La guerra futura: Un estudio sobre el pasado y el presente [Paperback] Freedman, Lawrence and Fernández Aúz, Tomás

by Lawrence Freedman

LA GUERRA FUTURA

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Military Fiction, War, Politics, Military History, International Relations

Paperback

About the author

Sir Lawrence David Freedman, KCMG, CBE, PC, FBA is Emeritus Professor of War Studies at King's College London.

Reviews

[Olethros · Rating 3 out of 5]

-De más a menos.-

Género. Ensayo.

Lo que nos cuenta. El libro La guerra futura (publicación original: The Future of War. A History, 2017), con el subtítulo Un estudio sobre el pasado y el presente, propone un viaje sobre las visiones, desde finales del siglo XIX hasta la actualidad, del concepto, consecuencias, riesgos y formas de una próxima guerra mediante las opiniones de militares, políticos, juristas, escritores, diplomáticos y periodistas, manejadas desde el análisis actual del autor.

¿Quiere saber más de este libro, sin spoilers? Visite:

https://librosdeolethros.blogspot.com...

[Michael Burnam-Fink · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Future of War is a magisterial synthesis of conflict studies by one of the field's leading practitioners. I'll admit I was half hoping for a review of weird military futurism, but this is a serious study of how people have thought about war, from Victorian invasion literature such as The Battle of Dorking through the 2017 US Department of Defense Quadrennial Review.


It's a good question. Why don't we have baby assault tanks?

Freedman identifies three major periods in conflict studies. The first is that of traditional industrial warfare. German victories against Austria and France in the 19th century demonstrated the potential of the strategic surprise offensive to rapidly achieve political ends. A county that was unprepared or slow to mobilize could find its army destroyed as it gathered and its capitol occupied. The cult of the offensive lead to the slaughter of the First World War, and the fearful reaction that future wars would be slow, bloody, and exhausting. Airpower, fortification lines, and blitzkrieg were reactions to the First World War, which proved in the Second World War that in total war there were no limits, that the entire population was a valid military objective. Nuclear weapons provided the ultimate example of the cult of the offensive by finally offering the ability to completely annihilate an enemy in a matter of minutes, at the expense of poisoning the planet and potentially inviting an omnicidal retaliation.

Mutually assured destruction was one keystone of the lack of superpower conflict after World War 2. The other, in Freedman's estimation, was a strong respect for the norm of national sovereignty. With some significant asterisks, like countries that had been partitioned in the wake of the Second World War, or minor countries without allies who found themselves on the wrong side of a superpower like Afghanistan or Panama, war was not seen as a practical matter of achieving political ends.

This international consensus shifted in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union, and bloody civil wars in Africa and the Balkans. Perhaps national sovereignty had to be balanced against human rights, and the international community had a duty to prevent civil wars from escalating. Freedman is skeptical of humanitarian interventions. While they may save lives, there is a little clarity about why civil wars start or end, and these conflicts can become frozen without any chance of political resolution.

9/11 and the War on Terror provided a third shift, as the United States embarked on a globe spanning war not against nations, but against shifting groups of terrorists. As an aside, I enjoyed the back to back chapters "From Counter-Insurgency to Counter-Terrorism" and "From Counter-Terrorism to Counter-Insurgency" describing the failures of the 2003 invasion of Iraq and the subsequent surge. It seems that war will continue to be a feature of the human experience, even as the frequency and intensity of conflicts on many measures has declined.

Since this book came out in 2017, it can't cover the lurching uncertainty of Trump's Actual Madman Presidency, China's increased naval aggressiveness, or the major conflicts such as the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the drone heavy Second Nagorno-Karabakh War between Armenia and Azerbaijan. Overall, this is a masterful synthesis of a complex topic, and well worth the read.

[James Murphy · Rating 5 out of 5]

You might ask how a book can be about both the future of war and a history of it. Lawrence Freedman, one of today's leading academic thinkers in military affairs and the nature of war, has given us this book explaining how nations of the recent past and today expected to conduct the wars they understood they were going to have to fight. His primary lesson is that it's always different from what's expected, both by the militaries whose mission it is to keep their forces ready as well as by those who only imagine war, like novelists and filmmakers.

