Table Of ContentO N
LD and EW
B
ATTLESPACES
O N
LD EW
and
B
ATTLESPACES
Society,
Military Power,
War
and
Jahara Matisek
and
Buddhika Jayamaha
boulder
london
Published in the United States of America in 2022 by
Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc.
1800 30th Street, Boulder, Colorado 80301
www.rienner.com
and in the United Kingdom by
Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc.
Gray’s Inn House, 127 Clerkenwell Road, London EC1 5DB
www.eurospanbookstore.com/rienner
© 2022 by Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Matisek, Jahara, 1983–author. | Jayamaha, Buddhika, 1971–author.
Title: Old and new battlespaces : society, military power, and war / Jahara
Matisek and Buddhika Jayamaha.
Other titles: Society, military power, and war
Description: Boulder : Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc., [2022] | Includes
bibliographical references and index. | Summary: “Explores how today’s civil
society, technology, and military organization are dramatically transforming
the character and conduct of war”— Provided by publisher.
Identifiers: LCCN 2021028801 (print) | LCCN 2021028802 (ebook) | ISBN
9781626379961 (hardback) | ISBN 9781955055079 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: War. | Military science. | War and society. | Military
policy—United States. | Strategy.
Classification: LCC U21.2 .M3644 2022 (print) | LCC U21.2 (ebook) | DDC
355.02—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021028801
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021028802
British Cataloguing in Publication Data
A Cataloguing in Publication record for this book
is available from the British Library.
Printed and bound in the United States of America
The paper used in this publication meets the requirements
of the American National Standard for Permanence of
Paper for Printed Library Materials Z39.48-1992.
5 4 3 2 1
Contents
Preface vii
1
Imagining War 1
2
How Battlespaces Change Through Time 17
3
Warfare in the Nuclear Age 45
4
The Complexity of Emerging Battlespaces 63
5
Compressed, Converged, and Expanded Battlespaces 97
6
Civil Society and the Contemporary Battlespace 117
7
New Battlespaces and Strategic Realities 141
8
The Future of Grand Strategy 159
List of Acronyms 173
Bibliography 175
Index 189
About the Book tk
v
Preface
THE GENESIS OF THIS BOOK LIES WITH OUR PERSONAL
observations of warfare over the last two decades, alongside teaching
warfare, strategy, and military studies at universities. Many student
comments and questions pertain to the wars they have grown up with in
the twenty-first century. Their probing provided us with the inspira-
tional impetus to see this project through.
Students pose incisive and intuitive questions honed to all levels of
war and all instruments of national power, such as the following: What
is the desired political end state in Afghanistan? Are the political and
military objectives there aligned? The United States has been continu-
ally engaged in Iraq for over thirty years, so what is the desired strate-
gic end state? What strategic advantages have the United States derived
as a nation after two decades of war? Is the digital community we call
cyberspace vulnerable to attack? Who is supposed to defend the cyber
domain and how? What does automation mean for the future of air-
power and the Joint Force broadly? How does the exponential growth of
technology change the character of war? How do weaker adversaries
outflank and defeat great powers and create strategic realities? What
does war mean if everything from terabytes of data to vehicles and
smart devices can be weaponized?
These questions focus on several themes. Inquisitive students of
strategy want to understand the character of wars they may be called
upon to fight, how wars change over time, and how to properly conceive
of a battlespace. For many military leaders, the traditional conception of
their job entails the management of violence to varying degrees, and the
vii
viii Preface
battlespace denotes a leader’s conception of the area of operation to
employ combat power effectively. What is the nature of that battlespace,
and how can one make sense of it across space, through well-known and
emergent domains, and along the various levels of war? Where should
one look, how should one look, and for what should one look?
The conversations that began in classrooms, then continued via text
messages, emails, and video chats with colleagues at home and deployed
abroad, transformed into this book during the Covid-19 pandemic. We
aim to bridge the scholarship divide among academics, policymakers,
and strategists who are interested in emerging security threats and who
want to make better sense of a transformed US-led international order.
