The Uncertain Course

This book presents the first comprehensive analysis of the strategicm military and technological forces which are changing the nature and likelihood of war. As the world enters the post-nuclear, or 'second' nuclear age, it has to take account of this revolution in military affairs which is as fundamental as the introduction of gunpowder once was. The contributors explain and chart the exotic technologies such as 'Star Wars', the Cruise Missile explosion, new naval dynamics, the US Army's Forward 'Air-Land' doctrine, the Soviet 'Operational Manoeuvre Groups' and 'Theatres of Military-Strategic Operations', battle management, and new challenged complicating international security calculations. They also take account f the fact that we have twenty-first century weapons but only nineteenth century ways of thought, and that computers and artificial intelligence are lessening our comprehension and control. They conclude that the risk of inadvertent war is increasing, even as the risk of deliberate war is diminishing.