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2020: World of War
'A timely and cogent reminder that history never ends and is about to be made' - Tim Marshall, author of Prisoners of GeographyWith the world already struggling to contain conflicts on several continents, with security and defence expenditure under huge pressure, it's time to think the unthinkable and explore what might happen.As former soldiers now working in defence strategy and conflict resolution, Paul Cornish and Kingsley Donaldson are perfectly qualified to guide us through a credible and utterly convincing 20/20 vision of the year 2020, from cyber security to weapons technology, from geopolitics to undercover operations.This book is of global importance, offering both analysis and creative solutions - essential reading both for decision-makers and everyone who simply wants to understand our future.
320 pages, Kindle Edition
Published July 6, 2017
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Displaying 1 - 25 of 25 reviews
September 1, 2018
Many people talk about strategy. Few actually really understand it. This book really makes you think about strategy and the military challenges in the 21st century. It is the authors' intention that people, particularly those that make policy and decisions, might read it to better prepare and adapt for these challenges.
December 20, 2020
Never read this book, it is based on personal opinion without caring for ground realities. It's basically a fiction or predictions purely based on biases.
July 22, 2017
2020 World of War
Paul Cornish & Kingsley Donaldson
Published by Hodder and Stoughton
ISBN: 978-1-473-64032-0
Dr Cornish is Chief Strategist at Cityforum Publish Policy Analysis and Kingsley Donaldson is a retired Army Officer and Director of Causeway Institute of Peace Building Conflict Resolution Institute. When General Sir John Hackett wrote ‘The Third World War: August 1985’ way back in 1978 it caused quite a sensation and I guess we all sighed with relief when not only did WW111 not happen (in part because of President Reagan’s build-up of American forces that the USSR could not match) but also because of the whole intellectual and ideological bankruptcy of Communist life that could no longer oppress millions of people who wanted a western way of life. Gorbachev gave way to Yeltsin, an alcoholic, who ultimately opened the way for the devious strongman from the FSB Vladamir Putin to rebuild Russia from economic ruins.
Hackett’s book served a purpose written in a time of chaos in the UK with inflation at 25% - a hopeless Socialist Government in office but the Unions in power. Now Cornish and Donaldson’s book (written in collaboration with Middle-Eastern specialists and others around the globe) wishes to alert us to the immediate problems ahead. We no longer have one big bad wolf to fight, war isn’t about going face to face with an enemy you can see. Sure Russia is still ‘the enemy’ taking every chance to destabilise democracy (using RT fake news for example) putting pressure on the Ukraine with thousands of deniable Russian soldiers in the theatre pretending to be patriots. Add endless cybercrimes against a complacent and vulnerable west that relentlessly puts all our lives on-line without genuine protection against fraudsters or hostile governments. Not only is Moscow our undeclared enemy but one must add to the mix Iran, ISIS, China and more. World of War 2020 takes all this on board and discusses every possible scenario that could lead to war.
Chapter by chapter it lays the groundwork for plausible conflict. Russia wanting Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania back under lock and key keeps us constantly distracted in the Ukraine knowing that NATO would not be able to cope with two out of control situations at once. China wanting a reason to take control of the Pacific countries around it notably Taiwan and even Japan, creates a distraction in Australia and takes a bet that the US won’t come to their aide over a migration issue. The book pushes at all the weaknesses in liberal governments, the sense of fair play. ISIS might be defeated in Mosul and Raqqa but it isn’t dead on-line and suddenly regroups in Tunisia and rapidly seizes Libya and then overwhelms Egypt. It happens so fast the west cannot react because they need parliamentary approval or UN approval and Russia emboldened by their success in supporting Assad in Syria and destabilising Europe with fleeing Syrians won’t let it happen. Trump vacillates in all these situations as he is compromised by his ties to Russia.
It is the speed of modern conflict and cyberwar – unimaginable in 1978 by Hackett. In one scenario an EMT attack in Central London knocks out all command and control of government and police. A cyberattack on banks, hospitals, railways, and internet paralyses the UK. We are defeated in around three minutes without loss of life. The very fact that we have just launched a new aircraft carrier loaded with Microsoft XP that went out with the Ark ten years ago tells all you need to know.