Freedman spends considerable time describing how the countries who fought the big wars of the 20th century expected them to be over quickly and therefore were forced to make major adjustments in resources and doctrine when they were drawn out. Many wars during the period he writes about, the past 150 years, might've been avoided if leaders had known they were going to go on so long and drain resources and societies. But he thinks this underlying optimism is a fundamental trait of those who plan war.

Another major topic is the reasons many of the post-WWII conflicts have been relatively small. He explains the rise in the number of civil wars in recent decades, and he writes about how the growth of mega-cities may breed violence--as in Central America today--between competing factions outside the control of the national authority.

The final chapters deal with new doctrines and methods in use today and being readied for the next wars: cyberwar, robots and drones, and doctrines incorporating climate change. The end of the book is a brief survey of what today's think tanks and academics see as potential flash points in the near future. Freedman is convincing in his argument that we can't begin to really know the future of war without knowing its history.

[Kara Babcock · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not actually my cup of tea, The Future of War: A History is a massive data dump and analysis of what we used to think about the future of warfare. Lawrence Freedman has clearly Done the Research, and I have to hand it to him: there’s compelling stuff here. Thanks to NetGalley and Public Affairs for the eARC.

I love the premise of this book. It kind of merges my passion for literature and my mild interest in history. It is very easy for us to interpret the actions of people in the past through our hindsight and our own cultural lenses. Freedman reminds us what any good historian tries to remember: people in the past had a very different conception of the world, and as such, their motivations might be hard to unravel if they didn’t write them down. To us, the multitudinous causes of World War I and the line connecting it to World War II seem obvious. To someone living in 1920 or 1930, not so much. To us, the outcome of the Cold War and its influence around the world is just a matter of fact now—to someone living in 1950 or 1960, with the spectres of Hiroshima and Nagasaki still lingering in recent memory, it’s a very different story.

Freedman’s survey of the literature is thoughtful, perceptive, detailed, and critical. He intersperses the literature between arguments for an overall thesis—which basically seems to be that, following the end of the Cold War, we’ve reached a point where it is increasingly difficult to predict the “future” of war, simply because we have yet to settle on a redefinition of the word.

One part of the book that really jumped out at me is where Freedman explains the intense efforts put into statistical analysis of wars. In particular, he describes late-twentieth-century attempts to compile casualty databases. He points out all the assumptions that necessarily went into this work, since it is difficult to define what war is, how long it lasts, or what counts as a “death” or “injury” attributable to the war. As such, while these sources of information are invaluable for discussing war and the related politics, they are also flawed and biased. Freedman reminds us that methodology in these situations is so tricky—it’s not a matter of getting it right, but of understanding that there is no one right way to collect and interpret the data.

I also really enjoyed the first part of The Future of War, where Freedman analyzes what people were writing prior to and then following the First World War. I liked the glimpse at war fiction, from people like Wells and others whose names aren’t quite as well known today. And it’s interesting how Freedman draws connections between fiction and its influence on the population, as well as politicians. Later on, he recapitulates this by recounting President Reagan’s reaction to Tom Clancy’s first novels.

The last part of the book was less interesting, for a few reasons. By this point, I was getting fatigued. This is a long book, and more to the point, it is incredibly dense and detailed and technical. A student of history will find this a useful resource; the casual reader, like myself, might start feeling bogged down. Also, the incredibly globalized nature of warfare in the 1990s, the sheer number of internecine affairs, means that Freedman has to cover a lot of ground in comparably few pages. Like, entire books have and can be written about small parts of each of these conflicts. So it all starts to feel overwhelming, but rushed.

None of this is Freedman’s fault in particular. The Future of War is quite well-written and informative. It is a little drier and less engaging than I typically want my non-fiction to be, but I can’t really hold that against it. I’m just not quite the target audience. History buffs, though, particularly those who want to learn more about how we used to think about war, might have more patience and inclination to really dive deep into this.

