Product Description

Why do we try to use military force to solve our political problems? And why, when our forces win the military battles does this still fail to solve those problems? It is because the force lacks utility. From Iraq to the Balkans, and from Afghanistan to Chechneya, over the past fifteen years there has been a steady stream of military interventions that have not delivered on their promise for peace, or even political resolution. The Utility of Force explains this anomaly at the heart of our current international system.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #10692 in Books
• Published on: 2006-09-07
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 448 pages

About the Author
General Sir Rupert Smith is one of the most senior international practitioners in the use of force. In his forty year career in the British Army he commanded the UK Armoured Division in the 1990-91 Gulf War, was GOC Northern Ireland, commanded the UN forces in Bosnia in 1995, and served as Deputy Commander of NATO. All of this experience informs his book. He retired in 2002.

Customer Reviews

This one is
Rupert Smith brings together his long and relevant experience of command in some of the more prickly theatres of conflict in our time in lucid writing to put through the message that the nature of "war" has changed irrevocably. And the armed forces too have to be reformed and thus prepared for the new conflicts

This book is one of its kind. Prospective buyers may like to get the book's flavour from the mp3 audio of Rupert Smith's recent lecture (of the same title) at the RSA, and the questions and answers that followed (website~ http://www.thersa.org/audio/lecture181006.mp3).

A superb and thought-provoking read.
Rupert Smith uses both his past experience as a commander of multinational troops and his interest in military history to illustrate why military forces with numerical and technological advantages fail to achieve the desired outcome - their force has no utility. He then lists how politicians and the military alike can learn from such lessons to give their force utility.

Highly stimulating and an easy read, The Utility of Force is written to such an extent that both novices interested in military affairs and those in the senior echelons of command can benefit from it. I wholeheartedly recommend it.

Simple, obvious, brilliant.
What the man says is not rocket science, but that's why this book is even more necessary.
It's about understanding the nature of what the conflict now is and what you want to get out of it. Once that's understood, make sure your organisation, tactics, strategy and resources fit.
And yet it's so obvious that this simple formula is routinely ignored by governments, not least of all our own one, and indeed armed forces.
It also reminds me as a journalist how many of my own profession don't understand what they're talking about when reporting on conflict - a modern journalistic blindspot as big as the lack of understanding of economics. This book ought to be mandatory reading for every foreign desk.
The best bits include the author's disection of various historic paradigm changes in conflict. The only criticisms that spring to mind are that he doesn't seem to give much of a rundown of things like the equipment changes that modern warfare demand, and that he can come across as a touch overbearing and arrogant, although this is no more than an impression and spoils nothing.