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

“War no longer exists,” writes General Sir Rupert Smith, powerfully reminding us that the clash of mass national armies—the system of war since Napoleon—will never occur again. Instead, he argues in this timely book, we must be prepared to adapt tactics to each conflict, or lose the ability to protect ourselves and our way of life.

General Smith draws on his vast experience as a commander in the 1991 Gulf War, in Bosnia, Kosovo and Northern Ireland, to give us a probing analysis of modern war and to call for radically new military thinking. Why, he asks, do we use armed force to solve our political problems? And how is it that our armies can win battles but fail to solve the problems?

From Iraq to the Balkans, and from Afghanistan to Chechnya, Smith charts a stream of armed interventions that have failed to deliver on promises of resolution. He demonstrates why today’s conflicts must be understood as intertwined political and military events. He makes clear why the current one-size-fits-all model of total war, fought out on battlefields, that politicians still cling to must be abandoned in favor of new strategies that take into account the fact that wars are now fought among civilian populations. And he offers a compelling new model for how to fight these battles—and secure our world.

Clear, incisive and provocative, The Utility of Force will fundamentally change the way we understand war.

In this new study, Dr. James Lebovic challenges the widely held view that many current US adversaries cannot be deterred. He maintains that deterrence is not a relic of the Cold War period and that it should shape US policies toward even so-called rogue states and terror groups. Prof Lebovic makes the case that deterrence principles continue to apply by focusing upon the "three pillars" of the Bush administration's national security policy:

(1) missile defense which preoccupied the administration until September 11, 2001;
(2) preemption which became the US focus with the September 11 attacks and US success in overthrowing the Taliban regime in Afghanistan; and
(3) homeland security which the administration has portrayed as more a natural response to threat than an aspect of policy that must be reconciled with the other pillars.
The author asserts that bad offenses and defenses have been endemic to the current US policy approach. As a consequence, US policymakers have pursued policies that require the US to do everything, as if more is always better, without adequate concern for resource trade-offs, overreach, and unintended consequences.

This book will be of great interest to students of US foreign policy, national and international security, terrorism and international relations in general.

Much recent writing about international politics understandably highlights the many changes that have followed from the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War. This book, by contrast, analyzes an important continuity that, the author argues, will characterize international strategic affairs well into the new century: nuclear deterrence will remain at the core of the security policies of the world's great powers and will continue to be an attractive option for many less powerful states worried about adversaries whose capabilities they cannot match.

The central role of nuclear deterrence persists despite the advent of a new international system in which serious military threats are no longer obvious, the use of force is judged irrelevant to resolving most international disputes, and states’ interests are increasingly defined in economic rather than military terms. Indeed, the author suggests why these changes may increase the appeal of nuclear deterrence in the coming decades.

Beginning with a reconsideration of nuclear deterrence theory, the book takes issue with the usual emphasis on the need for invulnerable retaliatory forces and threats that leaders can rationally choose to carry out. The author explains why states, including badly outgunned states, can rely on nuclear deterrent strategies despite the difficulty they may face in deploying invulnerable forces and despite the implausibility of rationally carrying out their threats of retaliation. In the subsequent empirical analysis that examines the security policies of China, Britain, and France and taps recently declassified documents, the author suggests that the misleading standard view of what is often termed rational deterrence theory may well reflect the experience, or at least aspirations, of the Cold War superpowers more than the logic of deterrence itself.

Case studies assessing the nuclear deterrent policies of China, Britain, and France highlight the reasons why their experience, rather than that of the more frequently studied Cold War superpowers, better reflects the strategic and economic factors likely to shape states’ security policies in the twenty-first century. The book concludes by drawing out the implications of the author’s theoretical and empirical analysis for the future role of nuclear weapons.

Coercion, Cooperation and Ethics in International Relations brings together the recent essays of, Richard Ned Lebow, one of the leading scholars of international relations and U.S. Foreign Policy. Lebow's work has centered on the instrumental value of ethics in foreign policy decision making and the disastrous consequences which follow when ethical standard are flouted. Unlike most realists who have considered ethical considerations irrelevant in states' calculations of their national interest, Lebow has argued that self interest, and hence, national interest can only be formulated intelligently within a language of justice and morality. The essays here build on this pervasive theme in Lebow's work by presenting his substantive and compelling critique of strategies of deterrence and compellence illustrating empirically and normatively how these strategies often produce results counter to those that are intended. The last section of the book, on counterfactuals, brings together another set of related articles which continue to probe the relationship between ethics and policy. They do so by exploring the contingency of events to suggest the subjective, and often self-fulfilling, nature of the frameworks we use to evaluate policy choices.