[Constantin Beda · Rating 3 out of 5]

Azi am trecut pe răboj "Viitorul războiului. O istorie", apărută în colecția Kronika de la Litera. Interesant titlu, nu? În esență, acolo se pune întrebarea dacă războaiele ce pot urma pot fi evitate studiind conflagrațiile din trecut. Extrapolând titlul, e o speranță că în viitor războaiele vor deveni istorie. Știu, e idealism utopic, dar cred că putem să sperăm. Ca să fiu și un pic realist, probabil că războaiele viitorului se vor purta de la distanță, prin intermediul dronelor și roboților controlați de operatori umani sau cu lovituri precise efectuate de sateliți militarizați.
Cartea e o analiză sumară a conflictelor mai mari sau mai mici, scrisă într-un mod detașat, o relatare oarecum distantă care nu prea a reușit să mă atingă, să mă impresioneze. Totuși, am găsit acolo un citat care m-a impresionat, preluat de autor dintr-un volum de poezii despre suferință și ororile războiului:
"Istoria își numără scheletele în cifre rotunde.
O mie unu rămâne o mie, ca și cum acel unu nu ar fi existat niciodată:
un embrion imaginar, un leagăn gol,
un abecedar niciodată citit,
aer care râde, plânge, crește,
un gol alergând în jos pe scări spre grădină, locul nimănui într-un șir.
(Wislawa Szymborska, Lagărul foamei de la Jaslo)

[Imran Said · Rating 5 out of 5]

The title of master strategic writer Lawrence Freedman's most latest book is titled 'The Future of War: A History'; itself an interesting premise. Instead of simply writing another prediction on future warfare as many polemologists have done at some point in their careers, Freedman instead sought to delve into the history of how strategists, pundits, politicians, and scholars have argued future warfare would play out. His main conclusion is that most attempts to rationalize and theorize the character of future warfare were largely unsuccessful, mainly due to one reason. Most claims on future war have been prescriptive rather than predictive, more concerned with persuading those in power and influence about taking certain steps laid down by them to avoid war breaking out in the first place (or in some cases making the first move to war to avoid being caught in a weaker position), rather than a serious attempt to analyze future trends and developments in organized violence for political ends (referencing a certain dead Prussian).

There are two main contentions in Freedman's book. The first is how writing on future war has been obsessed with the idea of the sneak attack or knockout blow. As modern war became more destructive, bloody, consumed a larger amount of state resources and touched every facet of society, the pressure was on to end wars quickly and decisively. During the First World War, the goal was to mobilize your armies and get them into an advantageous position as quickly as possible. However, this pressure to strike put a limited time constraint on generals and politicians on other alternatives to resolving the tensions, meaning the rush to war became almost unstoppable.

With the outbreak of the Second World War, the emphasis shifted to both the surprise attack and of the deliberate targeting of civilians. The latter was particularly influenced by the advent of airpower, and how air raids could be used to break the spirit of the enemy populace by inducing misery upon them. Of course, despite the destruction wrought on cities such as London and Stalingrad by the Luftwaffe, the British and Soviets would never buckle. The same could be said about the then enthusiasm on the surprise attack. Freedman notes that both Operation Barbarossa and the Attack on Pearl Harbor, while tactical and operational masterpieces, failed in their strategic ends. Both the Soviets and Americans were caught off guard and initially suffered grievously, yet ultimately both were able to consolidate their forces and steady their morale, ultimately inflicting crushing defeats on their respective opponents.

Despite this, as Freedman points out, Pearl Harbour would remain emblematic of the dangers of the surprise attack, and of lowering one's guard due to complacency (itself born out of both a degenerate society and a naive establishment). Every major development in the realm of warfare would allow one's enemy to negate your strenght with a knockout blow, leaving you helpless and vulnerable.

The advent of nuclear weapons could bring down an entire civilization in a nuclear first strike. The rise of terrorism (particularly international jihadism) saw frightening scenarios about terrorist groups one day getting their hands on nuclear, chemical, or biological device, forgetting the real world technical difficulties this would entail. Cyberwarfare and the targeting of vital state institutions and organs could lead to a 'digital Pearl Harbour', dismissing the strengths of modern cybersecurity and how most online attacks up to date had been more annoying than crippling.

