Martin Shaw, The New Western Way of War: Risk-Transfer War and Its Crisis in Iraq, Polity 2005

Contents 

Acknowledgements; Introduction

1          The New Western Way of War from Vietnam to Iraq

            The crisis of modern Western warfare

            The Falklands-Malvinas War (1982)

After the Cold War: the Gulf War (1991)

Humanitarian intervention and the Kosovo War (1999)

The Global War on Terror: from Afghanistan (2001) to Iraq (2003)

Conclusion           

2          Theories of the New Western Way of War

            A Western way of war

The revolution in military affairs

The new American way

Spectator-sport, virtual and virtuous war

Ways of war, modes of warfare

Ways of war in total warfare

3          The Global Surveillance Mode of Warfare

            The world military order and military globalisation

New wars and Western wars

            Transition to the global mode of war

            Massacre and denial in global warfare

            Types of war, wars as imagined economies

4          Rules of Risk-Transfer War

1.      Wars must respond to plausible perceptions of risk to Western interests, norms and values.

2.      Wars must be limited in the risks they create for Western polities, economies and societies.

3.      Wars are exercises in political risk-taking, therefore they must minimise electoral risks for governments - and if possible maximise their gains.

4.      Wars must anticipate the problems of global surveillance.

5.      These are quick-fix wars, strictly time-limited.

6.      Wars must be limited spatially to distant zones of war.

7.      Wars must, above all, minimise casualties to Western troops.

8.      Western forces should rely heavily on airpower and look to others to take risks on the ground.

9.      The enemy must be killed: efficiently, quickly and discreetly.

10.  Risks of 'accidental' civilian casualties must be minimised, but small massacres must be regarded as inevitable.

11.  Wars rely on 'precision weaponry' to sustain their legitimacy.

12.  Suffering and death must be unseen: indirect, less visible and less quantifiable life-risks are more acceptable.

13.  Longer-term, post-war risks must be spread as widely as possible through an international division of labour.

14.  'Humanitarianism' and 'humanitarian' organisations must be annexed, to compensate for violence against civilians.

15.  Media management is essential: it maintains the narratives that explain the images of war.

Risk-transfer war and militarism

5          Iraq: Risk Economy of a War

Defining and imagining political risks

Risk-exposure and risk-experience:

1.      Western military personnel - the 'blood price'

2.      Civilians - the 'equation' with soldiers' lives

3.      Indirect risks - 'unseen' harm

Body counting: measuring the risk economy

Risk rebound: life-risks and political risk

6          A Way of War in Crisis

            The Global War on Terror as an ideological framework

Militarisms of massacre

Just war theory and risk-transfer war

Human rights and the illegitimacy of war

Crisis of the Western way of war

            Alternatives to war?