Kind Of Warfare Research Articles

Historical Perspectives and Legal Aspects of Cyber Warfare

Historical development of cyber warfare follows three major historical periods: first period follows the technological advances of information technology during the 1980s until the end of the Cold War in 1990, second period is from the end of the Cold War to the terrorist attacks in United States during 11-th september 2001 year and the third period is from the terrorist attacks in United States during 11-th september 2001 year onwards. Each of the mentioned historical periods follows a specific doctrine and strategy of dealing with the national security threats from cyberspace. The world super powers and the world states, introduce appropriate strategies and national policies to deal with the consequences of this kind of warfare. Expression of cyberspace is linked to a short story titled "Burning Chrome" in the 1982 year written by American author William Gibson. In the following years, this word turned out to be conspicuously related to online PC systems. According to NATO, people are part of cyberspace. According to this, NATO defines that cyberspace is more than just internet, including not only hardware, software and information systems, but also peoples and social interaction with these networks. The first cyber warfare weapon ever known in history was Stuxnet. Stuxnet's objective was to physically annihilate a military target. Stuxnet has contaminated more than 60,000 PCs around the world, mostly in Iran. While international cooperation is essential, each nation should in near future develop a National foundation, its own national cyber security strategy, authorities and capabilities. Every nation state, should require effective coordination and cooperation among governmental entities at the national and sub-national levels as well as the private sector and civil society. The main hypothesis of this paper is to present the historical development and perspectives of cyber warfare and accordingly propose the best legal concepts, national doctrines and strategies for dealing with this modern type of warfare.

Piratical slave-raiding – the demise of a Viking practice in high medieval Denmark

ABSTRACT This article explores the demise of the piracy of the Vikings. This piracy consisted in part of slave-raiding and slave-trading, and in these operations the modus operandi was often to kill males and take females as slaves. Although the Danes were Christianized in the late tenth century, this practice persisted in the following centuries. Thus, even in the twelfth century when the Danish waged holy war against the pagan Wends on the southeastern Baltic shore, slave-raiding still seems to have been part of the Danish military practice. However, by then, there was increasing ideological and economic pressure to abandon this kind of warfare. The Church frowned upon the raiding and trading of Christians as slaves, and it increasingly condemned this practice. Moreover, the international trade was changing from being focused on the sale of luxury items such as furs, jewellery and slaves to one dominated by trade in bulk goods. Finally, the Franco-German military practice aimed at controlling land rather than people increasingly superseded the classic Scandinavian one of the raiding. In combination, these developments caused the cessation of Danish slave-raiding in the thirteenth century.

Of Life and Limb: Surgical Repair of the Arteries in War and Peace, 1880–1960 by Justin Barr