Contemporary hysterics about so-called hybrid warfare and how enemies could use 'Cool War' to gain an edge while keeping action below the threshold of a hot war ignored the fact that hybrid warfare was rarely decisive in itself. Russian attempts to seize Crimea and Eastern Ukraine using a combination of Special Ops, proxy forces, and information warfare failed to resolve the fighting. The West quickly caught on to Russia's tricks, and Moscow's disinformation campaign unravalled as their presented narrative became increasingly fanciful, to the point where almost no one trusted Russian officials. A cursory glance at Russian piecemeal acquisition in Ukraine, as well as Chinese attempts to bolster their maritime territory in the South China Sea, have only bolstered tensions in the region and locked both powers into increasingly irretractable conflicts, thereby if anything raising the likelihood of war.

The second main theme of his book concerns how we have thought of future war in terms of its character and how we study it. Freedman is equally as critical in this regard. He points out that attempts to apply a scientific approach to the study of international relations and conflict has often failed due to flawed methodologies. He points to the difficulties in acquiring accurate data (such as in the dreary business of collecting casualty figures from wars), as well as interpreting and categorizing them. A case in point, he notes that while the so-called Football War between El Salvador and Honduras involved high enough casualties to warrant being labelled a proper war in a project by the University of Michigan, despite its limited geopolitical impact outside of Central America. On the other hand, border clashes between the Soviet Union and Maoist China in the late sixties was not even considered a proper war, rather a 'Militarized Interstate Dispute'. This despite the fact that it clearly had larger consequences for international relations, pushing China closer to the United States as relations deteriorated between Moscow and Beijing. To attempt to apply a scientific understanding to war, to try and look at war through data and statistics, was to wrest wars out of their political and historic contexts.

Freedman also looks into new 'trends' in war; where scholars now analyze war beyond the traditional military and political. He points out that with the end of the Cold War, intrastate conflicts have largely proliferated as many new nation-states struggled to maintain stability in the wake of decolonization. He posits there were next to nothing written about these new civil wars, and that many scholars and pundits were forced to catch up to try and understand these bewildering developments. Efforts were made to try and understand what factors were involved in creating failed states, and whether all armed rebellion could really be blanketed as simply revolutionary in character or uprisings against injustices in society.

Much was written about the role of Western military power in responding to these armed rebellions, whether in the form of peacekeeping operations (which was soon discovered to not be as clean and bloodless as many had hoped), or through direct interventions to enforce direct regime change (which seen from Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya were not always great success stories). Near the end of the book, Freedman analyzes attempts to identify where the next great spark for conflict in the future could be, whether it be energy scarcity, food security and climate change, nationalism, and organized crime. In almost all cases, Freedman expertly challenges the hysterics and doomsday scenarios. It almost makes for comforting reading.

The Future of War is ultimately an expertly written book, combining that rare talent of packed with details yet still approachable to the common layman. If Freedman's main argument could be summarized as such, it would be that despite the histrionics and fancy buzzwords; war itself remains at its heart a brutal, bloody, grinding, and very much human affair. One which no amount of high-tech, fancy tech, intellectual fads, and wish-washing is going to change.

[Joseph Stieb · Rating 4 out of 5]

A little bit more of a textbook than I was hoping for, but nonetheless an interesting, thorough, and concise look at the future of war and the history of thinking about the future of war. Most of the book is a topic-by-topic rundown of key aspects of post-Cold War international security and warfare. This was a useful section, especially for undergrad type courses, although I didn't learn a ton of new stuff. More compelling were his criticisms of political science's usefulness in understanding modern security issues. Freedman has a great discussion of the COW and other databases, and he shows that basically produce such general outcomes that they aren't much use in predicting or understanding conflict. I always thought you could just predict where conflict is going to by less by correlating and more by, you know, watching other countries' politics and stuff.

