Intro
I have written this book with three central aims in mind.
First, it is intended to provide an accessible, authoritative introduction to the important and painful subject of modern war. The plan is to do this by answering a series of inter-linked and difficult questions. Definition: what is modern war? Causation: what causes modern wars to begin, why do people fight in them, and why do they end? Lived experience: what has the experience of modern war involved? Legacies: what have modern wars achieved?
Second, the book adumbrates a particular argument about the answers to these questions, based on the depressing disjunction between what we so often assume and think and claim about modern war, and its historical reality. What is frequently assumed to be modern in war evaporates on close interrogation. The alleged causes for wars beginning and ending often fail to match the actual reasons behind these developments, and the reasons for people’s fighting in such wars often differ both from the ostensible claims made by or about such people, and also
