- Eirene e Atena
- Edited by Fulvio Attinà, Luciano Bozzo, Marco Cesa, Sonia Lucarelli
La guerra pensata: narrazioni, teoria, prassi
- Luciano Bozzo
- © 2022 Author(s) |
- CC BY 4.0
- DOI: 10.36253/978-88-5518-595-0.06
The study of war and strategy has been at the core of the theory of international relations since the birth of the academic discipline. Strategy is a key factor in any conflict, first of all in violent conflicts. Military strategy is the bridge between politics and war. Strategic studies have mainly focused on military doctrines and the means to wage war for too long a time. Limited attention was paid to the cultural dimension of violent confrontations. Then, in the second half of the XX century the Western attention to the technological dimension of war became almost obsessive. However, if war is the continuation of politics by other means we must be aware that the human factor is of utmost importance among those “means”. The willingness of soldiers to sacrifice their life on the battlefield is the precondition to wage war. At the same time, it is also the basis of any political obligation. Hence, death is the continuation of politics by other means. Various “narratives” of war have been created in history in order to justify the individual commitment to fight and eventually die in war to attain political aims. Starting in the classical age the Western world has been developing two related narratives of war: the republican model and the decisive battle one. According to the first one the good citizen was a good soldier too, and vice-versa, while the second required the concentration of violence in space and time to break the enemy’s will to fight in the shortest possible time. The two concepts gave both moral and military sense to the violent, insensate, and chaotic environment of the battle. After the end of the cold war in most Western countries such a way of thinking on the relationship between war and politics has been undermined by several factors, first of all the unwillingness to sacrifice one’s life in war. The readiness to die in order to attain a political aim has almost vanished. On the contrary, the concept of the “decisive battle” has survived thanks to technological evolution. As a consequence, on the one hand, old figures of warriors reappeared on the battlefield: soldiers of fortune, God’s fighters, pirates, and criminals. On the other, the unwillingness to die coupled to the strategic archetype of the decisive battle is bringing more and more machines and AI into war, making it both post-heroic and post-human.
- Keywords:
- war,
- strategy,
- culture,
- death,
- narrative,
University of Florence, Italy - ORCID: 0000-0003-3513-3930
- Baudrillard, Jean. 2002. Lo spirito del terrorismo, traduzione di Alessandro Serra. Milano: Raffaello Cortina.
- Beaumont, Roger. 1994. War, Chaos, and History. Westport, London: Praeger.
- Beck, Ulrich. 1992. Risk Society. Towards a New Modernity. London: Sage.
- Bobbitt, Philip. 2008. Terror and Consent: The Wars for the Twenty-First Century. New York: Knopf.
- Botti, Ferruccio. 1995. Il pensiero militare e navale italiano dalla Rivoluzione francese alla Prima guerra mondiale (1789-1915), vol. I. Roma: Ufficio Storico SME.
- Bouthoul, Gaston. 1982. Le guerre: elementi di polemologia, traduzione di Sestilio Montanelli. Milano: Longanesi.
- Buzan, Barry. 1983. People, States, and Fear. An Agenda for International Security Studies in the Post-cold War Era. Brighton: Harvester Wheatsheaf.
- Buzan, Barry. 1987. An Introduction to Strategic Studies. Military Technology & International Relations, London: MacMillan.
- Caillois, Roger. 1990. La vertigine della guerra, traduzione di Mauro Pennasilico. Roma: Edizioni Lavoro.
- Coker, Christopher. 2002. Waging War Without Warriors? The Changing Culture of Military Conflict. Boulder, London: Lynne Rienner.
- Coker, Christopher. 2003. Humane Warfare. The New Ethics of Postmodern War. London, New York: Routledge.
- De Landa, Mauel. 1991. War in the Age of Intelligent Machines. New York: Urzone.
- Eco, Umberto. 2002. Riflessioni sulla Pace e sulla Guerra. I conflitti che regolano il pianeta. Milano: Fondazione Sant’Egidio.
- Freedman, Lawrence. 2006. The Transformation of Strategic Affairs. London: IISS, Adelphi Paper, 379.
- Galli della Loggia, Ernesto. 2008. La morte della patria. La crisi dell’idea di nazione tra Resistenza, antifascismo e Repubblica. Roma-Bari: Laterza.
- Galli, Carlo. 2002. La guerra globale. Roma-Bari: Laterza.
- Giddens, Anthony. 1990. The Consequences of Modernity. Cambridge: Polity.
