In an interview on War

Let’s move on to your next book, by Rupert Smith.

This book is really the transition from Clausewitz and Walzer to today. Smith was a commander in Bosnia and the Deputy Supreme Allied Commander Europe 1998-2001. He explains that the era of industrial war, of Clausewitzian war, is over, that war is not fought by soldiers against other soldiers any more. It’s a hugely important change. He says that war as a battle in a field with men and machinery no longer exists. There is no distinction any more between combatant and non-combatant – war is amongst the people, against the people. Clausewitzian war reached its apex in World War II.

Is he talking about his experience in Bosnia?

He is, but he starts with the Boer War which he sees as the first war amongst the people. He talks about Chairman Mao’s guerrilla theory which said that the guerrilla force should always avoid battle and instead try to control territory by winning the support of the people and then trying to wear down the enemy through sporadic attacks and undermining their political support. But, as a student of Clausewitz, he concluded that you have to fight conventional war in the end. Che Guevara followed a similar theory with similar results.

So they behave like drug dealers fighting for territory?

Yes. Contemporary warfare is just like drug dealers. The nasty guys control the territory but not by winning hearts and minds as in the theories of Mao and Che – but by spreading fear and hatred. Smith argues that there is no longer a clear distinction between war and peace.

In an interview on The Thrill of Diplomacy

And The Utility of Force?

The last three books had ‘peace’ in the title – but war is actually the crucial component of the understanding of the role of diplomacy in the world. This is the one book I’ve chosen that is actually a visionary work. Rupert Smith was a professional soldier who became Deputy Supreme Allied Commander in NATO. Throughout his career he was the intellectual, and the military are sometimes a little intolerant of intellectuals, but the modern soldier has come to be a very thinking and imaginative player if he or she does the job well.

What Smith sees is that making war, or threatening war or the use of force, has increasingly had to encompass the disciplines usually understood in diplomacy, just as diplomacy itself has changed. Whereas at the time of Daniele Varè it was actually quite important which corner of your visiting card you turned down when you left it at the legation, a century on what we are looking at in difficult diplomatic situations has the layers I mentioned with the Dayton Agreement, of: Where are the media in this? How are we going to carry out civil implementation of a diplomatic agreement that ends a war? And Smith understands this terribly well.

One of his great purple passages is about how the wars of the future will not take place with hard power, or in terms of traditional military logistics, but will be about the soft power of people’s minds, and trying to get inside them. This book got a bit of a mixed reception, but very quickly it was read by staff officers and staff colleges and taken into the curriculum, and I think the really ground-breaking impact of his insights is now recognised all round.

How much is it about the direct application of force?

He has a wonderful military historical survey at the beginning, and he explains, through two World Wars, that what often made the difference were particular talents – what was taking place inside the minds of men. His greater originality is in seeing the importance of non-state actors. I think what he traces very well is that, after the almost phoney war of the Cold War, it made us think that things could be fixed for a generation or two. But the world we inhabit now – with questions of WMD, letter bombs and terrorism by the least likely suspects – that requires an understanding by diplomats of this interface of war in peacetime societies, and an expectation of soldiers to see beyond their immediate military brief.

Does he think we’re there yet?

When he wrote this in 2005, he was suggesting new directions. Good soldiers have caught up with where he was and in certain respects taken it further now. But good books show their age eloquently. And I bet he’s got a good next book in him.