Reviewed by: Of Life and Limb: Surgical Repair of the Arteries in War and Peace, 1880–1960 by Justin Barr David S. Jones Justin Barr. Of Life and Limb: Surgical Repair of the Arteries in War and Peace, 1880–1960. Rochester Studies in Medical History. Rochester: University of Rochester Press, 2019. 302 pp. Ill. $85.00 (978-1-58046-966-1). Justin Barr has written a valuable history of medical innovation. His case study—operations to repair injured arteries—presents a classic puzzle. Innovations by surgeons had "revolutionized the potential for vascular surgery" by 1910 (p. 32). Yet forty years later artery repair remained rare. Surgeons instead continued to amputate limbs or ligate arteries. Barr explains this gap between invention and implementation with analyses that explore the causes of therapeutic change, the relationship between war and medicine, and the meaning of efficacy in surgery. At first pass, Of Life and Limb offers a narrow explanation. Artery repair was a simple idea, one that required neither new technology nor elaborate [End Page 530] infrastructure. Since the decision to amputate, ligate, or repair was an emergency, patients played little role in the decision. All that mattered was surgeons' skill and judgment: "In contrast to histories of many surgical innovations that were profoundly shaped by exterior forces, the story of arterial repair revolves around the operation itself, who could perform it, and under what specific conditions" (p. 4). Training was crucial. Barr credits the American Board of Surgery and the American College of Surgeons for increasing the rigor and availability of surgical residencies in the 1930s and 1940s. The average surgeon who worked in MASH units in Korea was more skilled than those in prior wars, and they were able to implement artery repair on a large scale for the first time. When these combat surgeons returned to civilian life, with data that showed the value of artery repair, they transformed vascular surgery. While this might seem like an old-fashioned, internalist argument, Barr executes it convincingly. It is notable that this argument about the primacy of surgical training is made by an author in the midst of his own surgical residency. However, it quickly becomes clear that Barr's arguments reach much farther. He considers "vectors of stasis and change ranging from the broadest social and cultural factors to the most specific technical details" (p. 157). Barr, for instance, acknowledges that war provides a crucible for surgical innovation: "This human carnage and its dehumanizing conditions also instilled an attitude of experimentalism and risk tolerance among some doctors" (p. 7). But only certain kinds of warfare: when combat is dynamic, with field hospitals racing to keep up with advancing and retreating battalions as casualties flood in, surgeons can do little more than triage and amputate. Only when battle lines stabilize, casualties slow, and armies erect more elaborate hospitals can surgeons work more deliberately. This is what happened in the final months of World War II in Europe (but not in the Pacific), and again during the final phase of the Korean War (1951–53). It was there that residency-trained surgeons finally succeeded with artery repair. Many subtler issues contributed. The manure-laden fields of French farms fueled wound infections during World War I; surgeons had little choice but to amputate (p. 42). Antibiotics largely solved this problem in Korea (p. 111). Surgical researchers took advantage of the "governmental penchant for documentation" that produced detailed medical records (p. 7). They benefitted from the professionalization of anesthesiology in the 1930s (p. 92). When surgeons returned to civilian life, the burden of disease had shifted: the rising tide of atherosclerotic vascular disease, urban violence, and motor vehicle trauma created growing demand for vascular surgery. These "contextual changes all occurred outside the operating room but nonetheless proved crucial to the eventual adoption of arterial repair by creating a fertile milieu" (p. 92). One last argument emerges in the conclusion. Surgical innovation is not just about improving efficacy: amputation, after all, offers decisive management of hemorrhaging arteries. Instead, innovation is driven by a desire to develop "less morbid operations" that are better tolerated by patients (p. 159). Barr also highlights crucial mistakes. When Michael DeBakey and Fiorendo...

Australia, the utility of force and the society-centric battlespace

Abstract Greater uncertainty characterizes Australia's strategic environment. Power transitions in the Indo-Pacific test US primacy at a time when Australia as a major US alliance partner is encountering new asymmetric, society-centric threats from state and non-state actors in what is called the ‘cognitive battlespace’. This is a different kind of warfare, utilizing information as military force. Threats take the form of direct manipulation of interconnected, information-rich environments. Securing the national interest from society-centric threats involving the ‘weaponization of information’, especially of social media and the global corporate platforms upon which they operate, poses considerable strategic, conceptual and technological challenges for Australia's civilian and military cyber-defence agencies. We begin by briefly reviewing the evolution of the strategic culture underpinning Australia's understanding and use of military force, arguing that it is shaped largely by historical insecurity borne from a deeply embedded social sense of isolation and an unquestioned strategic imperative to rely on alliances with ‘great and powerful friends’. We give a brief account of Australia's ‘last wars’ which saw it deploy to Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria and note the evolving cyber-enabled changes to the battlefield. We then argue that the new cyber-threats target the domestic fabric of liberal democracies and market economies, posing risks to all military and civilian institutions as well as weakening citizens' belief in the values which underpin them. Finally, we examine Australia's evolving integration with US networked cyber capabilities, and legislative and bureaucratic reforms to counter foreign political interference campaigns, asking whether they are sufficient.