With a new substantive introduction that will place the essays in the context of Lebow's comprehensive views on ethics and foreign policy, this book will be a major statement by a major thinker in international relations.

Fighting crime breeds emotional responses which often lead to counter-productive government policy. To allow a rational analysis of these important concerns, this book employs the thinking of economics, political science, and game theory to develop new perspectives on crime and its causes. A basic assumption is that the criminal is a rational actor who makes decisions based on his or her personal expected gains and costs. By using this assumption, predictions about behaviour as well as emotional concerns such as prostitution and gun control are given a theoretical perspective. By understanding the strategic variables which cause, for example, gang wars and drug sales, we are better equipped to design effective public policy.

In the new edition, a chapter on police corruption has been added. The Gangs chapter has been updated and focuses more on evaluating competing hypotheses about gang organization and activity.

Sieberg is full of surprises. She ignores the emotional and moral aspects of a few select current issues, and goes straight to the rational self interested calculations of the hypothetical individual who is considering whether to be content to earn the going legal wage (perhaps slave wages), or to commit a potentially much more profitable crime. That list of current issues includes mandatory prison sentencing, the three strikes and you're out laws, the privatization of prisons, prostitution, drugs, gangs, and gun control. On the basis of this analysis she makes a few suggestions as to what may be better and more rational legal policy; for example, regarding prison sentencing and alternative means of punishing criminals, she concludes with the following:

"This analysis indicates that a hybrid policy of imprisoning violent criminals and imposing alternative sentences on nonviolent criminals would be superior in terms of fulfilling society's goals. The maintenance of the prisons for violent offenders would provide protection of the public, both by incapacitation of those who are violent and by deterring others from the use of violence. Alternative sentencing [such as community service and repaying the victim with the earnings] could yield an improvement over the current system in terms of retribution, rehabilitation, and deterrence - but only if done seriously and carefully. Importantly, this more positive form of sentencing [as opposed to imprisonment], involving some form of repayment, reduces the individual and social cost of crime."
--page 33.

This book appears to be an expansion of work the author began as a student of Donald Saari, who is currently perhaps the world's leading mathematician in the field of social choice theory. My personal interest in this book stems from reading Saari's latest book, _Decisions and Elections_ (Cambridge University Press, 2001), where he briefly describes the nature of some of Sieberg's results, and explains how those results are related to the unintended loss of crucial but available information or action, and how that screws up decision making processes and public policies.

Using the tools of theoretical economics and decision theory with some basic algebra and calculus, Sieberg helps us look at the decision making process of those who consider whether to commit this crime or that, or no crime at all. We see the world through the eyes of the rational criminal, or potential criminal, and are surprised to see how some laws actually create incentives for increased crime. Beginning with the famous "Prisoner's Dilemma," an important abstract model of decision making, Sieberg formalizes the rational strategic thinking of criminals and potential criminals, and shows how they may calculate the probable costs and benefits of their various legal and illegal options.

Consider the case of marijuana sales or prostitution, where Sieberg notes that both the buyer and seller are committing a crime. What happens if one of them is ripped off by the other? They don't have legal recourse, of course, given that they prefer to avoid imprisonment, public humiliation or a fine. Sieberg shows how this sort of situation arises throughout the underground economic world, and this creates a force which tends to create and grow criminal gangs, pimps, etc., to which they may turn for justice. It is widely recognized that the mafia in the US is largely a child of the underground economy which was created by the prohibition of alcohol. We were soon forced to recognize our mistake in that case, but we apparently haven't fully learned our lesson yet. According to Sieberg's analysis, the current prohibition of drugs and prostitution fosters a similar crime laden underground economy.

There is room for criticism, of course. The author takes issue after issue, and argues that a consequence of prohibiting that product or activity will likely be to foster a black market. This may be true, it seems to me, but aren't there cases where there is no better alternative to prohibiting it? How about the case of human slavery, or the sale of the flesh of chimpanzees and other nonhuman great apes in gourmet restaurants? What is the difference between slavery and alcohol, which makes one (apparently) immune to the black market argument, but not the other? Isn't there a similar argument that the prohibition of slavery or chimpanzee dinners creates a black market incentive? I suppose that the difference is that there are some extenuating circumstances that need to taken into account, whatever they may be, which clearly tip the scale in favor of the prohibition of slavery or chimpanzee steaks, but not alcohol. I suspect that the relevant differences lie in the "victimless crime nature of prostitution, drugs and alcohol, on the one hand, and in the overridingly strong interest of vulnerable individuals, on the other hand, against being legally categorized and treated as mere property. That is, I suppose the essential difference is in the relative strength of the interests of the victim and the offender, which relates back to Saari's book and his analysis of (1998 Nobel Laureate) Amartya Sen's important theorem that individual and societal rights are incompatible.

