The Utility of Force

by Rupert Smith

This is the one book I’ve chosen that is actually a visionary work. Rupert Smith was a professional soldier who became Deputy Supreme Allied Commander in NATO. What Smith sees is that making war, or threatening war or the use of force, has increasingly had to encompass the disciplines usually understood in diplomacy, just as diplomacy itself has changed. The world we inhabit now – with questions of WMD, letter bombs and terrorism by the least likely suspects – requires an understanding by diplomats of this interface of war in peacetime societies, and an expectation of soldiers to see beyond their immediate military brief.