Max Boot's Invisible Armies: Chapter Summary

The United States has come a long way since the days of the American Revolution or either of the World Wars. Today war is all about airstrikes, drones, and the use of any other new technology in order to find a way to keep our troops at home and fighting conflicts without having “boots on the ground” as the saying goes. However even with, or perhaps because of, this new technology our country finds itself involved in conflicts that are unconventional to what we have seen in our history. The young generation of Americans today has grown up learning about the wars against terrorism where the enemy is hard to really signal out from a large crowd. We have become accustomed to fighting against what Max Boot calls “invisible armies” because it’s …show more content…
In the book, Boot gives us a thorough description of both groups and then goes on to explain how each group coordinates warfare. Guerrilla forces maintain an objective of capturing, controlling, and eventually defeating more powerful militaries as described by Boot. Guerrilla forces also may include a large number of soldiers and have been the dominant form of warfare following World War II. Terrorist groups differ in that most only have some dozens to a few hundreds of fighters who support the cause. Also terrorist groups really do not want to capture territory or defeat armies, instead their goal is to cause a few big surprise attacks that can trigger a revolution. This hope of revolution can be seen as the case for the terrorist group Al-Qaeda following their attacks on September 11, 2001. Max Boot provides the reader with a great description of both groups along with the objectives of each especially following World War