Amateur Soldiers, Global Wars: Insurgency and Modern Conflict (Praeger Security International)

Transnational politics, modern communications, and access to the tools of warfare have combined to give political movements the ability to wage global war to promote their own agendas, a development that has changed the face of both politics and warfare. Fowler examines current aspects of conducting war, including mobilization, funding, training, fighting, and intelligence to demonstrate how they are accessible to anyone and are well-suited to waging insurgency efforts in many places around the world. Such efforts force governments to deal with unforeseen enemies who violently advance their agendas in a quest for increased power and authority. Because global insurgents, such as al Qaeda, build more direct connections between politics and the use of force, confronting them requires solutions that emphasize politics as much as the use of force. National governments must unite to seek cooperative solutions to issues that affect them. The implications of the adoption of such strategies by groups with varied agendas will undoubtedly change foreign policy planning for decades to come.

While investigating trends in modern warfare, defense analyst and consultant Fowler (Roger Williams U., Rhode Island) discovered that war was increasingly being carried out by non-state amateur soldiers rather than national military forces, and that warfare and politics are changing from conventional warfare to global insurgency. Partly describing and partly predicting, he looks at leadership and mobilization; intelligence; funding, procurement, and training; a theory of global insurgency; and Al Qaeda. Annotation ©2006 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Foreign Affairs

Fowler follows the same line as Rupert Smith in pondering the implications of the shift from conventional war to insurgency. His book lacks the authority, lucidity, and historical sweep of Smith's, but he has some interesting observations on how today's amateurs are able to perform comparable functions to professionals in preparing their military operations. Insurgent leaders can mobilize and train their troops, develop strategies, collect intelligence, raise money, and procure weapons, tasks all made easier by globalization. But he comes up against a basic problem facing all contemporary insurgencies. Past masters, such as Mao Zedong, believed that the point of an insurgent force was to develop into a conventional army to defeat that of the state. Fowler recognizes that this may be difficult, so he suggests that modern insurgencies will go for a political takeover instead.

"Michael C. Fowler teaches at Roger Williams University in Rhode Island."--Jacket