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Command (Hardcover)
Loot Price: R1,090
Discovery Miles 10 900
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Command (Hardcover)
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Using examples from a wide variety of conflicts, Lawrence Freedman
shows that successful military command depends on the ability not
only to use armed forces effectively but also to understand the
political context in which they are operating. Command in war is
about forging effective strategies and implementing them, making
sure that orders are appropriate, well-communicated, and then
obeyed. But it is also an intensely political process. This is
largely because how wars are fought depends to a large extent on
how their aims are set. It is also because commanders in one realm
must possess the ability to work with other command structures,
including those of other branches of the armed forces and allies.
In Command, Lawrence Freedman explores the importance of political
as well as operational considerations in command with a series of
eleven vivid case studies, all taken from the period after 1945.
Over this period, the risks of nuclear escalation led to a shift
away from great power confrontations and towards civil wars, and
advances in communication technologies made it easier for
higher-level commanders to direct their subordinates. Freedman
covers defeats as well as victories. Pakistani generals tried to
avoid surrender as they were losing the eastern part of their
country to India in 1971. Iraq's Saddam Hussein turned his defeats
into triumphant narratives of victory. Osama bin Laden escaped the
Americans in Afghanistan in 2001. The UK struggled as a junior
partner to the US in Iraq after 2003. We come across insubordinate
generals, such as Israel's Arik Sharon, and those in the French
army in Algeria, so frustrated with their political leadership that
they twice tried to change it. At the other end of the scale, Che
Guevara in Congo in 1966 and Igor Girkin in Ukraine in 2014 both
tried to spark local wars to suit their grandiose objectives.
Freedman ends the book with a meditation on the future of command
in a world that is becoming increasingly reliant on technologies
like artificial intelligence. A wide-ranging and insightful history
of the changing nature of command in the postwar era, this will
stand as a definitive account of a foundational concept in both
military affairs and politics.
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