* * *
This book is based upon work supported by the Air Force Office of Sci-
entific Research under award number FA9550-20-1-0277 and was
cleared for public release (PA#: USAFA-DF-2021-130). Any opinions,
findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this mate-
rial are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of
the United States Air Force.
We are indebted to the Department of Military and Strategic Studies
and the Department of Research at the US Air Force Academy for sup-
porting our endeavors during this book project.
1
Imagining War
WAR IS THE ORGANIZED USE OF VIOLENCE IN PURSUIT OF
an objective. The link between war and politics prominent in contempo-
rary discourse emerged with the advent of standing armies at the end of
the early modern period in Europe and particularly after the Napoleonic
Wars. The purpose of military strategy is to reconcile ends, ways, and
means to shape the behavior of the adversary. Violence and the credible
threat of violence are merely means to create a particular effect; destruc-
tion is an intermediate effect, never an end in and of itself.1
War is also an elemental social enterprise. As societies change, so
too do the ways they organize violence—such as the shift from feudal
levies to national conscription to maintenance of standing armies. As
societies change, the nature of the objective changes, sometimes quite
drastically—such as from territorial conquest to the defense of human
rights. Likewise, the character of warfare evolves as societies change.
How societies adopt varied forms of military organizations shapes the
character of war just as war shapes the character of societies.2 When
trying to understand military power and the origins of and victors in a
conflict, it is widely accepted that the character and shape of war is
influenced by economic and political power and other structural vari-
ables.3There also is a general sense that broad trends, like the intensifi-
cation and diversification of global economic ties, the development of
new technologies, the increasing wealth of many countries, and the
political mobilization of their peoples, has affected the relationship
between the organized use of violence and the creation of effects that
have become contingent and far more complex than in the past.
1
2 Old and New Battlespaces
If military history is a guide, the relationships between violence and
creating effects will get more complex over time. This reality poses a
Janus-faced puzzle for students and practitioners of military and strate-
gic studies. Students of strategy usually look backward to understand
changes in warfare over time. Ultimately, strategists have the “task of
turning one currency—military (or economic, or diplomatic, and so
forth) power—into quite another (desired political consequences).”4
Practitioners who design strategy attempt to apply lessons of the
past as they address what they think are salient ongoing changes. Ulti-
mately, they execute strategy in an environment of imperfect informa-
tion with uncertainty as the only certainty. Standing athwart the past and
the present, students of strategy are faced with concerns over what
broad societal attributes will contribute to the changing character of war
over time. But how should both students and practitioners define the
character of warfare across time and space? What aspect of war, such
as, for example, its nature, character, representation, interpretation, or
organization, changes over time? We develop the concept of battle-
spaces as the prism with which to see changes in war overtime.
Napoleon’s Grande Armée marched across Europe in a context that
was distinct to the kinds of societies and states that existed at the dawn
of the nineteenth century. Napoleon was able to harness a commitment
and commonality of purpose that came with a nascent French national
identity. The armies that he faced lacked this resource. Union generals
in the American Civil War prevailed over their Confederate adversaries
in a context undergoing rapid change as industrialization shaped society
and state power in the middle of that century. Mechanized infantry and
strategic bombing of cities from World War II have become iconic
images of conventional warfare.5
The dominant mid-twentieth-century concept of warfare focused on
the clash of armies of sovereign states that build and sustain complex
military organizations. That kind of warfare, particularly viewed from
the present, seemed to pursue clear objectives and offered little ambigu-
ity concerning the main protagonists. Other types of warfare, deemed
“small wars” in a 1940 US Marine Corps manual, were confined to the
geopolitical periphery or were sideshows to bigger wars.6 But as the
information age changes societies and economies, organizational princi-
ples change and adapt to various efficiencies.7
Taken together, these broad changes reflect different configurations
of power. Material resources are important throughout, though in varied
ways. Broad political developments, such as the rise of nationalism, the
value of global connectivity, and evolving global norms about individ-
