The power of ideas: Fashions and myths in contemporary strategic thought ISWS Seminar Series - Guest Speaker Chiara Libiseller

Research on war and strategy constantly produces new concepts that aim to capture the changing character of war. How are these new terms created; why do we need them; and what makes them attractive? To answer these questions, this talk looks at fashionable concepts in contemporary Western strategic thought: concepts that diffuse so widely that they become powerful buzzwords and at the same time are fundamentally vague and ambiguous — think of hybrid warfare or the revolution in military affairs, for example. Focusing on both practitioners and scholars, the talk interrogates what makes these concepts attractive to different audiences and how they shape the ways we study and talk about war. To understand these aspects, we also have to engage with and deconstruct the ideas and myths underlying them, which include techno-optimism, the conventional-war bias, and the idea of the changing character of war itself.