The Utility of Force: The Art of War in the Modern World (review)

General Sir Rupert Smith's The Utility of Forcefirst came out in the United Kingdom in 2005. A major (400 page) theoretical work on the nature of warfare, the book received widespread acclaim, hailed in The Economistand New York Timesas a major contribution to the study of war. Niall Ferguson even dubbed Smith "the Clausewitz of low-intensity conflict and peace-keeping operations."

Smith wrote The Utility of Forceafter forty years in the British Army. His commands included the UK Armoured Division in the Gulf War, UN forces in Bosnia in 1995, and UK forces in Northern Ireland from 1996 to 1999. He finished his career as the deputy commander of NATO during the Kosovo War. The Utility of Forceis informed by this career but stands as a historical and theoretical work in its own right.

Smith's main argument is that total war is dead: "war as cognitively known to most non-combatants, war as battle in a field between men and machinery, war as a massive deciding event in a dispute in international affairs: such war no longer exists" (p. 1). Since 1945, a new paradigm has taken hold, which Smith dubs "war amongst the people," (p. 3) a wonderfully English phrase that transcends the sterility of like-minded concepts such as "limited war," "low-intensity conflict," "unconventional warfare," or "stability operations."

Wars amongst the people have six characteristics, all of which pertain to post-1945 warfare: ends are malleable objectives inherent in dealing with non-state opponents rather than the hard objectives of defeating other states; civilians crowd the battlefield, both literally and—because of the media—figuratively; conflicts tend to be "timeless," spanning decades; states are risk averse and "fight so as not to lose the force"; old industrial-age weapons remain the instruments of war; and the sides are often non-state actors, whether they be a coalition or guerrilla group (p. 17).

To be clear, the advent of wars amongst the people, in Smith's view, does not preclude conventional wars. Hence the Arab-Israeli wars and the Korean War. It does mean that such wars no longer go all the way; nuclear weapons have made that too costly. The aim is not: "to forcibly attain a decisive outcome by the direct application of military force." Instead, Smith contends that today states at odds with one another shift between periods of "conflict" and "confrontation", in which the aim "is to influence the opponent, to change or form an intention, to establish a condition and, above all, to win the clash of will" (p. 182). In this sense, recent conventional-style fighting in Georgia and Lebanon must have come as no surprise to Smith.

The idea that the era of total war has ended is hardly new for historians or political scientists. Smith explains it well, though, and the concept of conflict and confrontation is a useful one.

The book focuses on the strategic level of warfare and is neither a tactical nor operational guidebook. In fact, one of Smith's major points is that generals need to be prepared to adapt; there are no rules to winning wars amongst the people (begging whether there can be set doctrine or force structure). In Smith's words, "on every occasion that I have been sent to achieve some military objective…I…have had to change our method and reorganize…Until this was done we could not use our force effectively. On the basis of my lengthy experience, I have come to consider this as normal" (p. x).

To illustrate the nature of war amongst the people, Smith dedicates a chapter to his own Bosnia experiences. The chapter serves its purpose and also is an engaging source on the conflict's culmination in 1995.

The major problem with The Utility of Forceis its length. After introducing his ideas about the changed...