Гібридна війна як геополітичний конфлікт

Мета статті: вивчення феномену гібридної війни як сучасної форми вираження геополітичного конфлікту на основі результатів досліджень вітчизняних і зарубіжних науковців.
 Наукова новизна: поняття гібридної війни варто розглядати не тільки як різновид ведення війни у новітній історії людства. Гібридну війну доцільно кваліфікувати як новітню форму геополітичного конфлікту. Підтвердженням цьому є численні конфлікти, що відбуваються у різних точках планети, які стають виявами кризи попередньої системи міжнародної безпеки. Російська агресія проти України є сьогодні прикладом геополітичного конфлікту та гібридної форми війни, яка впливає і на світовий порядок. Захоплення Російською Федерацією українських територій стало можливим і через послаблення системи світової безпеки. Така ситуація створює потребу формування нових форм геополітичного співіснування.
 Висновки: Конфлікти різних видів пронизують всю історію людства. Міждержавні конфлікти характеризуються особливістю, яка полягає у тому, що вони можуть спричинити масову загибель людей як в країнах – учасницях конфлікту, так і в усьому світі, тобто, сучасні міждержавні конфлікти впливають на міжнародні відносини як локально, так і глобально, що перетворює їх у геополітичний конфлікт. Особливістю України є вразливість її геополітичного положення, зумовленого наявністю кордону з Російською Федерацією, що в умовах агресивної геополітики Російської Федерації спричиняє роль України як буферної зони. Ключовою характеристикою російської гібридної війни є повне ігнорування та пряме порушення базових міжнародних угод. У різні історичні періоди міждержавні конфлікти часто набували різних форм війни. Лише цивілізований розгляд геополітичного конфлікту сприяє залагодженню спірних питань між країнами та створює ситуацію, коли через вплив демократичних міждержавних інституцій унеможливлюється застосування силових методів та знижується інтенсивність гібридної війни. Міжнародне співробітництво – найбільш ефективна стратегія поведінки у геополітичному конфлікті, спрямована на конструктивне обговорення проблеми у пошуках рішення.

Walter Scott and Waterloo

Walter Scott responded very quickly to the defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo and within a few weeks he was at the site of the battle. Even before he left Britain, publicity about his projected poem The Field of Waterloo had appeared in the British press and it was soon followed by publicity for his prose account, Paul's Letters to his Kinsfolk. Faced with a battle quite unlike anything he had written about before, Scott tried, with mixed success, to find a new way of writing about this new kind of warfare. Media coverage of the poem was extensive but most critics disliked the poem and believed he should stick to medieval topics. Paul's Letters were also covered extensively in the print media but were well received, partly because they looked forward to new ways of memorialising war which would dominate the remembering of Waterloo for the coming century.

The projectilic image: Islamic State’s digital visual warfare and global networked affect

Islamic State’s (IS) image-warfare presents an auspicious opportunity to grasp the growing role of digital images in emerging configurations of global conflict. To understand IS’ image-warfare, this article explores the central role of digital images in the group’s war spectacle and identifies a key modality of this new kind of warfare: global networked affect. To this end, the analysis focuses on three primary sources: two Arabic-language IS books, Management of Savagery (2004) and O’ Media Worker, You Are a Mujahid!, 2nd Edition (2016), and a video, Healing the Believers’ Chests (2015), featuring the spectacular burning of a Jordanian air force pilot captured by IS. It uses the method of ‘iconology’ within a case-study approach. I analyze IS’ doctrine of image-warfare explained in the two books and, in turn, examine how this doctrine is executed in IS video production, conceptualizing digital video as a specific permutation of moving digital images uniquely able to enact, and via repetition, to maintain, visual and narrative tension between movement and stillness, speed and slowness, that diffuses global network affect. Using a theoretical framework combining spectacle, new media phenomenology, and affect theory, the article concludes that global networked affect is projectilic, mimicking fast, lethal, penetrative objects. IS visual warfare, I argue, is best understood through the notion of the ‘projectilic image’.

ASSYMETRIC WARFARE - NOT EVERY WAR HAS TO END?

