Titel
The Changing Face of War : Combat from the Marne to Iraq
Ausgabensprache
Englisch
Autor(en)
Martin van Creveld
Originaltitel
The Changing Face of War
Verlag
Presidio Press
ISBN
0891419020
EAN
9780891419020
Ausgabe
Taschenbuch
Inhalt/Klappentext
Martin van Creveld takes us on a journey from the last century's clashes of massive armies to today's short, high-tech, lopsided skirmishes and frustrating quagmires. Here is the world as it was in 1900, controlled by a handful of "great powers", mostly European, whose armies were still led by officers on horseback and whose messages were conveyed by hand, drum and bugle. As the telegraph, telephone, and radio revolutionized communications, big-gun battleships like the British "Dreadnought", the tank, and the airplane altered warfare.
Van Creveld paints powerful portraits of World War I and World War II, in which greater armies, new weapons, staggering casualties, and technological breakthroughs tramsform the state of combat and conflict. The ongoing development of nuclear weapons during the Cold War shifts nations from fighting wars to deterring them: The number of active troops shrinks and the influence of the military declines as civilian think tanks set policy. War today, van Creveld tells us, is a mix of the ancient and the advanced, as state-of-the-art armies fail to defeat small groups of crudely outfitted guerillas ans terrorists, a pattern that began with Britain's exit from Palestine and culminated in America's misadventures in Vietnam and Iraq.
How to learn from the recent past to reshape the military for this new challenge - how to still save, in a sense, the free world - is the ultimate lesson of this big, bold, and cautionary work. The Changing Face of War is sure to become the standard source on this essential subject.
Van Creveld paints powerful portraits of World War I and World War II, in which greater armies, new weapons, staggering casualties, and technological breakthroughs tramsform the state of combat and conflict. The ongoing development of nuclear weapons during the Cold War shifts nations from fighting wars to deterring them: The number of active troops shrinks and the influence of the military declines as civilian think tanks set policy. War today, van Creveld tells us, is a mix of the ancient and the advanced, as state-of-the-art armies fail to defeat small groups of crudely outfitted guerillas ans terrorists, a pattern that began with Britain's exit from Palestine and culminated in America's misadventures in Vietnam and Iraq.
How to learn from the recent past to reshape the military for this new challenge - how to still save, in a sense, the free world - is the ultimate lesson of this big, bold, and cautionary work. The Changing Face of War is sure to become the standard source on this essential subject.
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