Publication

This paper looks at the proliferation of what are now readily available technologies in war. More specifically, the text’s author argues that the growing reliance on standoff weaponry is not merely a Western phenomenon or illustrative of the casualty aversion that now defines democratic states. Rather, he believes that the proliferation of precision-strike technologies is attributable to military modernization processes and the transformation of modern power. Given these changes, the author concludes we should view precision-strike warfare as a “liquid” form of violence – i.e., a way of war that shuns the direct control of territory and focuses instead on the destruction of enemy forces and/or infrastructure.