The Future of War: A History

by Lawrence Freedman

Overview

In 1912, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of Sherlock Holmes, wrote a short story about a war fought from underwater submersibles that included the sinking of passenger ships. At the time, it was dismissed by the British generals and admirals of the day not because the idea of submarines was technically unfeasible, but because no one could imagine that any nation would be so depraved as to sink civilian merchant shipps. The future of war more often than not surprises us less because of some fantastic technical or engineering dimension but because of some human, political, or moral threshold that we had never imagined wanting to cross.

As Lawrence Freedman shows, the future of war has a past and a present. Ideas of war, strategies for warfare and its practice, and organizing principles of war all have rich and varied origins which have shaped the minds of those who conceive the next war. Freedman shows how war can be studied systematically and empirically to provide a firm foundation for enlightened policy.

The Future of War—which covers civil wars to as yet unknown nuclear conflicts, proxy wars (real) to the Cold War (not), fashionably small wars to the War to End All Wars (it didn't)—is filled with insight and fascinating nuggets of military history and culture from one of the most brilliant military and strategic historians of his generation.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781610393065
Publisher:	PublicAffairs
Publication date:	10/10/2017
Sold by:	Hachette Digital, Inc.
Format:	eBook
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Lawrence Freedman is emeritus professor of War Studies at King's College London. Elected a fellow of the British Academy in 1995 and awarded the CBE in 1996, he was appointed official historian of the Falklands Campaign in 1997. He was awarded the KCMG in 2003. In June 2009, he was appointed to serve as a member of the official inquiry into Britain and the 2003 Iraq War. Professor Freedman has written extensively on nuclear strategy and the Cold War, as well as commentating regularly on contemporary security issues. His most recent book, Strategy, was a best book of 2013 in the Financial Times, A Choice of Enemies: America Confronts the Middle East won the 2009 Lionel Gelber Prize and Duke of Westminster Medal for Military Literature.

Table of Contents

Introduction ix

Part 1

1 Decisive Battle 2

2 Indecisive Battle 11

3 The House of Strife 24

4 Victory Through Cruelty 32

5 Failures of Peace 42

6 Total War 54

7 The Balance of Terror 68

8 Stuck in the Nuclear Age 81

9 A Surprise Peace 93

Part 2

10 A Science of War 108

11 Counting the Dead 124

12 Democracy and War 134

13 New Wars and Failed States 142

14 Ancient Hatreds and Mineral Curses 153

15 Intervention 165

16 Counter-Insurgency to Counter-Terrorism 175

17 From Counter-Terrorism to Counter-Insurgency 184

18 The Role of Barbarism 198

19 Cure Not Prevention 209

Part 3

20 Hybrid Wars 222

21 Cyberwar 230

22 Robots and Drones 239

23 Mega-Cities and Climate Change 254

24 Coming Wars 264

25 The Future of the Future of War 277

Notes 289

Bibliography 333

Acknowledgments 362

Index 363

Editorial Reviews

In The Future of War, Lawrence Freedman offers a field manual to how past generations of Americans and Britons envisioned their conflicts to come. Again and again, they were blindsided by the conflagrations that upended their societies and wrecked their orderly lives—much as people today would be dumbfounded by an armageddon exploding from the Korean Peninsula, the Taiwan Straits, the Persian Gulf or the Baltics. "History," he writes, "is made by people who do not know what is going to happen next"…Insightful and opinionated, Freedman charges from the interstate wars of the 19th century to the Cold War to attempts to make sense of civil strife in the 1990s, ending with current fears about clashes with great powers like Russia or China using high-tech weaponry. He expertly covers centuries of evolving mayhem, from brutal European colonial wars to present-day counterterrorism, cyberwar and urban gang violence.

The New York Times Book Review - Gary J. Bass

01/01/2018
Freedman (Strategy), professor emeritus of war studies at King’s College London, takes aim at how generations of historians, military analysts, politicians, and journalists have tried to anticipate the unknowable: the contours of the next major conflict involving political superpowers or regional actors. In the annals of crystal ball gazing, Freedman points out, most soothsayers have been way off. Prior to WWI, instead of massive armies coming to blows, European nations engaged in colonial exploits in undeveloped lands. Some asserted that growing economic prosperity meant that countries would have little need to fight over resources. But after WWII, an apocalyptic view of future warfare took hold; the development of nuclear weapons merely dialed up this tendency, even as some parties asserted that the bombs would serve as deterrents. More recently, 21st-century prognosticators are predicting cyberwar; robot and drone fighting forces; potential clashes between the U.S., China, or Russia; and conflicts sparked by climate change–fueled events such as drought and famine. As chroniclers catalog the myriad ways that the next war could explode, Freedman unsurprisingly concludes that war “has a future.” Freedman’s work makes for well-informed, if dire, reading, and the book’s audience is probably limited to hardcore conflict enthusiasts. (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly

Praise for Lawrence Freedman's Strategy: A History

"[Freedman's] books manage to delight the experts yet are still comprehensible to the general reader, a rare skill in this genre. On this occasion, he has produced what is arguably the best book ever written on strategy." —Washington Post

"Magisterial... wide-ranging erudition and densely packed argument."
—The Economist

"This is a book of startling scope, erudition and, more than anything, wisdom." —Financial Times

"Lawrence Freedman shows here why he is justly renowned as one of the world's leading thinkers about strategy, which he defines as the central art of getting more out of a situation than the starting balance of power would suggest." —Joseph S. Nye, Jr., Harvard University and author of The Future of Power

"This substantial, comprehensive, hermeneutic work examines the various dimensions and history of "strategy," which Freedman defines as "the art of creating power"...this very ambitious exploration provides readers with a useful introduction to the field of strategic studies." —CHOICE

"Freedman consistently brings the discussion down to real cases, covering a wide range of history and geography. The final section, which considers the place of gang warfare and civil unrest in many parts of the world and the likely role of China in future conflicts, is especially thought-provoking. The author's lively style adds to the interest for general readers. A valuable book for anyone interested in international affairs."—Kirkus Reviews, starred review

"The one thing that Sir Lawrence is sure of is that predictions of future war rarely get it right. His message to policymakers is to beware those who tout 'the ease and speed with which victory can be achieved while underestimating the resourcefulness of adversaries'. Anybody who thinks otherwise should read this book."—The Economist

"[An] engaging survey of how and why historians and writers—of nonfiction, fiction and film—bravely prognosticate. The theme is scholarly, but the tone is refreshingly popular: Tom Clancy makes the index, but von Clausewitz does not."—Army Times

"The work is extremely well written and an erudite product produced by a renowned military theorist. It should, without reservation, be considered a welcome addition to both the personal library of the more seasoned scholar as well as that of the senior level officer."—Parameters

"Innovative... Readers who spend their time with either tech-driven science fiction or RAND analyses should put them aside for a while and read this thought-provoking book on the power of ideas in shaping the future of grand strategy."—Lawfare

From the Publisher

★ 09/15/2017
For those who favor simple answers to complex issues, this work by Freedman (emeritus professor, war studies, King's Coll. London; Strategy: A History) comes as a historic warning that there are none. Here, the author focuses on government predictions before, during, and after military conflicts; when diplomacy ends the politics of war begins and opposition is a consistent factor. Freedman surveys international conflicts and their predicted outcomes, those both "scientific" and normative, as well as those speculated by others such as novelists. The narrative spans the end of the 19th through the 20th century, from colonial wars to both World Wars, the Cold War, and counterinsurgency and counterterrorism. The author makes a convincing case that the military, defense industries, government think tanks, academia, politicians, and the media are not much better than creators of fiction when it comes to predictions of future war. VERDICT Although a sometimes monotonous read, Freedman's latest work delivers an important message. It will most appeal to military historians and political scientists.—William D. Pederson, Louisiana State Univ., Shreveport

Library Journal

★ 2017-08-07
Nations are constantly preparing for war, and a major part of that preparation is predicting what the next war will be like. An expert in military strategy provides a detailed look at how that process has evolved.Freedman (Emeritus, War Studies/Kings Coll. London; Strategy: A History, 2013, etc.) focuses primarily on British and American approaches, beginning in the mid-19th century, when a consensus arose that wars were decided in decisive battle, on the model of Waterloo. This encouraged military planners to aim for a knockout blow, preferably at the beginning of hostilities. Despite ample evidence of its flaws, this doctrine held sway for more than a century. With the arrival of the Cold War and its persistent theme of nuclear stalemate, Great Power wars became unthinkable. New technology that would avoid nuclear involvement became the holy grail of military thinkers. Then, with the collapse of the Soviet Union, local civil wars began to dominate the landscape. Western involvement—e.g., in Kosovo—became common, with results that often disappointed. Especially after 9/11, it became clear that traditional military methods were inadequate to win the new kind of conflict. The importance of cyberwar and the introduction of remote ways of killing—drones, in particular—came to the forefront, while grinding civil wars and terrorist action dominated the landscape. To show how contemporaries viewed future war in various eras, Freedman cites novels such as H.G. Wells' War of the Worlds and Nevil Shute's On the Beach along with more official military texts to show how the brass was thinking. More often than not, everybody guessed wrong, especially as they fell under the "decisive battle" illusion. Freedman consistently brings the discussion down to real cases, covering a wide range of history and geography. The final section, which considers the place of gang warfare and civil unrest in many parts of the world and the likely role of China in future conflicts, is especially thought-provoking. The author's lively style adds to the interest for general readers. A valuable book for anyone interested in international affairs.

Kirkus Reviews