- Gilpin, Robert. 1989. Guerra e mutamento nella politica internazionale, traduzione di Lucia Perrone Capano. Bologna: il Mulino.
- Girard, René. 1972. La Violence et le sacré. Paris: Bernard Grasset.
- Glucksmann, André. 1994. “Des guerres à venir….” Politique internationale 65: 49-68.
- Gray, Colin S. 1997. Postmodern War: The New Politics of Conflict. New York: Guilford Press.
- Haas, Mark L. 2007. “A Geriatric Peace? The Future of U. S. Power in a World of Aging Populations.” International Security 32, 1: 112-47.
- Hanson, Victor Davis. 1989. The Western Way of War. Infantry Battle in Classical Greece. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
- Harari Yuval N. 2017. Homo Deus. Breve storia del futuro, traduzione di Marco Piani. Milano: Bompiani.
- Heng, Yee-Kuang. 2006. War as Risk Management. Strategy and Conflict in an Age of Globalised Risk. London-New York: Routledge.
- Hillman, James. 2004. A Terribile Love of War. New York: Penguin Press.
- Hull, Isabel V. 2005. Absolute Destruction: Military Culture and the Practices of War in Imperial Germany. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
- Joxe, Alain. 1991. Voyage aux sources de la guerre. Paris: PUF.
- Kagan, Robert. 2003. Of Paradise and Power. New York: Knopf.
- Kaplan, Robert D. 2007. “On Forgetting the Obvious.”, The American Interest II, 6: 6-15.
- Liang, Qiao e Xiangsui Wang. 2001. Guerra senza limiti. L’arte della guerra asimmetrica fra terrorismo e globalizzazione, a cura di Fabio Mini, traduzione di Rossella Bagnardi e Roberta Gefter. Gorizia: LEG.
- Luttwak, Edward N. 2001. “Blood and Computers: The Crisis of Classic Military Power in Advanced Postindustrial Societies and the Scope of Technological Remedies.” In Zed Maoz e Azar, Gat eds. War in a Changing World, 49-75. Ann Arbor: The University of Mi
- Mini, Fabio. 2008. Soldati. Torino: Einaudi.
- Murray, Williamson, Knox MacGregor, and Alvin Bernstein, eds. 1994. The Making of Strategy: Rulers, States, and War. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- Posen, Barry R. 1984. The Sources of Military Doctrine: France, Britain, and Germany between the World Wars. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
- Schelling, Thomas C. 1960. The Strategy of Conflict. Cambridge-London: Harvard University Press.
- Shaw, Martin. 2005. The New Western Way of War. Risk-Transfer War and its Crisis in Iraq. Cambridge: Polity Press.
- Sheehan, James J. 2007. The Monopoly of Violence: Why Europeans Hate Going to War. London: Faber & Faber.
- Sheehan, James J. 2009. L’età post-eroica. Guerra e pace nell’Europa contemporanea, traduzione di David Scaffei. Roma-Bari: Laterza.
- Smith, Rupert. 2005. The Utility of Force. The Art of War in the Modern World. London: Allen Lane.
- Terray, Emmanuel. 1999. Clausewitz. Paris: Fayard.
- Watts, Barry D. 1996. Clausewitzian Friction and Future War. Washington, National Defense University: INSS, McNair Paper 52.
- Weigley, Russell F. 1991. The Age of Battles: The Quest for Decisive Warfare from Breitenfeld to Waterloo. London: Pimlico.
Chapter Information
Chapter Title
La guerra pensata: narrazioni, teoria, prassi
Authors
Luciano Bozzo
Language
Italian
DOI
10.36253/978-88-5518-595-0.06
Peer Reviewed
Publication Year
2022
Copyright Information
© 2022 Author(s)
Content License
Metadata License
Bibliographic Information
Book Title
Eirene e Atena
Book Subtitle
Studi di politica internazionale in onore di Umberto Gori
Editors
Fulvio Attinà, Luciano Bozzo, Marco Cesa, Sonia Lucarelli
Peer Reviewed
Number of Pages
208
Publication Year
2022
Copyright Information
© 2022 Author(s)
Content License
Metadata License
Publisher Name
Firenze University Press
DOI
10.36253/978-88-5518-595-0
ISBN Print
978-88-5518-594-3
eISBN (pdf)
978-88-5518-595-0
Series Title
Studi e saggi
Series ISSN
2704-6478
Series E-ISSN
2704-5919