Book Review: Lawrence Freedman. The Future of War: A History,
(London 2017).pp400.
Lawrence Freedman, former Professor of War Studies at King’s College London, has written widely on various aspects of strategy and war. His 2017 work; The Future of War, A History, tackles the last 150 years of writing on the future of war. More specifically it presents a thematic survey of Anglophone musings on the future of conflict.
The work is divided into three sections, each dealing with the overwhelming themes of an epoch. Part-one details the rise of industrial inter-state war from the 1850’s to the end of the Cold War. Here, Freedman highlights how ‘future war’ would evolve from a search for decisive battle to managing nuclear confrontation. Throughout this section, Freedman introduces the key theme of the work: the difficulty of prediction.
Freedman underscores this through Norman Angell and Ivan Bloch, both misunderstood in their own time; Angell is notably identified as a victim of chronic misunderstanding. Rather than stating war was impossible, Angell noted that a coming war would become so expensive and destructive, it made no rational sense to fight, not, as oft suggested: that fighting would disappear. As the succeeding chapters bear out, Angell’s analysis held true.
Moving from Angell and others such as H.G Wells and Herman Kahn, Freedman uses the following chapters to highlight a hubris of self-confidence from those plotting and planning future wars; however, as is borne out, these speculators are more often than not, wide of the mark.
Part-two focusses on the immediate post-Cold War ending in the early post 9/11 period. Here we find an academic field adrift in a sea of uncertainty; this is a period in which hordes of strategic analysts and horizon-scanners are denuded of their raison d’etre. With the Soviets out of the picture, future wars, as depicted in 1980’s classics –if such phrasing is acceptable– Threads, and The Day After, are no longer the wars of the future; even if the systems that made such a war possible had not actually gone anywhere.
During this period, Freedman notes that the world’s attention was focussed on non-state actors in the pragmatic sense, and on the nebulous concept of war amongst civilisations, in the abstract. The former, borne from a need to deal with crises arising from localised conflicts in the Balkans and Africa. These, in the age of 24-hour news, received attention historically denied to the proverbial small wars in faraway places. These small wars are used to contextualise the global war on terrorism and how it reflects upon the future of war.
Part-three focusses on the decade from 2010, covering the rise of extreme complexity in conflict. That is to say that the current views of modern conflict have built upon the preceding experiences; we are now faced with a situation of great complexity. The two key themes explored here are: information technology and its ramifications for war; and the environment and its effect on war. The use of modern technology in war is deemed noteworthy since it not only changes the face of battle, but also the field of battle itself. To be more precise; modern technology enables conflict in both the public sphere via social media and mis/disinformation, as well as the “classic” cyber-domain thus blurring the lines between war and peace.
In terms of the environment, Freedman underlines trends in demographics towards urbanisation and the impact they have on inter-group relations. This may be problematic for states as conflict in urban environments is frequently distributed, dirty, and difficult to control. Compounding this, is the potential for environmental stresses on food and water supplies to exacerbate conflict and tension amongst a myriad of actors.
Throughout the book, Freedman constantly highlights the fact that trying to identify what will happen in the future is a prisoner of its time, and frequently, this activity seems to be almost victim to availability bias. We can see this in the example of Graham Allison, who in the immediate post 9/11 period was proclaiming the future of a conflict between the West and Islam; yet a decade later it was a future of war between the US and China. Both of these concepts were bone from the discourse of the day rather than some far reaching analysis based upon abstract discrimination of the facts.
In addition, it is made abundantly clear that forecasting future conflict is inherently dangerous; if one is correct, there will be a conflict and people will die; if one is incorrect, then then one may not be prepared for the right conflict and people will die. Moreover, forecasting future conflict falls prey to learning the wrong lessons. As noted above with the case of Norman Angell, we are also given the cases of Pearl Harbour and Operation Barbarossa as examples of the failure to expect danger, rather than the incubator of disaster. To be more specific Freedman, excellently uses the notions of the threat of a ‘new Pearl-Harbor’ to highlight the failure to learn the right lesson: pre-emptive attack does not equate victory, and more often it is the harbinger of defeat for the aggressor rather than the aggressed.
Overall, Freedman presents a work that is accessible to non-specialists and is reasonably detailed considering it is only 288 of text. As expected from such an august author, the work is well documented with a large bibliography and detailed notes for each chapter however the focus on the anglophone world limits the potential of the book, for there are many excellent works from thinkers as diverse as Georgi Isserson, Heinz Guderien, or Andre Beaufre who would have added immensely to the work.
Additionally, the division of the work serves to make it somewhat imbalanced as the years 1850–1990 have the same space as 1990–2010 and 2010–2017 respectively. It is understandable that this was done to keep the work short, but it means that some aspects receive treatment that is not aligned (in this reviewer’s opinion) to its historical weight. That said, this is a strong, well thought out book which its core argument excellently.
