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The election of George W Bush to the White House in 2000 and the US response to the Al-Qaeda attacks on mainland USA the following year, seized on this record of success. Seemingly emboldened by the idea that the application of military force could succeed where patient diplomacy and the apparent inertia of the international community as a whole, particularly as manifested in the United Nations (UN), had patently failed, the Bush administration articulated a new doctrine of pre-emption. And at first, it too appeared to be successful, overthrowing the Taliban regime in Afghanistan with almost scornful ease and eradicating the Al-Qaeda bases and training camps from which the 2001 '9/11' attackers had emerged. However, the 2003 invasion of Iraq, as is now broadly recognised, was to prove an altogether different undertaking. It is against this background that Professor Martin Shaw has written his interpretation of 'The New Western Way of War.' Writing as a sociologist, he interprets the past 25 years in terms of an increasing military trend towards, what he terms: "risk-transfer war". By this he opines that the West has been willing to indulge, increasingly, in fighting wars provided that the risks of so doing are kept within 'acceptable' limits. Prima facie, there is little new in this argument. Wars have always been about risk assessment and risk management: the risks of losing, the risks of casualties, the potentially excessive toll on national coffers and the risks of the destruction of infrastructure and the means of production. However, where Martin Shaw becomes interesting, is his suggestion that in a world that is constantly and globally monitored by the media, a new range of risk factors have entered the field. These include: political risks, electoral risks for western leaderships and the risks of human casualties that are tiny in the context of historical norms. In the first half of his book, Martin Shaw helpfully, deftly and succinctly covers the operations in which the West has been involved since the 1982 Falklands War. Simultaneously, he charts the course of doctrinal development that has led through the so-called 'Revolution in Military Affairs', or 'RMA', to the most recent concepts of network centric warfare. A slightly anomaly is the omission of any discussion of 'Effects Based Warfare', that is currently shaping much of European thinking. Nevertheless, his argument is cogent and compelling - and leads to the heart of the book, in which he sets out his fifteen 'rules' for risk-transfer warfare. From the perspective of those who are particularly engaged in studying the relationship between the media, the military and the conduct of wars, Shaw's book is especially helpful because he sets out the manner in which the media today introduces a new strategic factor with which politicians and soldiers alike must deal. Because of its breadth, reach and speed of delivery, the media now provides a global surveillance mechanism that shapes political thinking in a manner that was unthinkable, even a generation ago. Governments are required to account for tactical incidents that might never even have reached the public's attention 30 years ago. Today, Presidents and Prime Ministers are often expected, and required, even to account for the deaths of individual soldiers - a strange thought when considered in the context of the 20,000 British lives lost on the first day of the Somme, just 90 years ago. Having set out his 'rules', Professor Shaw then tests his theory against the current conflict in Iraq, pointing out the strenuous efforts that both the US and British governments originally took to minimise a range of risks including that to their political longevity, even as the casualty figures have mounted and the insurgency has become more intense. If this book has a weakness, it may be this over-concentration on Iraq. At times, the author's thesis seems to be guided more by the manner in which the western media has reported, and continues to report, the war than a more balanced perspective that only historical distance will provide at some time in the future. This criticism aside, Martin Shaw still mounts a compelling argument and his concluding chapter on the relationship between just war theory and risk transfer war is particularly stimulating. In his conclusion, Shaw also argues that the crisis that Iraq has presented for those who have been comfortably developing the theories of the New Western Way of War, should provide an opportunity to reflect on whether warfare is an appropriate way to continue the conduct of international relations in the 21 st century:
Sadly, this seems likely to remain an Elysian field the world is unlikely to reach, at least not in the foreseeable future. It is probably too early to write Iraq off as a wholly failed operation. Iraq may not end up as the Jeffersonian democracy originally conceived by America's neo-conservatives. However, it may yet prosper, and the removal of Saddam and the clear signals that the US and its allies are now anxious to leave, seem to offer Iraqis the prospect of a better future. That said, the Iraq experience seems to place the Bush doctrine of pre-emption firmly in a box marked 'bad ideas'. And the consequence is that, as current dealings with Iran's government are demonstrating, diplomacy and the other levers of the international system, will now be restored to their proper place. Western governments will be less inclined to take the military option first but they are still likely to resort to military means in the face of unprovoked aggression - be that fundamentalist terrorism or otherwise. Martin Shaw's book must not be dismissed as a social polemic on the ills of Iraq. His central thesis about the changing, and expanding, nature of risk and the increasing ability of the media to hold governments to account, is sound. The principal challenge is not that wars will continue to be fought but that they now have to be prosecuted in the full glare of media comment and public attention. The western military establishment has patently still not grasped this new dimension. Future success in warfighting is likely to go as much to the media adept, as to finest militaryAngus Taverner © the war and media network, 2006 |
Martin Shaw 