Sieberg is full of surprises. She ignores the emotional and moral aspects of a few select c urrent issues, and goes straight to the rational self interested calculations of the hypothetical individual who is considering whether to be content to earn the going legal wage (perhaps slave wages), or to commit a potentially much more profitable crime. That list of current issues includes mandatory prison sentencing, the three strikes and you're out laws, the privatization of prisons, prostitution, drugs, gangs, and gun control. On the basis of this analysis she makes a few suggestions as to what may be better and more rational legal policy; for example, regarding prison sentencing and alternative means of punishing criminals, she concludes with the following:

This analysis indicates that a hybrid policy of imprisoning violent criminals and imposing alternative sentences on nonviolent criminals would be superior in terms of fulfilling society's goals. The maintenance of the prisons for violent offenders would provide protection of the public, both by incapacitation of those who are violent and by deterring others from the use of violence. Alternative sentencing such as community service and repaying the victim with the earnings could yield an improvement over the current system in terms of retribution, rehabilitation, and deterrence - but only if done seriously and carefully. Importantly, this more positive form of sentencing [as opposed to imprisonment], involving some form of repayment, reduces the individual and social cost of crime.--page 33.

Using the tools of theoretical economics and decision theory, Sieberg helps us look at the decision making process of those who consider whether to commit this crime or that, or no crime at all. We see the world through the eyes of the rational criminal, or potential criminal, and are surprised to see how some laws actually create incentives for increased crime. Beginning with the famous Prisoner's Dilemma, an important abstract model of decision making, Sieberg formalizes the rational strategic thinking of criminals and potential criminals, and shows how they may calculate the probable costs and benefits of their various legal and illegal options.

Consider the case of marijuana sales or prostitution, where both the buyer and seller are committing a crime. What happens if one of them is ripped off by the other? They don't have legal recourse, of course, given that they prefer to avoid imprisonment, public humiliation or a fine. This sort of situation arises throughout the underground economic world, and this creates a force which tends to create and grow criminal gangs, pimps, etc., to which they may turn for justice. It is widely recognized that the mafia in the US is largely a child of the underground economy which was created by the prohibition of alcohol. We were soon forced to recognize our mistake in that case, but we haven't fully learned our lesson yet. The current prohibition of drugs and prostitution fosters a similar crime laden underground economy, but those bad policies remain with us to this day.

There is room for criticism, of course. The author takes issue after issue, and argues that a consequence of prohibiting that product or activity will likely be to foster a black market. This may be true, it seems to me, but aren't there cases where there is no better alternative to prohibiting it? How about the case of human slavery, or the sale of the flesh of chimpanzees and other nonhuman great apes in gourmet restaurants? What is the difference between slavery and alcohol, which makes one (apparently) immune to the black market argument, but not the other? Isn't there a similar argument that the prohibition of slavery or chimpanzee dinners creates a black market incentive? I suppose that the difference is that there are some extenuating circumstances that need to taken into account, whatever they may be, which clearly tip the scale in favor of the prohibition of slavery or chimpanzee steaks, but not alcohol. I suspect that the relevant differences lie in the "victimless crime nature of prostitution, drugs and alcohol, on the one hand, and in the overridingly strong interest of vulnerable individuals, on the other hand, against being legally categorized and treated as mere property. That is, I suppose the essential difference is in the relative strength of the interests of the victim and the offender, which relates back to Saari's book and his analysis of Amartya Sen's Theorem regarding the conflict between individual and societal rights.

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Corrections: A Concise Introduction
James F. Quinn
Manufacturer: Waveland Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 1577662466

During in the Cold War, there was a very large debate amongst students of strategy and national security about how to use or threaten to use nuclear weapons. Numerous books were published on topics like brinkmanship, MAD, limited retaliation, and first strikes. In many ways, _Nuclear Deterrence Theory_ is the culmination of this literature and the answer to many of questions posed within it.

In _Nuclear Deterrence Theory_, Powell uses game theory to address the topics listed above. His analysis shows that there are widespread misconceptions regarding some of these topics. Moreover, the use of game theory provides insights into new dynamics within nuclear strategy. In general, although this may not be his aim, Powell causes the reader to appreciate how much warfare has changed since 1945 and how new ways of looking at strategy are needed.

Some readers might worry that the use of game theory, and the accompanying mathematical formulas, would be drawback to the book. However, Powell's writing is sufficiently explanatory to enforce his points and make the game theoretical analysis clear.

The real drawback to the book is the price. Why a publisher would charge so much for a book is beyond me. It certainly discourages anyone, including experts in the field interested in Powell's work, from buying the book.