Understanding War’s Enduring Nature Alongside its Changing Character
Understanding War’s Enduring Nature Alongside its Changing Character by Christopher Mewett, War on the Rocks
… There is something of a feedback cycle in play: social, political, and technological change impact the way wars are fought, and those wars often influence the way society and politics are organized. But war is a subset of politics, of human society—something that the Future of War team seems to have just as backwards as the technologists and Revolution in Military Affairs advocates who preceded them. The examples they give—gunpowder, small standing armies, and levée en masse—are a perfect illustration of this, as the way each is explained tends to misrepresent the relationship between military change and social and political transformation…