The Changing Face of War (van Creveld, 2008)

The Changing Face of War (van Creveld, 2008)

One of the most influential experts on military history and strategy has now written his magnum opus, an original and provocative account of the past hundred years of global conflict. The Changing Face of War is the book that reveals the path that led to the impasse in Iraq, why powerful standing armies are now helpless against ill-equipped insurgents, and how the security of sovereign nations may be maintained in the future.

While paying close attention to the unpredictable human element, 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, with the memories of eighteenth-century wars still fresh. Armies were still led by officers riding on horses, messages 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.

p.89-90 John Frederick Fuller...made great effort to discover the principles of war, of which he settled on nine: direction, concentration, distribution, determination, surprise, endurance, mobility, offensive action, and security... even barring his most extreme ideas - say, that armies should consist of tanks alone and every infantryman provided with his individual tankette - many of his suggestions have come to pass.

p.142 The principal constraints on production were...

p.157 it was only logistical constraints that really compelled the Red Army to halt.

p.149 The Germans were also the first to use electronic navigation aids, sending out electronic beams that aircraft could receive and use to orient themselves. The British countered by generating their own beams intended to mislead the Germans, and so on in an endless series of moves and countermoves

p.174 the number of bombs available ceased to present a serious constraint for planning purposes.