Book Reivew: Transformations of Warfare in the Contemporary World by John C. Torpey and David Jacobson.

• Jurisdiction: Derecho Internacional
• Author: Mattingly, David
• Date: 01 January 2017

Torpey, John C., and David Jacobson, eds. Transformations of Warfare in the Contemporary World. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2016. xii + 211 pages. Paperback, $28.95.

This book is a timely collection of essays edited by John Torpey, the director of the Ralph Bunche Institute for International Studies and professor of sociology and history at the City University of New York, and David Jacobson, the founding director of the Global Initiative on Civil Society and Conflict as well as professor of sociology at the University of South Florida. Among the contributing authors is C. Anthony Pfaff, a United States Army colonel and foreign area officer. Pfaff serves as an Army advisor on the Department of State Policy Planning Staff and is a former professor of philosophy at the U.S. Military Academy.

Moving into the twenty-first century, the United States and the rest of the Western World found itself immersed in armed conflicts not defined by the characteristics and laws of warfare seen in many of the past wars. In 2001, the U.S. military was in the midst of a 'Revolution in Military Affairs' and intended to change the Department of Defense into a smaller military that relied on technological advantages rather than traditional brute force to defeat the enemy. However, after the...