Description
Sir Henry Maine once said: “War appears to be as old as mankind, but peace is a modern invention.” We might add that peace is a very unreliable invention at that. War, on the other hand, although very old, is nevertheless an activity that has evolved dramatically since the allied victory in 1945, with the advent of precision weaponry and smart bombs. And yet the strategies and tactics of the Russo-Ukrainian and the Israel-Hamas Wars appear strikingly reminiscent not only of the Second World War but of the First World War as well, with the use of trenches, street-to-street fighting, air raids, and high civilian casualties. In the coming twenty-first-century wars, we will try to reconcile these brutal throwbacks with what we might otherwise expect—in terms of military technology, leadership, morale, alliances, and doctrine.