There is no 5 Minutes to Midnight anymore. There is almost nothing we can do to protect ourselves from acts of random violence (Borough Market for example) or rogue states such as North Korea seeking to bring down our financial system. Our Armed Forces are shrunken, our equipment is poor and our recruitment of cyber warriors to fight the hackers is woeful in all forces and MI6.
World of War 2020 was published only recently, and already events have passed it by. Macron doesn’t figure and the changes he will make to France and Europe. Mrs May is no longer strong and stable and Brexit can only serve to make us poorer and more vulnerable to events.
The Scenarios Cornish and Donaldson give us have a ring of truth, but of course it’s just an informed guess. One hopes none of the worst case scenarios will happen. The book is an alarm call to complacent governments and warning to us readers to get our own houses in order, stash provisions and some krugerrands underground in the garden for the inevitable day the ATM’s shut down, your name is erased from everything official and the supermarkets don’t open anymore.
Definitely worth a read and make sure your local MP is reading it too, including Corbyn, especially him.
Sam Hawksmoor July 22 2017
Another Place To Die: The Endtime Chronicles
Paul Cornish & Kingsley Donaldson
Published by Hodder and Stoughton
ISBN: 978-1-473-64032-0
Dr Cornish is Chief Strategist at Cityforum Publish Policy Analysis and Kingsley Donaldson is a retired Army Officer and Director of Causeway Institute of Peace Building Conflict Resolution Institute. When General Sir John Hackett wrote ‘The Third World War: August 1985’ way back in 1978 it caused quite a sensation and I guess we all sighed with relief when not only did WW111 not happen (in part because of President Reagan’s build-up of American forces that the USSR could not match) but also because of the whole intellectual and ideological bankruptcy of Communist life that could no longer oppress millions of people who wanted a western way of life. Gorbachev gave way to Yeltsin, an alcoholic, who ultimately opened the way for the devious strongman from the FSB Vladamir Putin to rebuild Russia from economic ruins.
Hackett’s book served a purpose written in a time of chaos in the UK with inflation at 25% - a hopeless Socialist Government in office but the Unions in power. Now Cornish and Donaldson’s book (written in collaboration with Middle-Eastern specialists and others around the globe) wishes to alert us to the immediate problems ahead. We no longer have one big bad wolf to fight, war isn’t about going face to face with an enemy you can see. Sure Russia is still ‘the enemy’ taking every chance to destabilise democracy (using RT fake news for example) putting pressure on the Ukraine with thousands of deniable Russian soldiers in the theatre pretending to be patriots. Add endless cybercrimes against a complacent and vulnerable west that relentlessly puts all our lives on-line without genuine protection against fraudsters or hostile governments. Not only is Moscow our undeclared enemy but one must add to the mix Iran, ISIS, China and more. World of War 2020 takes all this on board and discusses every possible scenario that could lead to war.
Chapter by chapter it lays the groundwork for plausible conflict. Russia wanting Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania back under lock and key keeps us constantly distracted in the Ukraine knowing that NATO would not be able to cope with two out of control situations at once. China wanting a reason to take control of the Pacific countries around it notably Taiwan and even Japan, creates a distraction in Australia and takes a bet that the US won’t come to their aide over a migration issue. The book pushes at all the weaknesses in liberal governments, the sense of fair play. ISIS might be defeated in Mosul and Raqqa but it isn’t dead on-line and suddenly regroups in Tunisia and rapidly seizes Libya and then overwhelms Egypt. It happens so fast the west cannot react because they need parliamentary approval or UN approval and Russia emboldened by their success in supporting Assad in Syria and destabilising Europe with fleeing Syrians won’t let it happen. Trump vacillates in all these situations as he is compromised by his ties to Russia.
