This question, posed by Hoover’s editors, is simply answered: America’s military structure does not need a radical revision. Its traditional assets like carriers and divisions are sound in concept. Indeed, the Pentagon adjusts remarkably. Consider that in 1979, alarmed by Russia’s invasion of Afghanistan, the Pentagon organized the “Rapid Deployment Force” that morphed into the U.S. Central Command in 1981.

On June 2, U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Tony Blinken told France Inter radio that the U.S.-led air campaign against ISIS had killed 10,000 members in the nine months since the attacks began. This was undoubtedly a salvo in the information campaign against the extremist group, as well as an attempt to downplay the recent loss of Ramadi to the Islamic State.

The multipolar world that has emerged from the brief moment of American unilateralism following the end of the Cold War has pitted the United States against strategic competitors in Asia, Europe, and the Middle East. Taking advantage of American military and economic weakness, but more importantly acting on a very real perception that American policymakers are no longer capable of providing the leadership required to knit together a global order, Chinese, Russian, and Iranian leaders are busy carving out pieces of neighboring regions.

Although today there is a flood of books on the law of armed conflict and emerging technologies of weapons (such as armed UAVs, or autonomous or highly automated weapons), or specific weapons and the law (such as nuclear weapons, or chemical weapons, or landmines), there are surprisingly few book-length treatments of the law of weapons as such under LOAC/IHL.