Urban Warfare in the Twenty-First Century

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Anthony King. Urban Warfare in the Twenty-First Century

CONTENTS

Guide

List of Maps

List of Figures

List of Tables

Pages

Urban Warfare in the Twenty-First Century

Preface

1 Gomorrah. Mosul

The Urban Revolution

Urban Origins

Understanding Contemporary Urban Warfare

Notes

2 Numbers. Defining Urban Warfare

Demography and Asymmetry

Interstate War

Force Size

The Decline of Mass Armies

Fronts: Twentieth-Century Warfare

Converging on Cities: Twenty-First-Century Warfare

Notes

3 The Urban Guerrilla. Out of the Mountains

Out of the City

Insurgent Literature

The Battle of Belfast

Force Ratios

Brazil

Back to the City

Notes

4 Metropolis. The Global City

The City as a System

Urban Sociology

Notes

5 Walls. Concrete

Early Modern Defences

Modern Defences

Twenty-First-Century Defences

Micro-Siege

Notes

6 Air. Volume

Airpower in the Twentieth Century

The Battle of Hamburg

Airspace in the Twenty-First Century

Aerial Architecture

Notes

7 Fire. Flames

Targeting

Airstrikes

Artillery

The Fire Sermon

Notes

8 Swarms. Fractal Manoeuvre

Mouseholing

Close-Quarters Battle

Swarming

The Return of the Siege

Beyond Manoeuvre

Notes

9 Partners. Traitors

Twentieth-Century Partners

Ramadi

Operation Inherent Resolve

Other Proxies

Notes

10 Rumour. The First Casualty of War

Winning the Narrative

A Sceptical Sociology of Information Operations

The Battle of Mosul

Notes

11 Armageddon. A Tale of Two Cities

Megacity War

The Smart City

Nuclear Holocaust

Notes

Bibliography

Index. A

B

C

D

E

F

G

H

I

J

K

L

M

N

O

P

Q

R

S

T

U

V

W

Y

Z

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Anthony King

I would like to say that, from the moment I saw that image, I decided to take Barry up on his challenge and to write a sociology of urban warfare. Yet, that would not be true. I remembered the image and Barry’s exhortation as a general lesson about sociological analysis, not as an injunction to write a particular book. The idea of a book on urban warfare only came much later as I was finishing my book on command in 2018. At this point, British and American and, indeed, Western armed forces generally were beginning to think seriously about urban operations. Their concerns about the increasing likelihood of urban operations, as well as their intense experience of them over the previous decade or more, attracted my interest. I had, in fact, written about urban tactics in The Combat Soldier, published in 2013. However, Barry’s image of that early modern siege became increasingly significant to me as I researched urban warfare. So in the end, this book might be read as a circuitous answer to Barry’s challenge. It is a sociology of urban warfare; it is an attempt to show how the changing size and density of military forces and cities, as social groups, have reconfigured the urban battle in the twenty-first century. I do not mention the work of Émile Durkheim in this book anywhere. Yet, for anyone who knows his work, its influence on my thinking about urban warfare past, present and future should be obvious.

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Virgil took his imagery from Roman siege techniques; his observation of the details of the escalade are striking. His moving depiction of the destruction of Troy seems to be a subtle interrogation of the hypocrisies of Roman imperialism.

Figure 1.1: The ancient walls of Jericho

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