Monday, May 19, 2014

To Be Fair, It's New to Them

On the heels of my utter frustration of the Putin worship that gives him credit for devising a new method of warfare, a blogger goes after the "we've never seen this before so I get to name it" school of warfare:

It seems that every pundit, scholar, and borderline academic publishing online has developed a new term to describe the state of war in the system. I can’t browse the pages of Foreign Policy, Foreign Affairs, or even the New York Times without someone making up a new term to articulate basic and common features of modern warfare.

Indeed. I usually stay out of this, although I reserved special scorn for the whole "Netwar" crap that floated around.

But yes, weapons change but there is little new in the basics of warfare. Just because it is new to you doesn't mean it is new.