Postmodern War: The New Politics of Conflict (Critical Perspectives) - Softcover

"Cyberwar, Infowar, Technowar, Antiwar, Postwar. You've seen it on TV, and played the videogame. Now you can read the book that separates the hype from the real in the hyperreality of postmodern war. Chris Hables Gray combines high theory, popular culture, and archival material with an apocalyptic power." --James Der Derian, PhD, University of Massachusetts at Amherst, author of Anti-Diplomacy "Written for both a broad popular audience and for serious intellectuals, Gray's account of postmodern war is animated by a vision of a possible peace. Postmodern war, emerging from the cauldron of World War II, is based on critical mutations in scale, compression of events, expanded battle space, and above all on cyborg weapons systems. Gray richly details the emergence of myriad human-machine weapons systems as they change the face of war and the stakes for peace. Postmodern War provides a sweeping vision of the history of war and the emergence of its specifically late 20th-century form. Alert to paradoxes, Gray shows postmodern war to be a perverse and critical species of progress inextricably linked to globalized technoscience, computers, and information. Gray is attentive to the sensuous pleasures and fierce beauty, and above all to the profound insanity of war and weapons. He asks how war works and what continues to make it possible. The question at the heart of Postmodern War is simple: How did contemporary war, with its obscene proliferating cyborg artifacts and practices, come about? What is different about postmodern war, and how can that difference ground sustained work for peace? Postmodern War is ambitious, large, sometimes rambling, but always compelling in its telling and horrific detail and passionate hope. Postmodern War is written against denial and for the possibility of truly changing the rules of engagement in our war-ready and war-saturated time." --Donna Haraway, PhD, University of California, Santa Cruz "Valuable to people in the military who research and develop how future wars may and can be fought and their effect on military branches." --"Airpower Journal" "A welcome addition to a growing body of literature that explores the changing character of modern war....Political scientists interested in politics and science, politics and the military, peace and war, and virtual and postmodern politics will find it interesting and useful." --"American Political Science Review" "Contains fascinating insights...for anyone with an interest in contemporary affairs, Hables Gray's book provides compelling food for thought." --"Great Falls, MT Tribune" "[Gray's] demonstration of the emotional relationship between humans and 'technoscience' is provocative." --"Publishers Weekly" "Well worth reading....Recommended for all libraries." --"Library Journal"

From Operation Desert Storm to the conflict in Bosnia, computerization and other scientific advances have brought about a revolution in warfare. This book shows how our high-tech age has spawned both increasingly powerful weapons and a rhetoric that disguises their apocalyptic potential in catch phrases like "smart weapons, " "cyberwar, " and "bloodless combat." A skillful combination of trenchant cultural study, provocative illustrations, and engrossing military, technical, and historical analysis, Postmodern War sheds new light on the ways we conceptualize and conduct war today. Analyzing the dynamics of conflicts from Afghanistan to Vietnam, Gray reveals the human forces of nationalism, greed, fear, and images of masculinity beneath the surface of trendy military doctrines such as "pure war" and "infowar." If we can identify and challenge the discourses of war, he persuasively argues, we can propose new discourses to replace them.