Routledge Handbook of the Future of Warfare by Gruszczak, Artur; Kaempf, Sebastian;

Short description:

This handbook provides a comprehensive, problem-driven and dynamic overview of the future of warfare.

Long description:

This handbook provides a comprehensive, problem-driven and dynamic overview of the future of warfare.

The volatilities and uncertainties of the global security environment raise timely and important questions about the future of humanity’s oldest occupation: war. This volume addresses these questions through a collection of cutting-edge contributions by leading scholars in the field. Its overall focus is prognostic rather than futuristic, highlighting discernible trends, key developments and themes without downplaying the lessons from the past. By making the past meet the present in order to envision the future, the handbook offers a diversified outlook on the future of warfare, which will be indispensable for researchers, students and military practitioners alike. The volume is divided into six thematic sections. Section I draws out general trends in the phenomenon of war and sketches the most significant developments, from the past to the present and into the future. Section II looks at the areas and domains which actively shape the future of warfare. Section III engages with the main theories and conceptions of warfare, capturing those attributes of contemporary conflicts which will most likely persist and determine the dynamics and directions of their transformations. The fourth section addresses differentiation and complexity in the domain of warfare, pointing to those factors which will exert a strong impact on the structure and properties of that domain. Section V focuses on technology as the principal trigger of changes and alterations in the essence of warfare. The final section draws on the general trends identified in Section I and sheds light on how those trends have manifested in specific local contexts. This section zooms in on particular geographies which are seen and anticipated as hotbeds where future warfare will most likely assume its shape and reveal its true colours.

This book will be of great interest to students of strategic studies, defence studies, war and technology, and International Relations.

'The editors have assembled an impressive and diverse collection of experts to describe and analyze how state and non-state actors will likely wield violence in the future. Taking a comprehensive and cutting-edge perspective, the volume covers a broad range of topics from new concepts of warfare to novel technologies of coercion and violence. This important volume will become a must-read for those seeking to understand how technology and trends will shape future warfare.'

Nina Tannewald, Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island, USA

'Any book that seeks to comprehensively survey not only the current landscape of military and security studies but also its volatile future sets for itself a daunting task, but this extraordinarily wide-ranging volume delivers the goods. Assembling an array of accomplished authors from a refreshingly broad range of national, geopolitical, and epistemological perspectives, The Routledge Handbook of the Future of Warfare is in equal parts informative and thought-provoking, offering a combination of sophisticated theory and insightful analysis of recent and contemporary events "on the ground." This book will be an indispensable resource for anyone looking to understand twenty-first century warfare in all its complexity, with particular appreciation of the paradoxical interplay between cutting-edge technology and elemental patterns of human conflict.'

Ward Thomas, College of the Holy Cross, Worcester, Massachusetts, USA

'Thinking about the future of war is by definition a difficult task. The speed, the secrecy, the intangible nature of strategy and culture make it perhaps the most difficult intellectual challenge to encounter. This book meets this challenge brilliantly. It invites reflection, change of perception, innovative thinking, addresses old and new questions we have about what is to come when it comes to war. It brings together the greatest minds of our times, and fills an important gap in the landscape on all things future.'

Florence Gaub, Research Director, NATO Defence College in Rome

‘[…] the two editors, Artur Gruszczak, chair of National Security at Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Poland, and Sebastian Kaempf, associate professor at the University of Queensland Australia, have brought together a stellar group of over 40 contributors to produce a comprehensive publication on future warfare. …. The result is a diverse publication presenting a variety of theoretical and epistemological perspectives to understand the research and debates on the foreseeable future of warfare.’

Raymond Steenkamp Fonseca, Scientia Militaria, Vol. 52, No.3, 2024

Table of Contents:

Introduction: Gazing into the Future Of Warfare  Part I: Approaching Future Wars  1. Strategic Foresight and Future War: A Discussion of Methodologies  2. Predicting the Future of War in the 21st Century: A Future War Studies?  3. Thinking About the Future of War  4. Human Security in Future Military Operations  5. Great Powers and War in the Twenty-First Century: Blast from the Past  6. The Ecology of Violence  7. Militainment for Future Warfare  Part II: The Systemic Variables of the Future of Warfare  8. How our Accelerating Interactions in Cyberspace Have Shifted Global Power and Made a Kinetic World War More Likely: The Riddle of Steel  9. State Fragility as a Major Challenge to the Existing World Order: "Too Fragile to Hold the World"  10. Lawfare in the 21^st Century  11. Privatization of Warfare  12. Terrorism: The Never-Changing Chameleon  13. Deterritorialization and Violent Networks  Part III: Concepts and Theories of Future Warfare  14. Understanding Western Perceptions of War and Insecurity: Unravelling Hybridity  15. Irregular and Unconventional Warfare  16. The Future of Proxy Wars  17. Remote Warfare: Drivers, Limits, Challenges  18. Vicarious War and the United States: Imperial Antecedents and Anticipations  19. Post-Modern Warfare  Part IV: Structural Complexity   20. The Persistent Appeal of Chaoplexic Warfare: Towards an Autonomous S(War)M Machine?  21. Ethnic Conflict and Modern Warfare  22. Just War Thinking and Wars of Information: War, Not-War, and the Places Between  23. Gender in Future Warfare  24. Intelligence and Awareness  25. Criminality and Delinquency: The Impact on Regional and Global Security  Part V: Technoscience  26. Cybernetics at War: Military Artificial Intelligence, Weapon Systems and the De-Skilled Moral Agent  27. Digitizing the Battlefield: Augmented and Virtual Reality Applications in Warfare  28. Quantum Warfare  29. Lethal Autonomous Weapon Systems and their Potential Impact on the Future of Warfare  30. Military Neuroenhancement  31. High-Energy Laser-Directed Energy Weapons: Military Doctrine and Implications for Warfare  32. Space-Based Systems and Counterspace Warfare  Part VI: Harbingers of Future Warfare  33. Prospects of Great Power Rivalry: Escaping the Tragedy?  34. Internationalized Civil War  35. Challenges to the Nuclear Order: Between Resilience and Contestation  36. Conflict in Cyberspace  37. Large-Scale Criminal Violence in the 21st Century  38. Staging the Conflicts to Come: Visions of the Future-Tracing Security Practices  39. Savage Wars and Conflict Dehumanization