The study of warfare, throughout its history, as well as efforts to legally regulate the resort to war and the conduct of war, were concentrated exclusively on one form of warfare - interstate conflict. Only since the terrorist attacks on Washington and New York in 2001 and the following ‘Global War on Terrorism’ has a discussion on a potentially new kind of warfare - asymmetric warfare - moved into the spotlight. Despite all the scientific attention, the concept of asymmetric warfare remains undefined or ill-defined until today, resulting in a proliferation of its use and limiting its value. Hence, restraint in the use of the term is necessary, in order to reinforce its analytical value and applicability. Defining asymmetric warfare as a conflict among opponents who are so different in their basic features that comparison of their military power is rendered impossible, is such an attempt to limit the term to a substantially new form of warfare, witnessed in a conflict that is often commonly called the Global War on Terrorism. The past two years, since the upsurge of the so-called Islamic State to the forefront of the salafi jihadi movement, have witnessed a significant change in this war. Superficial analysis could lead to the conclusion that the proclamation of the Islamic Caliphate on the territories of Iraq and Syria (for now) seems to have recalibrated this conflict into traditional interstate war again, making the concept of asymmetric warfare obsolete and diminishing it into just a short-term aberration in the history of warfare. Nothing could be further from the truth. The enemy in the Global War on Terrorism was and remains a global and territorially unrestricted ideological movement whose numbers cannot even be estimated, which fights its battles wherever it chooses to, and whose ultimate goal is the annihilation of the international system of sovereign states, not the creation of a new state within this system. The Islamic Caliphate in its current boundaries is nothing more than the “model Islamic state”, as envisioned by Osama bin Laden in his 1996 fatwa as part of Al Qaeda’s 200 year plan for the establishment of God’s Islamic World Order. This grand strategy is the guiding blueprint of the salafi jihad that is waged against the Westphalian state system in a war that is truly asymmetric. We have to adjust to this strategic asymmetry if we are to prevail in this struggle, fighting a long war against an indefinable enemy on battlefields that are still unknown.

Asymmetric Warfare – Not every war has to end?

<i>The study of warfare, throughout its history, as well as efforts to legally regulate the resort to war and the conduct of war, were concentrated exclusively on one form of warfare - interstate conflict. Only since the terrorist attacks on Washington and New York in 2001 and the following ‘Global War on Terrorism’ has a discussion on a potentially new kind of warfare - asymmetric warfare - moved into the spotlight. Despite all the scientific attention, the concept of asymmetric warfare remains undefined or ill-defined until today, resulting in a proliferation of its use and limiting its value. Hence, restraint in the use of the term is necessary, in order to reinforce its analytical value and applicability. Defining asymmetric warfare as a conflict among opponents who are so different in their basic features that comparison of their military power is rendered impossible, is such an attempt to limit the term to a substantially new form of warfare, witnessed in a conflict that is often commonly called the Global War on Terrorism.</i><br><br> <i>The past two years, since the upsurge of the so-called Islamic State to the forefront of the salafi jihadi movement, have witnessed a significant change in this war. Superficial analysis could lead to the conclusion that the proclamation of the Islamic Caliphate on the territories of Iraq and Syria (for now) seems to have recalibrated this conflict into traditional inter- state war again, making the concept of asymmetric warfare obsolete and diminishing it into just a short-term aberration in the history of warfare. Nothing could be further from the truth. The enemy in the Global War on Terrorism was and remains a global and territorially unrestricted ideological movement whose numbers cannot even be estimated, which fights its battles wherever it chooses to, and whose ultimate goal is the annihilation of the international system of sovereign states, not the creation of a new state within this system. The Islamic Caliphate in its current boundaries is nothing more than the “model Islamic state”, as envisioned by Osama bin Laden in his 1996 fatwa as part of Al Qaeda’s 200 year plan for the establishment of God’s Islamic World Order. This grand strategy is the guiding blueprint of the salafi jihad that is waged against the Westphalian state system in a war that is truly asymmetric. We have to adjust to this strategic asymmetry if we are to prevail in this struggle, fighting a long war against an indefinable enemy on battlefields that are still unknown.</i>

Działalność paramilitarnych band rozbójniczych na pograniczu krzyżacko-litewskim w XIV wieku

The aim of this study is to characterise the phenomenon of the bands of brigands ( latrunculi , Struter ) that were active in the Prussian and Livonian lands of the Teutonic Order and in pagan Lithuania. Although the brigands in this region may be regarded as a phenomenon inherited from tribal society, they continued to live, and even prosper, at the time when state-like structures came into being in the region under consideration. Such a situation was mainly conditioned by a stalemate in the war of the Teutonic Order against pagan Lithuania. The Prussian and Livonian brigands were useful for the Order in their subversive actions against the people living in Lithuania, and so, accordingly, were Lithuanian brigands for the grand dukes of Lithuania. The Teutonic Order and the grand dukes of Lithuania alike had only limited capabilities of interfering with the activities of “their” brigands. This is evident from international treaties in which the activities of brigands of both parties are addressed and some stipulations for their containment are provided (as in Lithuanian-Livonian accords of 1323, 1338, 1367). The grand ducal authority and the brigands coexisted on the mutual respect of each other’s rights. Neither side was willing, nor able to undo the other once and for all. One must also bear in mind that the strict lines of delimitation between brigands and warriors were then non-existent. So it comes as no surprise that certain commanders of the Teutonic Order cultivated the methods of brigandage with ambushes. Although the evidence is rather scantier on the Lithuanian part, it is clear that some Lithuanian dukes and warriors practiced this style of warfare too. Although this kind of martial activities was widespread in other parts of Europe as well, the peculiarity of brigandage between the Teutonic Order and Lithuania is to be seen in their attempts to regulate the behaviour of their brigands by treaties. This implies that both sides tended to regard the brigands as something normal and, in a sense, legal. On either side of the frontier there were quite a lot of people who were engaged in this kind of warfare and lived off the neighbouring land’s resources. Consequently they were not interested in a long-term peace and this partly explains why the war between the Teutonic Order and Lithuania was so prolonged.

