entire book - Chris Hables Gray

Notes to Chapter One [ 263 ]
Chapter One
1. The postmodern soldier would say, "Victory in war can only be based on the
latest information." Is this the same information?
2. Reuters, "Balkan Talks Strained Allies' Ties," International Herald Tribune,
November 25-26, 1995, p. A2.
3. Calling the United States the "only" superpower in the post-Cold War era is
dangerous. Actually, in terms of either economic (constructive/coercive) power or
purely military (destructive/coercive) power or both, there are now dozens of
superpowers in the world, including a number of multinational companies. The
United States has a special position, certainly, but is hardly omnipotent, not even in
culture, where it is strongest. Still, it is not insignificant that U.S.-based companies
are reporting record profits and foreign investments ($33 billion in the first half of
1995, up 27 percent over the previous record year, 1993) as the Pax Americana gets
on its way. See Allen R. Myerson, "U.S. Firms: The Worldly Shoppers—International
Investment Totals Reach Record Levels," International Herald Tribune, November
25-26,1995, p. Bl. Worldwide international investment for the first half of 1995
was also a new record, $226 billion.
4. On the other hand, some of the theories are far from useful. Baudrillard's
(1991) claim that the Gulf War was merely simulated isn't helpful even as overblown
postmodern rhetoric, as Norris (1994) and Nideffer (1993) among others have made
clear. The conceit in Manuel De Landa's War in the Age of Intelligent Machines (1991)
that AI robots are taking over is both technically wrong (AI is very distant, if not
impossible) and hopelessly deterministic.
5. This term was initially used by Fredric Jameson (1984) when he labeled
Vietnam the first postmodern war in his article "Postmodernism, or the Cultural
Logic of Late Capitalism.'' Ann Markusen and Joel Yudken (1992) use the same term
in their book, Dismantling the Cold War Economy, although their conception of
modern war is ahistorically limited to the twentieth century. There is a school of
thought (Nadel, 1995; Kellner, 1997) that sees the postmodern break as being
precipitated by the Vietnam War but coming after it. In many ways it takes a similar
approach to my own, and I am in broad agreement with many of its conclusions.
6. Douglas Waller, "Onward Cyber Soldiers," Time, August 21,1995, pp. 39-46;
Newt Gingrich, "Information Warfare: Definition, Doctrine, and Direction," address
to the National Defense University, Washington D.C., May 3,1994; Jackson Browne,
"Information Wars," LookingEast, Elektra Records, 1996; Tom Clancy, Debt of Honor,
1994; Ann Shoben, ed., RAND Research Review: Information War and Cyberspace
Security, 19, no. 2, Fall 1995. The Clancy novel is cited most often of all of these in
the many military articles on information war.
7. Some infowar advocates see it as being limited to electronic and electromagnetic
weapons; others argue that it is the role of information that is important.
Different definitions of C 4 I 2 war, infowar, netwar, and cyberwar proliferate. The
distinctions aren't important. What is crucial is to see the continuity of these types
of war with the long history of low-intensity (LICs) conflicts, on the one hand, and
with the existing system of postmodern war, on the other.
8. OOTW was first included in the U.S. Army's FM (Field Manual) 100-5