Command: The Politics of Military Operations from Korea to Ukraine

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The greatest strength of this book is its breadth. The conflicts chosen for study are worthy, including both those familiar to western audiences and ones which are criminally underrepresented. It was interesting to learn more about some of these such as the Arab/Israeli war of 1973 and the India/Pakistan conflict. The writing style is academic yet accessible, much like Freedman’s other work meaning it’s both a good starting point and one for a military history/strategy enjoyer. 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. And since Russia’s first plan to topple Ukraine with a coup de main against Kyiv collapsed within the first few weeks amid fierce Ukrainian resistance and Russian logistical incompetence, Moscow has struggled to find a credible plan B.

Book Review: “Command” by Lawrence D. Freedman

And have the Ukrainians surprised you? They’ve certainly surprised the Russians. They’ve turned out to be a pretty effective fighting force and appear to be becoming more effective with the passing of time, unlike the Russians.Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. One issue that has intrigued Freedman, as well as other analysts, is why Putin – whose use of force had been limited in scope before Ukraine – embarked on such a dangerous and badly prepared-for gamble in Ukraine. Even now, six months into the war, Freedman struggles to understand the logic of the Kremlin, not least its tactic of creating a wintertime energy crisis in Europe to undermine support for Kyiv. There are no incentives to tell the truth on the ground to the higher command. They are all part of the inner circle Lawrence Freedman He was made a member of the Privy Council of the United Kingdom when appointed to the Iraq Inquiry in 2009. [23] Personal life [ edit ] Russia’s war against Ukraine has been hampered by failings experienced by autocratic states during conflict, according to a far-reaching new study of command in war by one of the UK’s most prominent academics in the field.

Command - Penguin Books UK Command - Penguin Books UK

Despite these complaints, I would recommend reading because there is no doubt that Freedman knew what he was talking about and gave valuable insight into various conflicts and their conduct. I’m giving this a 4/5 because a 3/5 is unfair and a 3.75/5 does not exist here. Lawrence Freedman, former professor of war studies at King’s College London, is first and foremost an academic. His latest work, Command, is a philosophical reflection on the nature of command in warfare from the aftermath of the second World War to the present day. According to Freedman, the Royal Navy under the command of Rear Admiral John “Sandy” Woodward was very enthusiastic about the mission – using aircraft carriers recently targeted for destruction in swingeing defence cuts. The army and Royal Air Force were less enthusiastic, with Air Chief Marshal Sir Michael Beetham and Chief of Staff General Sir Edwin Bramall concerned at where the Royal Navy was bringing them – on such an extended projection of force – and “to where it all might lead”. Moral vs operational victory

Current research & consultancy projects: Lawrence Freedman". King's College London . Retrieved 25 November 2009.

Command by Lawrence Freedman review: when generals get drunk

Inevitably, this interaction is markedly different in western democracies than it is in totalitarian states. In the latter, the military command and the political power are the same thing – such as ­Khrushchev during the Cuban Missile Crisis, or Saddam Hussein in the two Gulf wars, or (and this book is bang up to date) Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. Freedman characterises such leaders as men (and they are inevitably all men) surrounded by sycophantic generals who have learnt that the best way to survive is to agree with everything the leader wishes to do. And finally, I mean, most of your career, or the beginning of it anyway, was during the cold war when the whole west was preoccupied by the Russian military threat, the idea that they might conventionally have the force to sweep through western Europe and so on. Are you surprised that this great, you know, “superpower”, as we used to refer to it, turns out not only to not be able to sweep towards western Europe, but not really to get out of eastern Ukraine? If you, you know, look at Chechnya, say, which is one of the chapters in my book, similar things were happening there. I think people thought that the Russians must have sorted out some of their problems because since Chechnya, their military operations have been at least successful. I mean, Georgia in 2008 showed quite a lot of problems. But their operation in Crimea, which didn’t involve a lot of fighting with the way they beat up the Ukrainians in 2014, suggested that they were in pretty good state, and Syria, of course. So the assumption was that they’d made great strides in modernisation, but it turns out they haven’t. And, you know, the postmortems in Moscow, I think, will show a lot of corruption, the problems of very hierarchical organisations. All of those things will now be gone over and we’ll get a better understanding of why they weren’t the great force that they thought they were. They clearly thought they were, and they turned out not to be. Also, they just don’t treat their troops well. And, you know, there’s a sort of stoicism on the Russian side, which is still evident. They haven’t all collapsed in a heap in the fighting. But there’s not a lot of loyalty shown by officers to men and men to officers. And that, again, affects your ability to fight. So, no, I wasn’t wholly surprised. And I think it was pretty evident, even on day one, that there were big inefficiencies in the way that the Russians were using their armed forces. Freedman was the official historian of the Falklands campaign, and author of The Official History of the Falklands Campaign, published in two volumes (London: Routledge, 2006). [10] How big are the constraints on what Ukraine itself can do? Because you still hear complaints from the Ukrainian side that the west is not supplying them with all the weaponry that they need. A particular kind of resentment towards, towards the Germans, but even sometimes towards the Americans.Freedman helped to prepare of the 1999 Chicago speech in which Tony Blair set out the 'Blair doctrine'. [8] [9] First Annual George G. Bell Strategic Leadership Award". Canadian International Council. [ permanent dead link] Throughout history, the concept of command -- as both a way to achieve objectives and as an assertion of authority -- has been essential to military action and leadership. But, as Sir Lawrence Freedman shows, it is also deeply political.

Lawrence Freedman: Command | The Spectator Lawrence Freedman: Command | The Spectator

Sir Lawrence David Freedman, KCMG , CBE , PC , FBA (born 1948) is a British academic, historian and author specialising in foreign policy, international relations and strategy. [1] He has been described as the "dean of British strategic studies" [2] and was a member of the Iraq Inquiry. [3] He is an Emeritus Professor of War Studies at King's College London. Freedman predicts (not unlike Sabina Higgins) that eventually, the war in Ukraine will falter and stall to a deadly stalemate and ultimately to a negotiation. Unless Putin presses the nuclear button. You say that they’ve got very limited options. One of the things that’s very striking is they may be, to put it crudely, running out of men — or they seem to be. They’re just unwilling to mobilise the population. In a recent article, Lawrence Freedman argued that the events in Ukraine are of historic importance. So when I got him on the line from Washington, where he was doing the rounds, I asked Sir Lawrence why he thinks the current developments are indeed historic.The military strategy expert and author of a new book on conflict says the flawed thinking behind Russia’s invasion stems from the inability of those at the top to take responsibility for mistakes Hello and welcome to the Rachman Review. I’m Gideon Rachman, chief foreign affairs commentator of the Financial Times. This week’s edition is about the stunning change in the war in Ukraine. The rapid advances by Ukrainian forces in the east of the country have changed the momentum of the conflict. Suddenly, Russian defeat looks like a real possibility. My guest this week is Sir Lawrence Freedman, emeritus professor of war studies at King’s College London and author of a new book, Command: The Politics of Military Operations From Korea to Ukraine. So, is this the beginning of the end of the war in Ukraine?