Between Two Realities

Between Two Realities Lyndee Yamshon (bio) Devangelical. Erika Rae. Emergency Press. http://emergencypress.org. 268 pages; paper, $15.95. Devangelical is an ambivalent coming-of-age tale of a teenage girl wrestling with the pressures of a rigid evangelical childhood and her philosophical, questioning nature. Set in the 1980s, the text is rich with nostalgic lingo of the memoirist’s youthful persona and her humorous but at times excruciating pulls between two realities: evangelical dogma and the “outside” colorful world that often seems more interesting. In the midst of pursuing the religious authenticity spurred on by her church youth leader, Erika Rae finds herself stepping outside her experiences and asking, what is the purpose of all this, or, what was our mission here again…which ultimately adds a smart, metanarrative layer to the text that would otherwise simply read as a personal journey away from a claustrophobic, repressed youth. Rae’s strength is her exuberant, colorful scene-building skills. Rich with characterization, detailed setting, and deadpan dialogue, the reader is immediately drawn into a world of religious extremities without judgment. The author straddles the line between self-mockery and simple, seemingly obvious inquiries, strategies allowing the reader to be fully engaged and entertained with a religious fervor that is foreign to the layperson and made delightfully accessible by the author. One scene involves Rae’s youth group attending a new age festival with the intention of cleansing young heathen souls and spreading the word of Jesus. The youth leader, affectionately referred to as King Richard, a longtime mentor and spiritual guide for the young Rae, suggests the best kind of “spiritual warfare” entails dueling with the devil in his environment by engaging in an onslaught of religious debate, an integral righteous fight for a good evangelical. This kind of warfare is synonymous with many religious fervent groups, involving the notion that the pious must get their hands dirty and risk their own impurity in order to save wayward souls. Rae’s nuanced subtext suggests that evangelicals yearning to help others are actually living vicariously through non-believers by conducting these so-called missions. Everyone is under scrutiny, including the pious, Rae herself, and atheists, so that the reader is instantly immersed in a thoughtful meditation about the pitfalls of belief as well as its potential benefits. Rae captures the rhythmic humor of her mentor Richard’s army-speak as the evangelical troops arrive at a new age festival for conquering: Well soldiers, this is it…. This is what we’ve been training for. Now I don’t want to see anyone do anything stupid or blow our cover in there. No casualties. We’re basically gonna spend one hour in there and then meet back at the front doors at…” he glanced at his camo Swatch, “… eleven hundred hours. Any questions?” Rae as teenaged spiritual warrior observes the surrounding “booths offering the Devil’s services: reflexology, fortune telling…massage…,” and wonders in her usual way, “Why are we here again?”, a pleading question that continues throughout the memoir. In this scenario, no one hears her because “the place was so full of noise, laughter—Steve Nick’s cackles—that they couldn’t hear me.” In truth, the fifteen year old often doesn’t feel heard by either her parents or the evangelical community. The external pressure of the constant religious vigor combined with her own inner doubts creates an undercurrent of anxiety as she pushes along through several misadventures. The reader is taken on a carnival ride into the uncanny chaos of an imposing religious world, and the writer has the ability to suddenly question what’s happening mid-scene without losing the book’s pacing or momentum. The group quickly retreats from the den of sin when Christine, a once staunch evangelical, is found sneaking a picture of her aura in a photo booth and then “wigs out” by quoting “the entire book of Deuteronomy.” Rae’s ironic response to Christine’s being taken in by pagan ritual is not disgust but curiosity, a pattern of inquiry persisting throughout the memoir. “‘What are you talking about?’ I asked incredulously. I had never heard of an aura before—let alone...

