Conflict Offers a Valuable Lesson in Warfare
BOOK REVIEW: CONFLICT: THE EVOLUTION OF WARFARE FROM 1945 TO UKRAINE
By David Petraeus and Andrew Roberts/ Harper
Reviewed by Ben Griffin
The Reviewer — Ben Griffin is and Army officer and the Chief of the Military History Division in the History Department at the United States Military Academy. He is the author of Reagan’s War Stories: A Cold War Presidency. He is currently working on the sequel, Imagined World Orders: Tom Clancy and U.S. National Security. The thoughts and opinions expressed are his own and not necessarily reflective of the US Government, Department of Defense, US Army, or United States Military Academy.
REVIEW — With Conflict: The Evolution of Warfare from 1945 to Ukraine, former CIA director and CENTCOM commander General David Petraeus pairs with historian and member of the British House of Lords Andrew Roberts to take on the daunting task of synthesizing warfare since 1945 into a coherent and digestible narrative. Recognizing that seeking to detail every armed conflict since the end of the Second World War would require multiple volumes, the authors instead chose to prioritize “conflicts that have contributed to the evolution of warfare.” The selection includes every major American war in the period, Israel’s war of independence, the Six Day and Yom Kippur Wars, the Falklands, and the Iran-Iraq War. Also present is an examination of wars of decolonization in Kashmir, Malaya, French Indochina, Algeria as well as nationalist conflicts in the 1990s in Ossetia, the former Yugoslavia, and Rwanda.
In all its case studies, Conflict provides a succinct narrative describing the origins, execution, and results of the war that is accessible and generally falls within the established historiography. As a primer covering 75 years of war, Conflict is largely successful. A reader would come away with an understanding of much of the state and non-state violence of the recent past. However, this is not the main goal of the work. Instead, the authors have more ambitious objectives. They use the histories for several discrete purposes.
First, Petraeus and Roberts argue that war since 1945, reveals four key tasks for strategic leaders which center around the “big ideas” of a war. These leaders must display a comprehensive understanding of the environment to develop these ideas, communicate them effectively, oversee their implementation, and determine how to refine, adapt, and augment them.
Secondly, the authors repeatedly emphasize the importance of soldier morale, discipline, and training. Finally, Conflict argues that “money spent on deterrence is seldom wasted” and that the history of recent wars demonstrates that nations that are either unable to deter adversaries or unready for war, bear a much higher cost in terms of both lives and money.
The work is most effective in arguing the third point as the case studies of the Yom Kippur War, failures of peacekeeping in the 1990s, and the US in Iraq and Afghanistan demonstrate the perils of complacency and underinvestment. The interplay between Conflict’s emphasis on the “big idea” at the strategic level and the importance of individual soldiers at the tactical creates a narrative tension as the book at times alternates between which is more important. That the authors do not try to force a firm answer is a credit to Conflict. It recognizes war is highly situational and even amid a conflict, the driving factors can shift dramatically. Emphasizing communication and preparedness helps minimize seams for plans to fall through or an adversary to exploit.
Given Petraeus’ role as the senior commander of both wars, the chapters on the US in Iraq and Afghanistan are of special interest. Here Conflict often shifts into first-person as Petraeus writes from his personal experience. The perspective is a useful one and makes the criticism of policy decisions more effective.
Both chapters read as a repudiation of the notion that the 1990s saw a revolution in military affairs, something the authors rightly disdain. On Iraq, they argue the US relearned “shock and awe based on high-tech forces is not a substitute for troop numbers.” In Afghanistan, they also identify a failure of resourcing as the war in Iraq took center stage even as “the Bush administration’s goals in Afghanistan expanded.” Each also demonstrated massive failures in policy and strategy. The effect is that both chapters effectively support Conflict’s thesis about the importance of the “big idea” and that spending more upfront is more strategically and economically effective.
Conflict’s discussion of the ongoing war in Ukraine is the most compelling in terms of advancing the book’s thesis. Petraeus and Roberts effectively show Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky as a “truly Churchillian leader, performing each of the key tasks of a strategic leader superbly.” Putin and Russian leadership demonstrate the antithesis, fortunately failing spectacularly in developing a big idea or developing the organizational structure needed to carry out a strategic vision.
The authors also furnish substantial evidence pointing to how superior morale and discipline have aided Ukrainian soldiers against their Russian adversaries. Recognizing the danger in analyzing a major ongoing operation, Conflict does not seek to predict the outcome in Ukraine, limiting its analysis to what’s already occurred. This effectively ties together many of the big ideas of the book itself in a compelling way.
Petraeus and Roberts do provide some thoughts on trends that will shape future conflict. Advanced sensors, AI, notions of hybrid-war, open-source, and cyber all appear but the critical lessons about future war that Conflict seeks to impart are firmly anchored not in new technology, but in history.
The book concludes strongly and emphatically on principles including the risk of superpower isolationism (410), the essentialness of having the army that learns fastest, and leaders remaining involved from developing an idea to verifying its implementation. This is fitting as throughout, Conflict ably highlights that war is a human endeavor and investment, understanding, and communication on the part of strategic leaders and individual soldiers can overcome vast disparities in technology.
While Conflict understandably does not seek to explore every engagement there are still several wars – where the inclusion of which – would offer interesting points of comparison for the book’s narrative.
One example is Israel’s 1982 “Operation Peace for Galilee” and subsequent occupation of southern Lebanon paired with the tragic results of the US peacekeeping effort in Beirut. Exploring this conflict would offer much to explore and would link several other chapters of the book.
On the Israeli side, it would show the difficulty the nation had in applying lessons from 1973 and responding to an evolving foe.
In the case of the US, it continues the narrative of not understanding the “big ideas” in irregular settings especially when juxtaposed against Operation Urgent Fury, which the authors rightly regard as necessary and successful, while noting “the expedition had not been pretty.” The US experience would also go on to inform the Weinberger-Powell Doctrine discussed later in the book and demonstrates that nations often engage in regular and irregular conflict simultaneously. This was also the case for Iran, which backed numerous groups in Lebanon while fighting conventionally in the Iran-Iraq War, which Conflict identifies as a war of regression rather than evolution.
Another notable absence which arguably rises to the author’s bar of contributing to “the evolution of warfare” is the Troubles. Conflict highlights British success in Malaya and Borneo in the 1950s and 60s respectively and including analysis of Northern Ireland would both continue the thread of the British experience in irregular warfare and show the evolution of terrorism. Examining the PIRA’s international approach in using support from state actors while drawing on a global diaspora – and contrasting with the time and resources devoted by the UK to the conflict – would link to multiple conflicts and help set the stage for the discussion of Iraq and Afghanistan later in the book.
The emphasis on strategic leader action causes Conflict to have some resemblance to Eliot Cohen’s Supreme Command: Soldiers, Statesmen, and Leadership in Wartime which also details successful actions taken by key policymakers. However, Conflict unsurprisingly differs sharply on the idea of military expertise. Conflict’s examination of history to inform contemporary action also bears some similarities to Hal Brands’ and Charles Edel’s The Lessons of Tragedy: Statecraft and World Order and Brands’ edited volume The New Makers of Modern Strategy: From the Ancient World to the Digital Age.
Conflict fits neatly in conversation with those and as the authors note, their backgrounds add a distinct perspective to the work. Conflict is an interesting and thought-provoking book which will appeal to policymakers, military leaders, and those interested in the study of war and strategy.
Conflict is awarded an impressive 3.5 trench coats
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