It is the speed of modern conflict and cyberwar – unimaginable in 1978 by Hackett. In one scenario an EMT attack in Central London knocks out all command and control of government and police. A cyberattack on banks, hospitals, railways, and internet paralyses the UK. We are defeated in around three minutes without loss of life. The very fact that we have just launched a new aircraft carrier loaded with Microsoft XP that went out with the Ark ten years ago tells all you need to know.
There is no 5 Minutes to Midnight anymore. There is almost nothing we can do to protect ourselves from acts of random violence (Borough Market for example) or rogue states such as North Korea seeking to bring down our financial system. Our Armed Forces are shrunken, our equipment is poor and our recruitment of cyber warriors to fight the hackers is woeful in all forces and MI6.
World of War 2020 was published only recently, and already events have passed it by. Macron doesn’t figure and the changes he will make to France and Europe. Mrs May is no longer strong and stable and Brexit can only serve to make us poorer and more vulnerable to events.
The Scenarios Cornish and Donaldson give us have a ring of truth, but of course it’s just an informed guess. One hopes none of the worst case scenarios will happen. The book is an alarm call to complacent governments and warning to us readers to get our own houses in order, stash provisions and some krugerrands underground in the garden for the inevitable day the ATM’s shut down, your name is erased from everything official and the supermarkets don’t open anymore.
Definitely worth a read and make sure your local MP is reading it too, including Corbyn, especially him.
Sam Hawksmoor July 22 2017
Another Place To Die: The Endtime Chronicles
March 27, 2023
This book is an interesting one, the chapters go into a wide variety of topics (on regional, environmental, health) and how they could be issues to the international security environment, there are also worst-case scenarios to most of these topics. It is a well-researched book, and it does provide some thought-provoking insight.
July 13, 2017
I found it difficult to decide what to make of this book. Certainly my GR's bookshelf 'history-21stc' is something of a misnomer here, as much of '2020 World of War' is analysis of the global picture of international security in 2017 and projection of possible events up to the turn of the second decade of the twenty first century.
The book initially grabbed me with it's introduction and first couple of chapters incorporating multiple facts and reports from various social, economic and environmental think tanks and governmental agencies. While reading this book, published in 2017, I found it weird to read of scenarios that were incorporating real events that have taken place in the last weeks and months.
Both authors, Cornish and Donaldson have military backgrounds and proceed to explore possible trouble spots developing around the world that conclude in 2020.
I thought it was o.k. but gave it three stars for the historical/factual content.
The book initially grabbed me with it's introduction and first couple of chapters incorporating multiple facts and reports from various social, economic and environmental think tanks and governmental agencies. While reading this book, published in 2017, I found it weird to read of scenarios that were incorporating real events that have taken place in the last weeks and months.
Both authors, Cornish and Donaldson have military backgrounds and proceed to explore possible trouble spots developing around the world that conclude in 2020.
I thought it was o.k. but gave it three stars for the historical/factual content.
July 20, 2017
Not sure what I expected but I was disappointed by this book. I was hoping to learn something new but I didn't, at all. The scenarios the author describes have become increasingly unlikely after the UK snap elections and the out come of the French elections.
May 2, 2018
This book was inspired by Sir John Hackett's 'Third World War'. Published in the 1970s, that book aimed to draw our attention to the parlous state of British defence capabilities as we entered the Thatcher era. That is the point at which this book starts, and it fails to ask the obvious question. If the state of British defences were so run down during the 1970s, how is it that the country could despatch an expeditionary force half way round the globe to see off an invasion from an unfriendly power? The Falklands War provides an inconvenient counter-balance to 'The Third World War'.
This book charts the ways in which the world has changed since the 1970s, and the security consequences of those changes. The book sets out a number of scenarios that roll the clock forwards two years to 2020, and then asks what if a key trigger event happened. We are treated to war between great powers in the Pacific, a resurgent Russia in Europe, the advent of non-state actors in a variety of hotspots, the cyber challenge, and the security consequences of a nation that is at unease with itself. A fairly good list of things to worry about.
