Future Wars - Complexity and the Price of Complacency

I tweeted yesterday about a interview by Kevin D. Wlliamson at National Review Dispatches from the Future Front. The interview is well worth reading for gems like this:

When President Biden said in his first phone call with President Putin that Ukrainian sovereignty is a priority for the United States, I thought: “All right! That’s a hell of a policy statement!” Of course, we have no strategy that underpins it, and you can’t have a strategy for

the Black Sea region if you haven’t figured out a strategy for how you’re going to deal with Russia. And now there’s a feeling that we’re going down the same path of thinking we can deal with these guys, negotiate with them — forget it, that’s not who they are and have been for hundreds of years. I don’t know why we allow ourselves to continue to be surprised.

Last night I was re-reading Tom Clancy's Red Storm Rising and this morning I started reading Future War and the Defence of Europe by John R. Allen, Frederick Ben Hodges, and Julian Lindley-French Ben Hodges is the author interviewed by Mr. Williamson

Both books posit war with Russia, though the Clancy book refers to the Soviet Union, and Future War is more global, involving fighting Russia and China and more. Both challenge the complacency of the U.S. and the Europeans with respect to Russia and China -  there seems to be be a belief negotiations will work, or that the U.S. will somehow pull Europe's bacon out of the fire, or that they will be "eaten last" - the newer book, being much more up to date on the current state of affairs, of course, including the shortfalls of the U.S. merchant fleet, U.S. Navy combatant warships, and more.

As a review here puts it:

Future War and the Defence of Europe offers a major new analysis of how peace and security can be maintained in Europe: a continent that has suffered two cataclysmic conflicts since 1914. Taking as its starting point the COVID-19 pandemic and way it will inevitably accelerate some key global dynamics already in play, the book goes on to weave history, strategy, policy, and technology into a compelling analytical narrative. *** Europeans should be under no illusion: unless they do far more for their own defence, and very differently, all that they now take for granted could be lost in the maze of hybrid war, cyber war, and hyper war they must face.

I highly recommend this book, which is available for a reasonable price in its Kindle form at Amazon.