The Art of War in an Asymmetric World

rights, religion, and ethnicity. This work points out that war and conflict in today's world need to be understood in the context of systemic global complexity and are not attributable to a single factor. All students and scholars of strategy and conflict in the current era should take note of Zellen's important and lasting contribution to our understanding of war in the modern world." -- James Russell, Associate Professor, Department of National Security Affairs, Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, USA. Author of Innovation, Transformation, and War: Counterinsurgency Operations in Anbar and Ninewa Provinces, Iraq, 2005-2007 (Stanford University Press 2010). "In his fascinating new book, The Art of War in an Asymmetric World, Barry Scott Zellen breaks new theoretical ground, exploring both the theorists of disorder who emerged after the Cold War's end, and the strategists of order who responded to this new, chaotic world. While much of our world has globalized, Zellen reminds us that in the remote regions where today's wars are being waged, the world remains inherently tribal. Zellen provocatively argues only tribal order - and not state-imposed centralized orders - can provide us with a stable, and enduring structure of world politics, and a foundation for the return of peace. One need not share Zellen's enthusiastic embrace of tribalism to both understand and appreciate that his book initiates a much-needed debate on tribalism in the modern world."--Robin Truth Goodman, Professor of English and Director of the Literature Program at Florida State University, USA. Author of Policing Narratives and the State of Terror (SUNY Press 2009). "Barry Scott Zellen's The Art of War in an Asymmetric World breaks new ground weaving together the intimate (but usually neglected) interconnections between tribal conflict and the fight against terrorism, which has been unfolding now for over a decade in some of the most remote and therefore, largely indigenous frontier regions in the world. Had our war planners read this pioneering work before entangling us in Afghanistan, we'd very likely not be in the tragic situation that we are today. This important work needs to be closely read -- particularly Zellen's concluding chapter on 'The Tribal Foundations of Order' -- at the highest levels of command now facing intractable Transnational Organized Crime, both here in the Americas and across the seas." --Martin Edwin Andersen, author of Peoples of the Earth; Ethnonationalism, Democracy and the Indigenous Challenge in 'Latin' America (Lexington Books, 2010), and publisher of the daily NewsWatch on 'Latin' America and the Caribbean