The 9/11 Reading List: Future Warfare

Jeremy Black reviews
Another Bloody Century: Future Warfare
By Colin Gray
Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2005

Colin Gray is a master of strategy, literally so in that he has played a role as British and American government adviser in strategic policy areas, and, intellectually, because he is the author of a number of relevant and perceptive studies, including Modern Strategy (1999), Strategy for Chaos: Revolutions in Military Affairs and the Evidence of History (2002) and The Sheriff: America’s Defense of the New World Order (2003). His particular skills are his fine understanding of the nuances of American strategic culture and institutional practice and his willingness to appreciate the complexities of historical processes – the latter, alas, not a characteristic of most of those in his field, for Gray is a professor of international politics and strategic studies. Readers of this journal will particularly welcome the absence of such characteristics of all-too-much theoretical work as complicated mathematical formulations about international systems, and abstract reflection on the nature of the subject. Gray briefly mentions the debate between realists and liberal optimists, but he ably avoids framing the discussion in the book in terms of the contours and vocabularies of this, and other, debates.

Gray begins by warning about the perils of prediction, provides political, social and cultural contexts for the importance of war, questions the emphasis on technological determinism, assesses the likely nature of future regular and irregular warfare, considers weapons of mass destruction, space mounted-weaponry and cyberwarfare, all of which are seen as different forms of weaponry, not paradigm-busters, and discusses the issue of whether wars can be controlled: in some cases, he believes, they should not be, so that issues can be settled through conflict. Gray argues that war is a constant feature of the human condition, albeit one of a highly variable nature that requires historicist assessment; that, although irregular warfare may be dominant for some years, a Sino-Russian axis is emerging to oppose the USA globally; that warfare is best understood in a political context, but that this needs to be considered in the light of cultural pressures; that war and warfare do not always change in an evolutionary, linear fashion; and that attempts to regulate war are problematic.

The range of reference is impressive, the writing clear, the book excellent value as a hardback. By its nature, writing about the future is a difficult exercise. I had a shot in War and the New Disorder in the 21st Century (London: Continuum, 2004), and, considering Gray’s first-rate book in light of my own efforts, I would say he is better on the American side and on new technology, but possibly not sufficiently interested in the problems posed by civil conflict, and the related issue of how best to define war. The latter is not an abstract one if you are sent to deal with armed drug-dealers in a failed state.

I agree entirely that we need to prepare both militarily and strategically for the consequences of great power confrontation: is it sensible, for example, for Britain to become dependent on Soviet gas; and, given Franco-German willingness to look at the Sino-Russian axis to balance the USA – not an easy or prudent policy to pursue safely or securely – is not the Blair Government’s European policy based on a strategic fallacy? At the same time, most conflict will continue to be in the ‘Third World’, much of it at the sub-state level that International Relations (IR) theorists find so elusive because it does not match their criteria; and those who write on war, whether IR specialists or military historians, will doubtless persist in giving this warfare short shrift.

Jeremy Black
University of Exeter
Author of Introduction to Global Military History (Routledge, 2005) and World War II (Routledge, 2003)

This book review was first published in the RUSI Journal (Vol. 150, No. 4, August 2005).