The Utility of Force; The Art of War in the Modern World

London: Allen Lane, 2005. First Edition [stated], presumed first printing. Hardcover. Good/Very good. xvi, 428, [4] pages. Tables. Index. Substantial ink notations observed. This work is a a treatise on modern warfare that explains why the best military forces in the world win their battles but lose the wars. This is due to the paradigm change in military activity, from industrial warfare to the paradigm identified in the book as "war amongst the people"—a situation in which an outcome cannot be resolved directly by military force. The strategies for war amongst the people should be analyzed as fighting and winning a linked series of confrontations rather than a series of battles. General Sir Rupert Anthony Smith, KCB, DSO & Bar, OBE, QGM (born 13 December 1943) is a retired British Army officer and author of The Utility of Force. He was a senior commander during the Gulf War, for which he was recognized with the award of the Distinguished Service Order (DSO), and again during the Bosnian War, for which he was recognized with the award of a bar to his DSO. After graduating from the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, Smith was commissioned as a second lieutenant into the Parachute Regiment in December 1964. He has served in East and South Africa, Arabia, the Caribbean, Northern Ireland, Europe and Malaysia. In 1978, he was awarded the Queen's Gallantry Medal for services in Northern Ireland. In October 1990 Major General Smith assumed command of the 1st Armoured Division which he led during the Gulf War. His final assignment was as Deputy Supreme Allied Commander Europe between 1998 and 2001, covering NATO's Operation Allied Force during the Kosovo war. Why do we try to use military force to solve our political problems? And why, when our forces win the military battles does this still fail to solve those problems? It is because the force lacks utility. From Iraq to the Balkans, and from Afghanistan to Chechneya, over the past fifteen years there has been a steady stream of military interventions that have not delivered on their promise for peace, or even political resolution. The Utility of Force explains this anomaly at the heart of our current international system. Smith is a retired general who spent 40 years in the British Army. He was motivated to write the book by his experiences in the Balkans. He commanded the United Nations Protection Force (UNPROFOR) in Bosnia from 1995 to 1996, during which time the Srebrenica massacre occurred and the capital, Sarajevo, was under siege by Serb forces. Smith was instrumental in the lifting of the siege by arranging for NATO air strikes and an artillery barrage. This enabled a ground assault by Bosnian and Croatian forces that ended the siege and led to the Dayton Agreement. Smith's second involvement with the Balkans was in 1999 during the Kosovo War, when he was serving as NATO's Deputy Supreme Allied Commander Europe, overseeing air strikes against Serb targets. Smith's thesis, and the central theme of The Utility of Force, is that the world entered a new paradigm of conflict at the end of the 20th and beginning of the 21st centuries, which he calls 'war amongst the people', and that Western, industrialized armies are ill-suited to the new style of warfare. The defining characteristics of 'war amongst the people' are that conflicts tend to be timeless, more political in nature, and fought between parties that are part of, and in amongst, the civilian population rather than between uniformed armies on a battlefield. To prove his theory, Smith provides a detailed history starting with Napoleon, who invented what Smith calls 'industrial warfare'—the paradigm in which the entire resources of the nation were mustered and which culminated in the two world wars. In the second half of the book, Smith states that the advent of nuclear weapons rendered industrial warfare obsolete, but that Western governments and generals refused to acknowledge the new paradigm, which led to several significant defeats in the second half of the 20th century. He provides six themes which characterize modern conflicts and proceeds to analyze each in detail, before dedicating his final chapter to his reflections on his command in Bosnia. He concedes that he did not foresee the Srebrenica massacre, but criticizes UNPROFOR, believing that it was not in a position to act even had the massacre been foreseen and that it had no strategy for effectively intervening in the war. In his conclusion, Smith argues that military force is only part of the solution in modern conflicts, and that it must be combined with political initiatives which together will subdue but not necessarily end the conflict. The Utility of Force was broadly praised by reviewers on both sides of the Atlantic. It was compared favorably with Carl von Clausewitz's treatise On War and American reviewers felt that it contained important lessons for the United States military. Reviewers praised Smith's analysis of modern war and recommended that The Utility of Force ought to be read by politicians and military officers.