Ought we to be worried? We ought to be in one sense - these are all real and credible threats to our way of life - but they also represent threats that exist in 2018. The authors fail to demonstrate why the threat level should be appreciably higher in 2020 than it is in 2018. What, exactly, is likely to worsen in the intervening two years? The authors do try to address this question, but they are not futurists. Their models lack precision and their reasoning lacks a systematic base. I think that futurists could do a better job, simply because they have a background in fleshing out complex and uncertain future narratives.
Unsurprisingly, the book ends with a call for greater vigilance (and spending) on defence. I felt that this was too large a leap for a book of this nature. Warning the public about all sorts of things that could - or could not - happen is not the basis for a sustainable spending review. What we do know that will happen for sure is that the population will continue to age, demand for adult social care will increase, and the NHS will be under ever increasing pressure. To argue for a shift of resources away from things we know will happen to those which may never happen is both naive and unrealistic.
This rather damns the book as a piece of wishful thinking that argues for more resources. And yet, if one of those scenarios were to happen, how would we cope. After all, we are not exactly prepared for it.
This book charts the ways in which the world has changed since the 1970s, and the security consequences of those changes. The book sets out a number of scenarios that roll the clock forwards two years to 2020, and then asks what if a key trigger event happened. We are treated to war between great powers in the Pacific, a resurgent Russia in Europe, the advent of non-state actors in a variety of hotspots, the cyber challenge, and the security consequences of a nation that is at unease with itself. A fairly good list of things to worry about.
Ought we to be worried? We ought to be in one sense - these are all real and credible threats to our way of life - but they also represent threats that exist in 2018. The authors fail to demonstrate why the threat level should be appreciably higher in 2020 than it is in 2018. What, exactly, is likely to worsen in the intervening two years? The authors do try to address this question, but they are not futurists. Their models lack precision and their reasoning lacks a systematic base. I think that futurists could do a better job, simply because they have a background in fleshing out complex and uncertain future narratives.
Unsurprisingly, the book ends with a call for greater vigilance (and spending) on defence. I felt that this was too large a leap for a book of this nature. Warning the public about all sorts of things that could - or could not - happen is not the basis for a sustainable spending review. What we do know that will happen for sure is that the population will continue to age, demand for adult social care will increase, and the NHS will be under ever increasing pressure. To argue for a shift of resources away from things we know will happen to those which may never happen is both naive and unrealistic.
This rather damns the book as a piece of wishful thinking that argues for more resources. And yet, if one of those scenarios were to happen, how would we cope. After all, we are not exactly prepared for it.
April 4, 2020
It's sad to see that books like this which are highly biased and antagonize the east are still being published. The authors have relied in their personal idiosyncrasies to write the book. They have failed to account for the actual ground facts. Most importantly, I still cannot believe how did they manage to get praise from Tim Marshall- must have drugged him or blackmailed him to give them the review.
January 26, 2020
I was completely gripped by this well researched book, which I assume was robustly vetted before publication otherwise it reads like a terrorism suggestion guide.
I'm guessing the book came out of a commission for research, otherwise it's hard to understand why anyone would publish a book that would become out of date so quickly. I bought it in 2019, and much has already been superceded by events such as the election of Boris Johnson.
It has a disconcerting style of moving seamlessly from a discussion of factual circumstances to hypothetical scenarios complete with proposed dates in 2020. If anyone casually picks up this book in the future without reading the introduction, they could easily be fooled into thinking these were events that actually happened.
Some of the hypothetical outcomes seem far fetched, but they are soundly extrapolated from the evidence, and the authors warn at the beginning they are worst case scenarios.
At the beginning of the book all the outcomes seem to be a happy ever after after for the Anglosphere, becoming progressively more pessimistic towards the end.
Definitely recommended, but you need to read it quickly before the hypotheses are proved or disproved by real world events.
The take away from the book is the over-riding need to develop adaptability to respond to fast changing global situations, rather than simply responding and reacting.
I'm guessing the book came out of a commission for research, otherwise it's hard to understand why anyone would publish a book that would become out of date so quickly. I bought it in 2019, and much has already been superceded by events such as the election of Boris Johnson.