Human Interest and Humane Governance in Iraq: Humanitarian War and the Baghdad Zoo

This article argues that the story of the Baghdad zoo in the Iraq war and the ‘human interest’ it attracted are important for the analysis of warfare and humanitarian intervention. The activities at the zoo are notable precisely because they provide a specific site through which to analyse the increasing entanglements between war and humanitarianism, and practices associated with civil–military cooperation. The recovery and reconstruction efforts at the Baghdad zoo brought together a diverse, ad hoc assemblage of civilian, military, local and international actors around a common problem: how to turn a symbol of the tyranny and ‘backwardness’ of the Hussein regime into a space that would foster liberal humane values amongst the Iraqi population. The activities at the zoo thus tell us much about the kind of warfare that not only involves lethal force, but also fosters civilian and military action in reforming a carceral and leisure institution. They also reveal a broader aspiration of reforming the whole Iraqi population around an idea of humane governance, while providing a potentially profitable investment opportunity for foreign speculators.

Armies of heaven: the First Crusade and the quest for apocalypse

At Moson, the river Danube ran red with blood. At Antioch, the Crusaders-- their saddles freshly decorated with sawed-off heads--indiscriminately clogged the streets with the bodies of eastern Christians and Turks. At Ma'arra, they cooked children on spits and ate them. By the time the Crusaders reached Jerusalem, their quest--and their violence-- had become distinctly otherworldly: blood literally ran shin-deep through the streets as the Crusaders overran the sacred city. Beginning in 1095 and culminating four bloody years later, the First Crusade represented a new kind of warfare: holy, unrestrained, and apocalyptic. In Armies of Heaven, medieval historian Jay Rubenstein tells the story of this cataclysmic event through the eyes of those who witnessed it, emphasizing the fundamental role that apocalyptic thought played in motivating the Crusaders. A thrilling work of military and religious history, Armies of Heaven will revolutionize our understanding of the Crusades.

Defining cyber warfare

Cyber conflicts represent a new kind of warfare that is technologically developing very rapidly. Such development results in more frequent and more intensive cyber attacks undertaken by states against adversary targets, with a wide range of diverse operations, from information operations to physical destruction of targets. Nevertheless, cyber warfare is waged through the application of the same means, techniques and methods as those used in cyber criminal, terrorism and intelligence activities. Moreover, it has a very specific nature that enables states to covertly initiate attacks against their adversaries. The starting point in defining doctrines, procedures and standards in the area of cyber warfare is determining its true nature. In this paper, a contribution to this effort was made through the analysis of the existing state doctrines and international practice in the area of cyber warfare towards the determination of its nationally acceptable definition.

Information Warfare: A Philosophical Perspective

This paper focuses on Information Warfare—the warfare characterised by the use of information and communication technologies. This is a fast growing phenomenon, which poses a number of issues ranging from the military use of such technologies to its political and ethical implications. The paper presents a conceptual analysis of this phenomenon with the goal of investigating its nature. Such an analysis is deemed to be necessary in order to lay the groundwork for future investigations into this topic, addressing the ethical problems engendered by this kind of warfare. The conceptual analysis is developed in three parts. First, it delineates the relation between Information Warfare and the Information revolution. It then focuses attention on the effects that the diffusion of this phenomenon has on the concepts of war. On the basis of this analysis, a definition of Information Warfare is provided as a phenomenon not necessarily sanguinary and violent, and rather transversal concerning the environment in which it is waged, the way it is waged and the ontological and social status of its agents. The paper concludes by taking into consideration the Just War Theory and the problems arising from its application to the case of Information Warfare.

‘Cyberation’ and Just War Doctrine: A Response to Randall Dipert

In this essay, I reject the suggestion that the just war tradition (JWT) does not apply to cyberwarfare (CW). That is not to say CW will not include grey areas defying easy analysis in terms of the JWT. But analogously ambiguous cases have long existed in warfare without undercutting the JWT's broad relevance. That some aspects of CW are unique is likewise no threat to the JWT's applicability. The special character of CW remains similar enough to other kinds of warfare; the distinctions are more differences of degree than of kind.