His more substantial criticism of political science, and the general idea of predicting the future of war, comes in his first section about thinking about the future of war going back to the 1870s. He argues that strategists, futurists, and even novelists all focused overwhelmingly on technology in their predictions of future war because that's the one thing that can really be projected into the future. Political contexts, alliance, where the conflict will be, the national mood, diplomacy, etc, all these things that have an enormous impact on the conduct of war, are all far less predictable. This is ultimately Freedman's argument for caution in prediction and the value of history, which seeks to take in events in all of their complexity rather than reduce things to the "true" causes by comparing tons and tons of cases.

I'd recommend this book for anyone looking for a relatively brief overview of security issues and military history. I appreciated that Freedman brought in a wide variety of thinkers about the future of war, not just the classic folks like Mahan or Douhet. I'd also recommend this to people teaching modern warfare or security studies type classes who are interested in accessible course readings.

[Henry Davis IV · Rating 1 out of 5]

Unlike this book's title, this is a purely a concise history of warfare which provides nothing more forward looking than stating many characteristics of warfare throughout the ages will persist into the future. If this was a well done history it might make a good text book in a Freshman level history course. Unfortunately, the chapters that should be some of the most compelling and updated are some of the least on both accounts. Specifically, the chapters in part three dealing with hybrid wars, cyberwar, robots and drones, and the concluding chapters. While these chapters do have some good material in them, they incorrectly minimize the military importance of emerging or current trends like cyberspace operations and "hybrid wars" (really full spectrum operations in current American military parlance). Despite this book's very attractive cover and some well-done overviews in earlier chapters, I do not recommend this book. There are a plethora of other concise military histories available which will provide readers much greater insight and provide to be more pleasant literary adventures than wandering down the blind path of this book with its great lack of "so what?"

[Ana-Maria · Rating 4 out of 5]

Viitorul războiului – Lawrence Freedman (2017)

Am purtat cartea asta cu mine câteva săptămâni, aproape ca pe un accesoriu obligatoriu. De fiecare dată când prindeam un răgaz, furam câteva pagini, și nu doar din datorie de cititor, ci pentru că – în mod neașteptat – m-a prins. Mă așteptam la o istorie clasică a războiului, seacă și cronologică, dar Freedman m-a surprins. El nu povestește cum au avut loc războaiele, ci cum și le-au imaginat oamenii înainte să izbucnească. Cum au proiectat viitorul scriitori, politologi sau strategi militari, și câtă dreptate (nu) au avut în raport cu realitatea.

Asta mi se pare ideea centrală: oamenii au reușit să intuiască mai ușor direcția tehnologică a conflictelor – arme noi, echipamente, inovații militare – decât schimbările politice și sociale care urmau să dea peste cap ordinea lumii. A fost mai simplu ca un H.G. Wells să prevadă apariția avioanelor, a radarelor, a armelor nucleare, a dronelor sau a inteligenței artificiale decât evenimente specifice cum ar fi prăbușirea Uniunii Sovietice, atacurile din 11 septembrie sau consecințele decolonizării.

Un capitol care mi-a plăcut în mod deosebit urmărește rolul literaturii și al filmelor speculative. Ficțiunea nu doar a reflectat anxietățile vremii, ci le-a și hrănit. Unele scenarii aparent fanteziste au influențat direct modul în care liderii politici s-au raportat la amenințări: atacuri-surpriză, lovituri „decisive” care ar putea încheia rapid un război, vulnerabilități ce trebuiau acoperite. M-a surprins să aflu influența pe care a avut-o romanul Vânătoarea lui Octombrie Roșu asupra președintelui Reagan, în felul în care privea amenințarea nucleară și relația cu Gorbaciov.

Foarte provocatoare este și analiza statelor fragile. Freedman arată cum slăbiciunea instituțiilor și instabilitatea internă fac din aceste state teren fertil pentru conflicte civile sau războaie de lungă durată. Dacă războaiele interstatale erau oarecum reglementate prin tratate și convenții, conflictele interne – Guatemala, Algeria, Sri Lanka – au lăsat lumea internațională într-o zonă de ambiguitate: cine are dreptul să intervină, în ce condiții și cu ce consecințe? Iar atunci când controlul ajunge în mâinile bandelor sau rețelelor criminale, nu există nicio cale clară care să permită intervenții ale forțelor străine pentru a stabiliza conflictele.