It has a disconcerting style of moving seamlessly from a discussion of factual circumstances to hypothetical scenarios complete with proposed dates in 2020. If anyone casually picks up this book in the future without reading the introduction, they could easily be fooled into thinking these were events that actually happened.
Some of the hypothetical outcomes seem far fetched, but they are soundly extrapolated from the evidence, and the authors warn at the beginning they are worst case scenarios.
At the beginning of the book all the outcomes seem to be a happy ever after after for the Anglosphere, becoming progressively more pessimistic towards the end.
Definitely recommended, but you need to read it quickly before the hypotheses are proved or disproved by real world events.
The take away from the book is the over-riding need to develop adaptability to respond to fast changing global situations, rather than simply responding and reacting.
April 23, 2018
An interesting presentation of different potential scenarios from a security expert. These are very much 'could be' rather than 'will be' scenarios and the aim is to consider the range of ways in which we could all be doomed, rather than to narrate a fictional WW3.
Already some it is out of date, which I suppose is inevitable but the author presents some interesting ideas. They don't all work... some feel much more of a stretch than others... but they are all interesting thought experiments. The gist of the book seems very much to be that Russia/China/a resurgent ISIS, and reliance on the internet and modern communications will doom us all. Thought provoking, if slightly depressing!
Already some it is out of date, which I suppose is inevitable but the author presents some interesting ideas. They don't all work... some feel much more of a stretch than others... but they are all interesting thought experiments. The gist of the book seems very much to be that Russia/China/a resurgent ISIS, and reliance on the internet and modern communications will doom us all. Thought provoking, if slightly depressing!
July 26, 2019
Verbose and self opinionated takes a chapter to describe what could be said in a page or two. What I would expect from a bunch of academics mixed with the militaria political pseudo academics.
By their own definition we don't know what is in the future and what singularity might occur ie we don't know what we don't know......
By their own definition we don't know what is in the future and what singularity might occur ie we don't know what we don't know......
May 9, 2020
The opening was quiet promising. Howeve, I could only found first few chapters interesting and solid. The scenarios presented by authors are full of loops and exaggerated without any reference to present and historic linkages. I wonder Tom Clancy was really better at presenting scenarios for NATO specifically and the world in general. Three stars is more than this book really is.
June 10, 2020
Just Ok. If you want to read something about how wars might break out in the near future and what influence what states hold in the future and how a face-off might occur, then you are allowed to read otherwise it will be a boring read if you are looking for something se*y
December 23, 2025
Alright, perhaps partly my fault for not getting to it sooner. Some analysis holds up okay - but mainly where the tenets are rather evergreen - failure to prepare is prepare / plan for peace by preparing for war, etc etc. Heavy on the anti-Brexit / anti-Trump piece which I struggled to get behind.
February 28, 2018
Interesting to see what willl actually happen in 2020. Was interesting and was quite engrossing at times and certainly made you think about the potential of what will happen next.
June 5, 2018
Good insights in general for potential conflict zaman zones in the nese future. Some of the fictious scenarios are too complex to follow though. Enjoyable read in general.
December 19, 2018
Un libro di scenari di guerra asimmetrica, alcuni interessanti
January 10, 2019
Full of terrible predictions, unfounded and ungrounded stories
October 2, 2019
Frightening but an excellent insight into the potential hotspots that could lead to new global conflicts.
November 30, 2019
Intressant, men börjar bli lite inaktuell, mest därför så lågt betyg.
December 14, 2019
Maybe it’s the differences of time that made the different. At the time of writing, or the time of publishing and the time of reading. And this may contribute to the inapplicable scenarios.
October 3, 2020
Interesting scenarios, but nothing too shocking. Good incentive for leaders to prepare for some of the coming challenges and threats
November 24, 2020
I read this book in 2020, and i've realised that this is an absolute watse of time.
July 1, 2022
A commendable write-up of issues hurling the contemporary world.
Displaying 1 - 25 of 25 reviews