I am happy to announce that my book, Nonlinear Science and Warfare: Chaos, Complexity, and the U.S. Military in the Information Age, will be published by Routledge this fall. The best estimate at this point is October or November. The book will be the first in a news series, Routledge Studies in Conflict, Security and Technology, edited by Mark Lacy, Dan Prince, Sylvia Walby, and Corinne May-Chahal.
Here’s the working version of the back cover blurb, for those who are interested:
This book examines the U.S. military’s enlistment of concepts and metaphors from nonlinear sciences such as chaos theory and complexity theory in its efforts to understand and respond to the challenges of information-age warfare. Over the last three decades, the United States defense community has shown an increasing interest in learning lessons from the nonlinear sciences. Theories, strategies, and doctrines of warfare that have guided the conduct of U.S. forces in recent conflicts have been substantially influenced by ideas borrowed from nonlinear science. These include maneuver warfare, network-centric warfare, and counterinsurgency. This book accounts for the uses that the U.S. military has made of nonlinear science, but also for the conditions that have made that use possible in the first place. It does this by examining the enlistment of nonlinear science in light of the long-standing historical relationship between the natural sciences and Western militaries. It identifies concepts and metaphors borrowed from natural science as a key formative factor behind the development of military theory, strategy, and doctrine. It improves our understanding of the relationship between military professional identity, professional military education, and changes in technology. It provides important insights into the evolving nature of conflict in the Information Age.
The book is based primarily on my dissertation work. The book has been considerably shortened from the dissertation, reorganized and rewritten in parts, and has been updated to include a discussion of the use of nonlinear science by theorists and advocates of counterinsurgency and fourth-generation warfare.