Jonathan Boff

New tactics are needed for the wars of the future

Understanding ideology and social change will be just as important as developing sophisticated weaponry, Jeremy Black predicts

Jeremy Black envisages a wave of insurgencies and civil wars across the new mega cities where more and more of us will live. Credit: Alamy 
issue 30 October 2021

The strategic bankruptcy of the West has twice so far this century demanded that our brave soldiers risk their bodies and minds to fight unwinnable wars. The lessons to be learnt from Iraq and Afghanistan, and indeed from Libya, Syria and the Sahel, are many; but the original sin was hubris, born of post-Cold War military preponderance and successes in Sierra Leone, Ulster and Kosovo.

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