Command: The Politics of Military Operations from Korea to Ukraine

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So obviously, anything we say about what’s likely to happen now has to have all sorts of caveats around it.

Freedman | Substack Comment is Freed | Sam Freedman | Substack

I was in Ukraine in 2019 and discussion to have then suggested, you know, some concerns about whether the Ukrainian command structure was still a bit too Soviet. Since the late 1990s our age has been largely defined by war, beginning with Chechnya and the former Yugoslavia and intensifying with 9/11 and the decision to overthrow Saddam Hussein. Clear lesson at the end about how civilian and military leaders should work together while respecting civilian primacy. His wife is Judith Freedman, Pinsent Masons Professor of Taxation Law and a Fellow of Worcester College at Oxford University. King draws on McCrystal’s distinction between the challenges resulting from greater complication and those from greater complexity.

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. Battlefield reporting is important, because people back home need to know what is being done in their name.

Command - Penguin Books UK Command - Penguin Books UK

He has been described as the "dean of British strategic studies" [2] and was a member of the Iraq Inquiry. There are many reasons for this but essentially the problem is that so many more tasks must be accomplished at this level of command than before. It also makes everyone complicit if the risks have been underestimated and the results are calamitous. False steps are likely to be picked up by the media and magnified, as McChrystal himself found out to his cost.

The Financial Times and its journalism are subject to a self-regulation regime under the FT Editorial Code of Practice. I mean, there’s just a sort of issue of commentary here, which is just worth noting that nobody wants to sound ridiculously optimistic or complacent about the conflict because wars are full of pitfalls and unexpected developments. And the Russians have got a real problem in terms of whether they move all those troops back from Kherson, where they went to meet the offensive that’s still going on there and still important I think to Ukrainians. He did see it as a special military operation [ the term the Kremlin has consistently used rather than “war”] that would last a few days. Here’s a former member of the Russian parliament, Boris Nadezhdin, saying that the war as currently being fought by Russia is unwinnable and a colonial venture.