President Putin made three foundational assumptions in launching his war against Ukraine that should have been correct but were not. First, Putin assumed the invasion of Ukraine would be a quick and easy fight. Second, he assumed the world would denounce the invasion but tacitly allow it. Third, Putin assumed the war would deter NATO expansion.
A Short History of War will certainly be welcomed by a larger public interested in military history. Not only has Black remarkably explored multiple facets of the global history of war, but he also highlights complex elements regarding the evolution of warfare over a long period of time. In addition, the volume is written in a language accessible to a general public unfamiliar with the field of war history which helps to democratize debates and discussion about the nature of war.
The line between celebrating heritage and creating a fully-rounded history can be a fine one in many institutional histories. Appreciating this tendency, Royal Air Force-insider John Shields reassesses the 1982 Falklands Conflict, seeking to explode multiple myths while also providing a better assessment of the air campaign by focusing on the operational rather than the tactical level of war.
There is no crystal ball for future warfare. Instead, this essay argues that historical lessons provide the best means of determining its form, but only if it is used correctly. The context behind each case study must be carefully considered by military planners who seek to learn from the past so that the observations gathered can be accurately extrapolated onto the present situation, and the resulting lessons meaningfully applied.
War is naturally characterized by uncertainty, and humans are known to exhibit an in-built optimism bias that frequently causes them to overestimate the likelihood of positive outcomes. This bias may have evolutionarily adaptive advantages in many situations. Yet in the dialectic between military planners generating coercive options within available means and national cabinets seeking solutions to intractable diplomatic or geostrategic problems within acceptable costs, optimism bias can lead to tragic and avoidable outcomes.
Rupert Wieloch’s Liberating Libya: British Diplomacy and War in the Desert brings new insights to the story of British military and diplomatic involvement in Libya from the late seventeenth century to the present. The author draws mainly on a vast amount of secondary literature, supplemented with some primary material to tell the long story of British involvement in Libya. His compelling narrative is punctuated by numerous well-developed stories of personal action and sacrifice, and misfortune, which give it vivid depth and detail.
Through historical research, Mikolashek captures the early experiences of the soldier and the lessons he learned during the Great War that influenced his character and leadership twenty years later during his World War II campaigning. In addition to descriptions of Patton’s early battlefield exploits, Mikolashek writes of the birth of tank warfare and the creation of the Army’s Tank Corps. From early success at the U. S. Military Academy at West Point to the transition to the newly formed Tank Corps, Patton made informed and deliberate decisions as a young officer that steered his career to the ground floor of tank warfare.
Military history and its practitioners were long derided for their obsession with battle. The bugles and banners style of operational history, the standard approach of the discipline until the mid-1970s, has cast a long shadow of exclusion and dismissal upon military historians and their purpose. That all changed when John Keegan’s The Face of Battle was released in 1976. Wayne Lee, Anthony Carlson, David Preston, and David Silbey come together in The Other Face of Battle to present the next step in Keegan’s cause while highlighting a serious flaw in his objective. This book and its four authors, all of outstanding reputation and pedigree, stand on the 40-year foundation set by the cultural turn. In a masterful homage to Keegan and with eyes to the future, Lee, Carlson, Preston, and Silbey take the iconic work and its framework into the present by asking questions that are as difficult as they are important.
The 50 stories in Atlas at War range from 1951 to 1960, curated by comics history author Michael Vassallo, who has previously written on the history of Marvel Comics. Most of the stories are about the Korean War and World War II, although there are a few stories about other conflicts. Readers will be interested to see early, non-superhero, work by famed creators such as Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, and Steve Ditko, who defined the early periods of Spider-Man and Dr. Strange. A vast array of other, lesser-known to today’s readers, talents contribute fascinating work as well. However, while this collection of early war comics will please older readers who might nostalgically remember these types of stories from their youth, and provide fascinating historiographical insight into how popular culture contributed to the culturally constructed memory of these wars, the work could probably benefit from more contextualization, analysis, and commentary.
All of the author’s evidence and contextual explanations surrounding the Goodier court martial make this case clearly and effectively. Messimer’s work also sheds light on why flying training and flight duty pay are so thoroughly regulated in the military today. And over one hundred years later, it reminds us how military organizations in our country must be accountable for their responsibilities to the public, to the Press, and to Congress.
We do need to accept that grand strategy has no definitive or stable meaning, and that the term does not describe activities which are defined by similarity of equivalence. Understandings of strategy were given coherence through their connection to the enduring nature of war. Grand strategy has no such anchor. Thus, the terminology of grand strategy is a relatively recent, Anglophone attempt to describe and explain the evolution of a much more long-term and varied set of activities, traditionally located in the realm of policy or statecraft. As such, to account for the myriad differences and changes that have characterised how polities have pursued security across time, we must move towards a more flexible approach.
Kissinger on Kissinger is a thoughtful and insightful account of some of the most successful American diplomatic achievements of the 20th century, carried out by its most accomplished practitioner of diplomacy. The book provides an important look into Kissinger’s legacy, although it is only one part of the polytropos that is Henry Kissinger.
Greek mythologies, while not perfect analogies, provide ample cautions for military leadership faced with the prospect of future algorithmic warfare. Advanced military technologies named after Greek mythological characters—Harpy, Gorgon, Athena, Aegis, Talos, etc.—suggest an analogical construct reminiscent of ancient heroes who relied on the favor of the gods to tip the enigmatic scales in their favor.
Professional military education needs tools to look at the past as a guide, as a way to learn the practice of discovering solutions that meet present needs by knowing enough to ask the right questions. History supplies these military professionals with the tools to shape models of the present and visions of the future.
The authors acknowledge that each engagement is unique and that no single metric could ever fully account for the complexities of war. However, in order to make informed decisions with the goal of improving the lethality of its force, the United States needs to at least attempt to develop a rudimentary lethality metric that could be applied to comparatively analyze the impact of policies, equipment, operations, tactics and training.
In theory, policy, and strategy are the product of extensive analysis, detailed cost-benefit calculations, and rational criteria for decision-making. In practice, good strategy development is also about compromise and consensus building, resolving problems, mitigating uncertainty and constraints, and steering downstream through the fluid dynamics of international and domestic politics.
Alison McQueen’s Political Realism in Apocalyptic Times offers a refreshing approach to religion in political theory. The book builds on the work of political scientists and political theorists over the past two decades to insert religion into international relations studies. Rather than dismissing apocalyptic language or confining it to political idealism, McQueen finds apocalyptic language in texts of political theory normally associated with political realism, leading her to consider these (purportedly realist) political theorists’ works as responses to apocalypticism.
The premise of Michael Pillsbury’s controversial book is alarming yet straightforward. Western strategic thinkers have been the victims of a massive deception campaign perpetrated by a group of Chinese hardliners who have convinced the West that China’s intentions are benign, but who are, in fact, driven by one overriding goal, to overthrow the U.S. as the world’s sole superpower. If this conjures up images of a thriller from the pen of Dan Brown, it may be the intent of the author.
Fifty years ago, Vermont Royster wrote that “it may seem cruel, this tradition of asking good and well-intentioned men to account for their deeds.” This accounting should not stop with the commanders at sea, but should also go to actions ashore, including how incidents like this are handled, and learned from.
This single volume is perfect for the student or military accession looking for a fantastic introduction on the history of war in the air. Serious scholars might consider going so far as to obtaining multiple copies of this work to hand out to colleagues in other fields. It is a book perfect for classes on the history of warfare. It will find itself on numerous college syllabi and a place as one of the great air power textbooks for the foreseeable future.
