Description
This paper interrogates how predictions concerning the future of war are produced discursively and epistemologically through the case of Giulio Douhet’s advocacy for strategic bombing in the aftermath of World War I. Douhet, now recognised as a “prophet” of air power, affirmed the implacable, “mathematical” logic of strategic bombing through a radical rejection of the empirical evidence of air warfare in World War I, simultaneously as he used the example of trench warfare to demonstrate the inevitable failure of ground offensives. Through an analysis of Douhet’s advocacy for strategic air power, this presentation therefore asks how empirical evidence for future theorising of war is produced, which empirical bases can lead to future-oriented policy making, and how contemporary war is shaped and shaped by knowledge of the future of war.
