This major new study shows how war can be thought of in terms of proactive risk management rather than in terms of conventional threat response.

It addresses why the study of "risk management" has helped fields such as sociology and criminology conceptualize new policy challenges but has made limited impact on Strategic Studies with new case studies of recent Anglo-American military campaigns in Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq.

This book shows how "risk" is now a key defining feature of our globalized era, encompassing issues from global financial meltdown, terrorism, infectious diseases, to environmental degradation and how its vocabulary, such as the Precautionary Principle, now permeates the way we think about war, and how it now appears in US and UK defense policy documents, and speeches from both civilian and military staff
Bill Clinton first launched America's opening phase of the war to manage globalized terrorism in Afghanistan with cruise missile strikes in 1998, a war Bush was to continue after 9/11. Bombing Iraq in 1998 and Kosovo in 1999, Clinton warned on both occasions, "the risks of inaction outweigh the risks of action"- a phrase Bush was to repeat in 2003 before taking Baghdad. These case studies are analyzed within a broader inter-disciplinary theoretical and historical perspective that advances the debate on risks from sociology into strategy and conflict, shedding light on our dangerous times. An additional analysis shows the impact of globalization and security risks on emerging thinking about security and warfare even before 9/11, and how 9/11 accelerated and crystallized these trends.

This book will be of great interest to all students and scholars of strategic studies, war studies, international relations and globalization.