From the editors

It is with sadness that we note the passing of Professor Robert Jervis on 9 December 2021. Bob was a truly towering figure in the field of strategic studies, and international relations and political science more broadly. Bob’s career was marked not only by his impressive body of scholarship, but also his engagement with and devotion to the community more broadly. He was a mentor, colleague, and friend to many scholars in the field, of all ages. The security studies book series that he co-edited for Cornell University Press helped launch countless careers. He was a consistently helpful supporter of The Journal of Strategic Studies and a long-time member of our editorial board. At a stage in his career when he could rightly have stepped back, he remained deeply engaged in the issues of the day. We will miss him greatly.

Headlining this inaugural issue of the 45^th volume of The Journal of Strategic Studies is the winner of this year’s Amos Perlmutter Prize. The prize recognizes the most outstanding essay submitted for publication by junior faculty members. This year’s Perlmutter Prize goes to Samuel Zilincik of Masaryk University and Leiden University for his essay, ‘Technology is Awesome, but So What?! Exploring the Relevance of Technologically Inspired Awe to the Construction of Military Theories.’¹ In his essay, Zilincik examines the under-explored topic of the influence of emotions on the crafting of strategic theory. Specifically, he explores how awe over the emergence of air power, nuclear power, and cyber power yielded theories of their use that became narrowly focused, technocentric, and detached from previous theories and military history. Zilincik’s essay offers a warning that technological ‘silver bullets’ may be less transformational than they first appear to be.

This issue also contains three essays that examine the important topic of urban warfare from different perspectives. In ‘War in the City: Urban Ethnic Geography and Combat Effectiveness,’ Kristin J.H. Brathwaite of Michigan State University and Margarita Konaev of Tufts University argue that a city’s ethnic geography – whether it is ethnically homogenous, segregated, or mixed – influences combat effectiveness through intelligence and public opinion.² They explore their thesis through a structured focused comparison of the Troubles in Northern Ireland and the First Palestinian Intifada.

In ‘Will Inter-State War Take Place in the City?’ Anthony King of the University of Warwick argues that future inter-state wars are likely to include operations in urban areas because cities will contain important strategic, operational, and tactical objectives. In ‘A Tale of Two Mosuls: The Resurrection of the Iraqi Armed Forces and the Military Defeat of ISIS,’ Maarten P. Broekhof, Martijn W. M. Kitzen, and Frans P.B. Osinga of the Netherlands Defense Academy offer a case study of modern urban warfare. Combining an academic theoretical framework on military adaptation with a primary source-based investigation of the Iraqi fight against ISIS, the authors reconstruct how the Iraqi armed forces learned from their mistakes in 2014 and the role this process played in the military defeat of ISIS in Iraq.³

The issue then turns to the topic of how new technologies may influence strategic stability. In ‘Mutually Assured Surveillance at Risk: Anti-Satellite Weapons and Cold War Arms Control,’ Aaron Bateman of The Johns Hopkins University uses recently declassified archival documents to show that U.S. President Jimmy Carter pushed for limits to anti-satellite (ASAT) weapons due to his broader arms control agenda, whereas his successor, Ronald Reagan rejected ASAT arms control primarily because of its potential impact on the Strategic Defense Initiative.

The final essay in this issue explores one of the great texts of the strategic studies canon. In ‘Michael Howard and Clausewitz,’ which is based on the annual lecture delivered at the Sir Michael Howard Centre for the History of War at King’s College London, Hew Strachan of the University of St. Andrews argues that the English translation of Carl von Clausewitz’s On War by Sir Michael Howard and Peter Paret has had a major impact on how Clausewitz is read today. However, in reflecting the issues of its day, the text is not fully reflective of what Clausewitz himself said and has itself become dated.⁴

The issue concludes with two reviews: by Campbell Craig of Cardiff University of Matthew Kroenig’s The Logic of American Nuclear Strategy and by Matthew Ford of the University of Sussex of The Changing of the Guard: The British Army Since 9/11 and Blood, Metal, and Dust: How Victory Turned into Defeat in Afghanistan.

We look forward to continuing to offer our readers cutting-edge scholarly research on strategic studies throughout 2022 and beyond.

Notes

¹ See also Richard J. Harknett and Max Smeets, ‘Cyber Campaigns and Strategic Outcomes,’ Journal of Strategic Studies (2020), DOI: 10.1080/01402390.2020.1732354; Thomas Rid, ‘Cyber War Will Not Take Place’, Journal of Strategic Studies 35/1 (2012); Jacquelyn Schneider, ‘The Capability/Vulnerability Paradox and Military Revolutions: Implications for Computing, Cyber, and the Onset of War,’ Journal of Strategic Studies 42/6 (2019), 841–63. DOI: 10.1080/01402390.2019.1627209

² See also Raphael S. Cohen, ‘Just How Important Are “Hearts and Minds” Anyway? Counterinsurgency Goes to the Polls’, Journal of Strategic Studies 37/4 (2014); Michael Evans, ‘Lethal Genes: The Urban Military Imperative and Western Strategy in the Early Twenty-First Century,’ Journal of Strategic Studies 32/4 (2009), 515–52, DOI: 10.1080/01402390902986949; Rod Thornton, ‘Getting it Wrong: the Crucial Mistakes Made in the Early Stages of the British Army’s Deployment to Northern Ireland (August 1969 to March 1972)’, Journal of Strategic Studies 30/1 (2007); Efraim Inbar and Eitan Shamir, ‘“Mowing the Grass”: Israel’s Strategy for Protracted Intractable Conflict’, Journal of Strategic Studies 37/1 (2014).

³ Stephen Biddle, Julia Macdonald, and Ryan Baker, ‘Small Footprint, Small Payoff: The Military Effectiveness of Security Force Assistance’, Journal of Strategic Studies 41/1–2 (2018), 89–142; Theo Farrell, ‘Improving in War: Military Adaptation and the British in Helmand Province, Afghanistan, 2006–2009, Journal of Strategic Studies 33/4 (2010), 567–94; Robert T. Foley, ‘A Case Study in Horizontal Military Innovation: The German Army, 1916–1918ʹ, Journal of Strategic Studies 35/6 (2012), 799–827; Adam Grissom, ‘The Future of Military Innovation Studies’, Journal of Strategic Studies 29/5 (2006), 905–34; Nina A. Kollars, ‘War’s Horizon: Soldier-Led Adaptation in Iraq and Vietnam’, Journal of Strategic Studies 38/4(2015), 529–53; Raphael D. Marcus (2019) Learning ‘Under Fire’: Israel’s improvised military adaptation to Hamas tunnel warfare, Journal of Strategic Studies 42/3–4, 344–70. DOI: 10.1080/01402390.2017.1307744; Jonathan Monten and Radha Iyengar Plumb, ‘Is there an “emboldenment” effect: Evidence from the insurgency in Iraq,’ Journal of Strategic Studies (2020). DOI: 10.1080/01402390.2020.1711740

⁴ See also Eugenio Diniz & Domício Proença Júnior, ‘A Criterion for Settling Inconsistencies in Clausewitz’s On War,’ Journal of Strategic Studies 37/6–7 (2014), 879–902. DOI: 10.1080/01402390.2011.621725; Andreas Herberg-Rothe, ‘Clausewitz’s Concept of Strategy – Balancing Purpose, Aims and Means,’ Journal of Strategic Studies 37/6–7 (2014), 903–25. DOI: 10.1080/01402390.2013.853175