Learning The Lessons Of Modern War

Learning the Lessons of Modern War uses the study of the recent past to illuminate the future. More specifically, it examines the lessons of recent wars as a way of understanding continuity and change in the character and conduct of war. The volume brings together contributions from a group of well-known scholars and practitioners from across the world to examine the conduct of recent wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, the Middle East, South America, and Asia. The book's first section consists of chapters that explore the value of a contemporary approach to history and reflect on the value of learning lessons from the past. Its second section focuses on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Chapters on Iraq discuss the lessons of the Iraq War, the British perspective on the conflict, and the war as seen through the lens of Saddam Hussein's military. Chapters on Afghanistan discuss counterinsurgency operations during the war, Britain's experience in Afghanistan, raising and training Afghan forces, and U.S. interagency performance. The book's third section examines the lessons of wars involving Russia, Israel, Sri Lanka, the Philippines, Georgia, and Colombia. It concludes by exploring overarching themes associated with the conduct of recent wars. Containing a foreword by former National Security Advisor Lieutenant General H.R. McMaster, Learning the Lessons of Modern War is an indispensable resource for international relations and security studies scholars, policymakers, and military professionals.

This volume, the first in a series of three, covers the lessons of the 1973-1989 Arab-Israeli arms race and of the conflicts of 1973 and 1982. It draws on interviews with Arab and Israeli sources and reveals that if truth is the first casualty of war, then history is the first casualty of peace.

The recent Afghanistan and Iraq wars were very controversial. The conflicts’ casualties, intractability and the apparent failure of the US and its allies to achieve their objectives mean that many see the wars as failures. This resulted in a loss of confidence in the West of the utility of force as an instrument of state power. Both wars have been well described by journalists. There is no shortage of memoirs. But there is little discussion of how the conduct of these wars and capabilities of the forces involved changed and evolved, and of the implications of these developments for future warfare. This book gives readers a clear understanding of the military character dynamics of both wars and how these changed between 2001 and 2014. This includes the strategy, operations, tactics and technology of the forces of the US and its allies, Afghan and Iraqi government forces as well as insurgents and militias, showing how they evolved over time. Many of these developments have wider relevance to future conflicts. The book identifies those that are of potential wider application to US, NATO and other western forces, to insurgents, as well as to forces of states that might choose to confront the west militarily.

This series takes a comprehensive look at five major conflicts in the later part of the 20th century.

How military organizations trained for conventional war adapt—or fail to adapt—to nontraditional missions

Drawing upon extensive original research, this book explores best practice in army lessons-learned processes. Without the correct learning mechanisms, military adaptation can be blocked, or the wider lessons from adaptation can easily be lost, leading to the need to relearn lessons in the field, often at great human and financial cost. This book analyses the organisational processes and activities which can help improve tactical- and operational-level learning through case studies of lessons learned in two key NATO armies: that of Britain and of Germany. Providing the first comparative analysis of the variables which facilitate or impede the emergence of best practice in military learning, it makes an important contribution to the growing scholarship on knowledge management and learning in public organisations. It will be of much interest to lessons-learned practitioners, and students of military and strategic studies, defence studies, organisation studies and security studies.