Chilling lessons from the last 300 wars

A vital study of conflict since 1945 shows today’s wars aren’t just fought by land, sea and air – but online

CONFLICT by General David Petraeus and Andrew Roberts

544pp, William Collins, T £26 (0844 871 1514), RRP£26, ebook £14.99

For those who imagined state-on-state warfare in Europe was a thing of the past, Russia’s disastrous invasion of Ukraine last year must have been quite a shock. In 1945, after the worst global conflict in history, the founding of the United Nations raised hopes that the “scourge of war” might be over.

So what went wrong? How has warfare evolved since 1945? And what might it look like in the future? These are the questions posed by the authorial dream team of David Petraeus and Andrew Roberts: respectively a distinguished former US general and spy chief, and one of Britain’s finest military historians.

They make the important point that while nuclear weapons have precluded a hot war between the global superpowers – the United States, the Soviet Union and latterly China – limited conflicts and proxy warfare have been ten-a-penny.

The outcome of these many wars – more than 300 by one count, with a death toll above 50 million – has often depended upon the quality of strategic leadership.

Talented leaders “can transform even the most seriously disadvantageous situations for the better”; bad ones “can turn likely victory into certain defeat”.

Both outliers were present during the Chinese Civil War which ended with victory by Mao Zedong’s communists over Chiang Kai-shek’s more numerous and better-equipped nationalists in 1947.

Why? Because Chiang failed to master the four key tasks of a successful commander – getting the big ideas right, communicating them to subordinates, overseeing their implementation and driving through the campaign plan “relentlessly and determinedly” – whereas Mao “eventually came to master them all successfully”.

Harry Truman, the US president who supported Chiang, is often said to have “lost China” by 1947. The accusation certainly made him more determined to resist communist aggression three years later when the Russian- and Chinesebacked North Koreans invaded their southern neighbours. Truman was let down, however, by the “hubris and vanity” of his 70-yearold field commander, Douglas MacArthur, who failed to anticipate China’s willingness to enter the fray when North Korea was on the verge of defeat. Fortunately, the “more competent, hands-on and determined approach” of MacArthur’s successor, Matthew Ridgway, saved the day and the war ended in a negotiated peace.

America’s subsequent war in Vietnam, in many ways a mirror image of Korea, ended in defeat and was probably unwinnable.

Yet it was not without “enduring accomplishment”, write the authors, in that it saved many other Far Eastern countries from communism, and, in Henry Kissinger’s words, “probably preserved the American presence in Asia”.

It also encouraged the US military to engage in “serious introspection” and to embark on a series of “very significant reforms” that bore fruit when a US-led coalition ejected Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi Army from Kuwait in 1991.

Subsequent US military forays in Somalia, Afghanistan and Iraq faced a very different type of opponent. The guerrilla, supported by the local population, required the type of counter-insurgency techniques that should have been learnt in Vietnam. They weren’t.

The greatest missed opportunity was Afghanistan because, even as resources were diverted to preparing for, and then conducting, the war in Iraq, the US government’s goals became more ambitious.

“The initial agenda of defeating the Taliban and destroying AlQaeda had morphed into nationbuilding and the establishment of democracy in Afghanistan.”

The heavy lifting for the Afghanistan and Iraq chapters is done, not surprisingly, by Petraeus, who served in both as a senior commander. He notes striking similarities between Afghanistan and Vietnam: in both, the US attempted to prop up unpopular and corrupt regimes and were defeated by enemies “enjoying cross-border sanctuaries and fighting to tire the American people”.

Where they diverge, in his view, is that Afghanistan was neither a war of choice nor unsustainable. He feels, moreover, that the hasty withdrawal in 2021 was a mistake. The cost – $3 billion annually – was a small fraction of America’s overall defence budget ($750 billion) and the conflict “could have been managed if not fully resolved”.

Iraq, on the other hand, was an unnecessary war because not one of the reasons given for the 2003 invasion – including the mistaken belief that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction – represented in retrospect “an existential threat to the United States and its vital national interests”.

As for the wars of the future, they will be fought in six domains: land, sea, air, cyber, space and information. The latter is a particular challenge, given that a recent MIT study showed that “truth takes about six times as long as falsehood to reach 1,500 people, and that disinformation was 70 per cent more likely to be shared on social media than a piece of news that was true”.

The authors conclude that “Plato was right: only the dead have seen the end of war”. To guard against complacency, Nato has to prepare for a variety of challenges that include major combat operations, but also but irregular warfare, counter-terrorism and humanitarian support operations. It sounds expensive, but also necessary.

Elegantly written and persuasively argued, Conflict is a hugely important book that explains why wars are still being fought and lost, what we can learn from them, and how we can protect ourselves from malign actors in the future.

It should be required reading for any Western leader who questions whether military and financial support for Ukraine is money well spent.

Misinformation is a key battleground: falsehood spreads six times as fast as truth