Global Insurgency and the Future of Armed Conflict: Debating Fourth-Generation Warfare

This volume covers a timely debate in contemporary security studies: can armed forces adjust to the rising challenge of insurgency and terrorism, the greatest transformation in warfare since the birth of the international system? Containing essays by leading international security scholars and military professionals, it explores the Fourth-Generation Warfare thesis and its implications for security planning in the twenty-first century.

No longer confined to the fringes of armed conflict, guerrilla warfare and terrorism increasingly dominate world-wide military planning. For the first time since the Vietnam War ended, the problems of insurgency have leapt to the top of the international security agenda and virtually all countries are struggling to protect themselves against terrorist threats. Coalition forces in Afghanistan and Iraq are bogged down by an insurgency, and are being forced to rely on old warfare tactics rather than modern technologies to destroy their adversaries. These theorists argue that irregular warfare-insurgencies and terrorism-has evolved over time and become progressively more sophisticated and difficult to defeat as it is not centred on high technology and state of the art weaponry.

Global Insurgency and the Future of Armed Conflict will be of interest to students of international security, strategic studies and terrorism studies.

Author: Regina Karp
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 02/19/2009
Pages: 316
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.98lbs
Size: 9.21h x 6.14w x 0.66d
ISBN: 9780415778374

About the Author

Aaron Karp is Director of Studies on the Graduate Program for International Studies at Old Dominion University, Virginia. He is co-Editor of the journal Contemporary Security Policy.

Regina Karp is Director of the Center for Regional and Global Studies at Old Dominion University. She is co-Editor of the journal Contemporary Security Policy.

Terry Teriff is Senior Lecturer in International Security in the Department of Political Science and International Studies at Birmingham University, UK.