Description
After the U.S. military—transformed into a lean, lethal, computerized force—faltered in Iraq after 2003, a robust insurgency arose. Counterinsurgency became a social form of war—indeed, the U.S. Army calls it "armed social work"—in which the local population was the center of gravity and public opinion at home the critical vulnerability.War 2.0 traces the contrasting ways in which insurgents and counterinsurgents have adapted irregular conflict to novel media platforms. It examines the public affairs policies of the U.S. land forces, the British Army, and the Israel Defense Forces. Then, it compares the media-related counterinsurgency methods of these conventional armies with the methods devised by their irregular adversaries, showing how such organizations as al-Qaeda, the Taliban, and Hezbollah use the web, not merely to advertise their political agenda and influence public opinion, but to mobilize a following and put violent ideas into action.
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Two intimately connected trends are putting modern armies under pressure to adapt: the rise of insurgencies and counterinsurgency, and the rise of Web 2.0, the newly interactive and participatory form of the Web. This book traces the contrasting ways in which insurgents and counterinsurgents use novel media platforms in irregular conflict. In three case studies based on government and policy reports and interviews, the public affairs policies of US, British, and Israeli conventional forces are examined, and their media-related counterinsurgency methods are compared with the Web-based methods devised by al-Qaeda, the Taliban, and Hezbollah to advertise their political agenda, influence public opinion, and put violent ideas into action. A chronology overviews landmarks in the recent history of telecommunications and irregular warfare. The book is written for a general audience as well as for scholars of modern armed conflict, political advisors, officers, and journalists. Rid is a research fellow at the Center for Transatlantic Relations in the School for Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University. Hecker is a research fellow at the Security Studies Center of the French Institute for International Relations. Annotation ©2009 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)
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