Conflict Realism

Amos Fox is doing more clear-eyed thinking about the evolution of the character of warfare over the past 20 years and what it portends for the future of conflict than virtually anyone else.  This book challenges current analysis, current assumptions and decisions by many current military analysts, senior defense and military leaders. This work should gain their attention and spark an intellectually rooted debate about what the intersection of war, societies and technologies means for how we will fight and how we should organize and prepare for it. Amos Fox has prepared a primer for the Pentagon brass to educate themselves on the issues at hand and gives a prescription of how to proceed. Let’s hope they read it.  Major General (Retired) Patrick Donahoe, US Army former Commanding General of the Army’s Maneuver Center of Excellence and Fort Benning Military theory has been discarded for too long in the West - systemically across martial institutions. Amos Fox provides the essential corrective. Against the shouty voices of technology evangelists and fiction-loving futurologists, this book provides compelling evidence that lazy thinking since 9/11 has handed the advantage to adversaries - not through their ingenuity, but by our own acceptance of the mediocre and the wilful denigration of military theory. Fox, thankfully, provides us with a way out of this fix. Professor Peter Roberts is founder and CEO of Aurelius Lab Ltd., Senior Associate Fellow and former Director at RUSI, Professor of War and Warfare at Ecole de Guerre, Paris.