Strategies to Tackle Fourth Generation Warfare (4GW): An Aerial Perspective

The changing nature of warfare, as the twentieth century drew to a close, saw the increased proliferation of conflict between non-state actors and the state. Small wars, wars of liberation, insurgencies, terrorism, proxy wars, sub-conventional warfare and a host of other terminologies emerged that attempted to fingerprint this genre of low spectrum warfare. Initially, it was felt that it was risky to use air power in this kind of warfare and that surface forces were best equipped to fight these wars with only superficial support from air forces. However, as the twenty-first century unfolded, the use of air power in Kargil, Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon and Sri Lanka in diverse roles has sparked off a fresh debate on the effective employment of air power at the lower end of the spectrum of warfare.

The Replacement of the Composite Reflex Bow by Firearms in the Muscovite Cavalry

Muscovite cavalry went over to carbines and pistols during the course of the 17th century, yet firearms were not better handheld weapons than the composite reflex bow that the cavalry had been using. carbine was a light form of musket that could be used on horseback, (1) but it had a very short range. (2) To reload the carbine on a horse was tricky, and a cavalryman had to bring his horse to a more or less full stop or dismount. In the heat of battle, the carbine was just dropped in its sling so the cavalryman could use his sword. (3) Likewise, a cavalryman could get off only one shot a pistol (two shots if he had two pistols) and was effective only at very close range. (4) In contrast, mounted archers could get off anywhere from 6 to 15 shots a minute, and their bows had an effective range of from 350 to well over 500 yards, depending on the quality of the bow, the arrows, and the skill of the bowman. In the hands of truly expert bowmen using flight arrows, distances of from over 600 to over 1,000 yards were reported. (5) composite reflex bow remained until the mid-19th century superior to handheld firearms in terms of accuracy, distance, and number of shots able to be discharged from horseback. question is, why did the Muscovite cavalry go over to carbines and pistols? And why did the Muscovite government support the replacement of the composite reflex bow firearms? Although the evidence to answer these questions ranges from minimal at best to virtually nonexistent in Muscovite sources, I hypothesize that firearms replaced bows for reasons that had little to do the weapons themselves. Instead, changes in tactics limiting the cavalry to a defensive role on campaign and placing it secondary in relation to infantry in battle as well as the difficulty in maintaining a sufficiently large force of horse archer athletes is probably what led to the adoption of firearms. Our evidence does tell us that the Muscovites of the 14th through 16th centuries fought using steppe methods of warfare, including the composite reflex bow. (6) Muscovite strategies, tactics, and weaponry reflected the type of warfare conducted by the Mongols and their successors in the western Eurasian steppe. Light and heavy cavalry whose weaponry and equipment were ideally suited for steppe warfare tactics constituted almost the whole of the Muscovite army during that time. Militaries a little further to the west, such as those of Novgorod and Lithuania, were using European methods of the day, including, in the 15th century, the armored knight lance. evidence from Rus' chronicles is sparse but telling. entry of 1436 describes the Lithuanians fighting with (s kop i). (7) Under 1408 the Nikon Chronicle describes a battle in which the Lithuanians' weapons and style of fighting were inadequate to counter the steppe method of fighting employed by the forces of Emir Edigii (Edigei): The proud prince Svidrigailo his brave Lithuanians did not do well against the foreigners [inoplemenniky], [for] their weapons and all their military skills were crushed [slomibosia]. (8) Muscovite chronicles describe the Novgorodians as also fighting primarily lances. According to the entry for 1456, the chronicles portray a battle between 5,000 Novgorodians, who were using heavy armor and lances, and 200 Muscovites, who were using bows: warriors of the grand prince, noticing the heavy armor on the Novgorodians, began shooting arrows at their horses. horses took fright and began to rush about under them and to throw them from their saddles. They [the Novgorodians] were unfamiliar that kind of warfare and were as dead, and their hands grew weak. Their lances were so long that they could not raise them, as was the usual manner of fighting. They dropped them onto the ground when their horses panicked, and they fell under their horses because they could not master them. …

An Accountability, Written in the Year 2108

This 'archaeology of the future' examines how we, as scholars and anthropologists, will be read—and judged—in the time to come. Twenty-second-century theoreticians may well ask (as we today ask of colonial-era scholarship): Did the scholars in the early twenty-first century see in their analyses new kinds of warfare, unparalleled forms of violence, potentialities yet to be developed? Through an analysis of events likely to unfold over the course of the next 100 years (from chang- ing power constellations to anthropology's attempt to commit disciplin- ary suicide), this article affirms an anthropology that takes ontological reflexivity seriously; that no longer accepts outdated heuristics dividing theory from theoretician from Being (production of the world); and that grounds this approach in an accountability recognizing epistemology as dynamic, honest, and emergent.

