{"product_id":"the-changing-character-of-war","title":"The Changing Character of War","description":"\u003cp\u003eOver the last decade (and indeed ever since the Cold War)  the rise of insurgents and non-state actors in war  and their readiness to use terror and other irregular methods of fighting  have led commentators to speak of new wars. They have assumed that the old wars were waged solely between states  and were accordingly fought between comparable and symmetrical armed forces. Much of this commentary has lacked context or sophistication. It has been bounded by norms and theories more than the messiness of reality. Fed by the impact of the 9\/11 attacks  it has privileged some wars and certain trends over others. Most obviously it has been historically unaware. But it has also failed to consider many of the other dimensions which help us to define what war is - legal  ethical  religious  and social. The Changing Character of War  the fruit of a five-year interdisciplinary programme at Oxford of the same name  draws together all these themes  in order to distinguish between what is really changing about war and what only seems to be changing. Self-evidently  as the product of its own times  the character of each war is always changing. But if wars character is in flux  its underlying nature contains its own internal consistency. Each war is an adversarial business  capable of generating its own dynamic  and therefore of spiralling in directions that are never totally predictable. War is both utilitarian  the tool of policy  and dysfunctional. This book brings together scholars with world-wide reputations  drawn from a clutch of different disciplines  but united by a common intellectual goal: that of understanding a problem of extraordinary importance for our times.  This book is a project of the Oxford Leverhulme Programme on the Changing Character of War.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"My Store","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44985911246901,"sku":"ByrdShop_0199688001","price":108.9,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0627\/8139\/0901\/files\/9780199688005.jpg?v=1770876921","url":"https:\/\/atxbooks.com\/products\/the-changing-character-of-war","provider":"ATX Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}