tactics to pin down the local populace ( everyone had to stay put ), and threatened the army with blowing everyone to bits. As well as their standard AK-47s, they had Barret 82 rifles, rocket-propelled grenades, weaponry to bring down army helicopters (which they did) and a host of other equipment to impose their will. The Mexican army could have won, but with terrible bloodshed, loss of life and perhaps just barely. It is not an exaggeration to say that drug cartels control maybe eight of Mexico's 32 states. Although the Mexican army is a well-equipped and well-trained force, it does not seem to have found an effective way to contain, much less, eliminate the cartels, which day by day become more sophisticated. ( Perhaps the government could use more deadly, clandestine means, but they are reluctant to do so because of public reaction, which the Narcos know too well ). This is indeed an ongoing low-intensity conflict of the type discussed in the book. ( and happening very close to the US border ).
I use this example to validate Van Creveld's argument, that modern armies and weaponry are simply not enough to confront terrorists, armies of religious fanatics, drug cartels, 'freedom' fighters, and so on. Although written 30 years ago, and although it may exaggerate somewhat the extent of this threat, I feel its conclusions and message have to be taken very seriously. And I am sure they are, by all students of military history and strategy.

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Runamuck
A very advanced book
Reviewed in the United States on August 7, 2007
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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.

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Dimitrios
Amazing!!!
Reviewed in the United States on December 10, 2004
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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.

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Philipp Mueller
A masterpiece!
Reviewed in the United States on August 11, 2018
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This book tells you why and how war is fought, what for and by whom and what war is all about. It covers the crucial role of the law of war and why state armies have been keeping losing wars against insurgents since World War II.

P.S. Martin van Creveld has actually annotated the books he listed under Selected Bibliography. Very informative to read his comments of these books.

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The Shevmeister
Ahead of its time and, sadly, dead on the money
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on February 3, 2014
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If you want insight into what is really going on these days regarding the conflicts in Africa, the middle East, Europe and elsewhere - as the world seems to be tearing itself apart from the inside out while we wring our hands wondering what we can or should do about it, this book is a real eye opener. Some of the points it raises have recently been made elsewhere, but Van Creveld wrote this back in 1991 and his points are even more relevant today than they were then. His analysis of how, why, where and by whom wars are fought from theoretical, practical and historic perspectives is incisive and thought provoking. His predictions for the future are extremely unsettling because, 20 years later, he has been proven right and the transformations he predicted then are well under way now and proceeding on schedule. The only thing he missed was explicitly predicting the upheaval in the middle East and North Africa, but it isn't that he got it wrong - the present chaos is entirely consistent with his analysis, there is just more of it in that region sooner than he anticipated.

Van Creveld's approach is sober and objective while observing those aspects of human nature that make warriors, soldiers and wars tick. These observations leave little room for optimism. His assessment of nuclear weapons, hi-tech heavy armaments and their relevance to the various forms of what he calls "low-intensity conflict" will make even the most hawkish think twice regarding these high budget items, not as matters of liberal principle but in terms of their practical value in successfully defending against the threats Van Creveld predicts will dominate the future and are now dominating our present. The points he raises inevitably lead to questions regarding the viability of the nation state as we know it. I will not look at war the same way after having read this book. Not a comforting read at all, but highly recommended,

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Hans-Christian Bruus
The most inspiring work on war I have ever read
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 15, 2013
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As a recently commissioned officer, I find this work much more inspiring than much of the litterature I have been presented with at the academy. If we fail to appreciate the thoughts and reflections that is presented to us by Creveld, we fail to understand how to grasp the future of warfare and armed conflict. This book is a must-read for all professional officers.

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Kindle Customer
by far the best look at contemporary warfare I have come across
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 11, 2016
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Deeply insightful, by far the best look at contemporary warfare I have come across. Despite being written more than a decade ago the words are as true today as they were in 2000.

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pioneer
Not a quick read but a very worth while one ...
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on September 15, 2015
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Not a quick read but a very worth while one if your interested in the now and future of conflict

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