Triumph Impossible

November/December 2007 · Historically Speaking 35 Triumph Impossible Jim Dingeman Who has ownership of the meaning of the Vietnam War? This is an especially compelling question in view of our involvement in a new series of difficult conflicts around the world as a result of 9/11—virtually a global counterinsurgency campaign. The U.S. armed forces have had to relearn the sobering lessons of fighting a counterinsurgency war after decades of deliberately turning away from this kind of warfare after Vietnam. A fierce debate rages about the mindset of our senior policy makers concerning what lessons they did or did not take from the Vietnam War as they crafted our intervention into Iraq. Comparisons between the wars in Iraq and Vietnam dominate the U.S. political landscape, and many Americans feel that Iraq is a new Vietnam . Into this imbroglio a new comprehensive interpretation of the Vietnam War has arrived that renders the war as just, necessary, and winnable, a sharp contrast to the view of the majority of Americans who feel, in poll after poll, that the Vietnam War was unjust, unnecessary , and unwinnable. The ideas of Mark Moyar are part of the complicated , diverse body of thought on the issue of why the U.S. lost the Vietnam War. His Triumph Forsaken is the latest book in the long line diat seeks to create a positive image of America's defeat. Moyar cites new scholarship and data that only became accessible after the Cold War ended, as well as Vietnamese sources. Triumph Forsaken is clearly the best expression of conservative scholarship on the Vietnam War in years. For some this work is an act of sartori , for others a case of angina. But whatever the reaction, his opinions cannot be swept under the rug since they reflect the latest neoconservative intellectual reaction to the defeat in Vietnam. Moyar's arguments are actually old wine packaged in new bottles with whip cream and cherries sprinkled on top. His opinions about the nature of Vietnamese communism, his portrayal of Ngo Dinh Diem's regime, and his account of Johnson's war escalation in 1965 will generate much contention. In my opinion, Moyar overestimates the ability of military force to alter a complicated political environment . Moyar's examination of the American attempt to save the beleaguered French garrison at Dien Bien Phu during their occupation of Indochina is such a case. He writes that the use of U.S. airpower during the batde of Dien Bien Phu against the Vietminh "almost certainly would have thwarted their attack . General Maxwell Taylor, special military advisor for President Kennedy, meets with South Vietnam President Ngo Dinh Diem in Saigon on October 23, 1961 , © Bettmann/CORBIS. . . . and left them with sharply reduced capacity for large-unit warfare throughout Indochina." There is no doubt that such a bombing campaign would have disrupted and possibly lifted the Vietminh siege of the French forces at Dien Bien Phu. But then what? One of the greatest opponents of bombing at Dien Bien Phu was U.S. Army Chief of Staff Matthew Ridgway. In his memoir, Soldier, Ridgway looks back on his opposition with pride: "[TJhe thing that I would be most humbly proud of was having fought against, and perhaps contributing to preventing the carrying out of some harebrained tactical schemes which would have cost the lives of thousands of men. To mat list of tragic incidents that fortunately never happened I would add the Indochina intervention ." I disagree emphatically with Moyar's positive view of Diem, a centerpiece of his argument. As Moyar points out, it is clear that Diem, an anticommunist nationalist, was a highly complicated figure. Like some American allies in the Cold War, his power stemmed largely from U.S. support. Moyar decouples Diem from the long history of Vietnamese anticolonialism by reducing Vietnamese communism to merely a tool of international communism . He then valorizes what other historians for decades have seen as Diem's weakness: his narrow basis of legitimacy. Moyar arduously reconstructs the progress of the war on the ground. He argues that the war had been turned around by 1962 and that Diem's ill-timed demise accelerated the subsequent turn...