Pe măsură ce se apropie de prezent, Freedman discută teme pe care le auzim zilnic: războiul hibrid, valurile de refugiați, terorismul, campaniile de dezinformare. El rămâne prudent în a formula predicții, dar observă cât de ușor un conflict „în zona gri” se poate transforma în război deschis, mai ales acolo unde corupția, neînțelegerea culturală sau geografia favorizează rezistența și războaiele de anduranță.

Cartea se încheie în 2016, cu întrebarea deschisă despre ce formă va lua războiul viitorului și cu atenția îndreptată spre Rusia și China. Citite acum, în 2025, reflecțiile lui sunt lucide: vedem drone și sisteme autonome în Ucraina, războaie urbane la Mariupol sau Gaza, atacuri cibernetice care paralizează infrastructuri, și un discurs public dominat de „intervenționism” și „amenințări hibride”.

Pentru mine, Freedman este un autor de urmărit, atât pentru analizele lui geopolitice, cât și pentru felul în care citește conflictele din prezent și schițează conturul celor viitoare.

[Daniel A · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellence. Broad and comprehensive, it went into much more than wars of old and gave solid grounds for its predictions on the wars of the future. I was especially thankful for sections on decisive and indecisive battles, climate change and resource scarcity, ancient hatreds, hybrid wars, and comings wars.

Dr. Friedman’s finding, that every major war was characterized by one side’s willingness to cross a polItical red-line not crossed before, was a critical influence on an analysis I wrote concerning Chinese hypersonic weapon systems. It worries me that the next red-line will be the use of WMDs.

Dr. Friedman, thank you.

[John Plowright · Rating 3 out of 5]

The study of History cannot be justified on the grounds that it teaches ‘lessons’, as the past “is infinitely various, an inexhaustible storehouse of incidents from which we can prove anything or its contrary”. So said Sir Michael Howard in his Inaugural Lecture as Oxford Regius Professor of Modern History and it is to Howard as ‘Teacher, Mentor, Friend’ that Lawrence Freedman dedicates his book ‘The Future of War’. One might, then, expect Freedman to detail how all efforts to predict the nature and course of future conflicts have failed.

The past is certainly littered with plenty of examples of generals assuming that the next war will be like the last one and thus devising strategies or tactics that seem bound to fail. A classic example is the Maginot Line. The French assumed that a Second World War would be like the Great War and accordingly devised a set of fortifications on the Franco-German border which represented a more elaborate version of the Western Front’s trench system, failing to appreciate that changes to warfare (to say nothing of the failure to extend the Line to the Channel) would render it virtually obsolete by 1940.

But hang on a minute – if Maginot represents a failure to conceive the future of war by the French, shouldn’t the German proponents of Blitzkrieg, like Guderian, building on the insights of Basil Liddell Hart and J. F. C. Fuller into the potential of armoured warfare, be credited with correctly piercing the veil of the future?

And isn’t Ivan Bloch an even better example of an accurate prophet of future war? It was Bloch, remember, who in the six volumes of his book ‘La Guerre, published between 1898 and 1900, stated that the lethality of modern firepower would drive men to dig trenches and that warfare would result in stalemate because frontal assaults against entrenchments would prove too costly.

This is, then, the central problem with Freedman’s book. He has no difficulty showing that many military experts and some gifted civilian amateurs (such as Bloch and H. G. Wells) expended considerable energy musing about future war from the mid-nineteenth century onwards (when war became increasingly destructive and changes to technology and weaponry begged the question of how they would be employed militarily). Nor does he have any trouble in detailing how the way in which “people imagined the wars of the future affected the conduct and course of those wars when they finally arrived.” What he does not do, and in the nature of History cannot do, is provide a satisfactory overarching explanation of how a few got the future right but most got it very wrong. Hence the book concludes that, “If there is a lesson from this book it is that while many [future speculations about future wars] will deserve to be taken seriously, they should all be treated sceptically”.

After almost 300 pages, in which there is admittedly much interesting material about imagined futures of past wars and even speculation about the future of war as an institution, one is nevertheless bound to question whether the journey was worth making for such a trite and anti-climatic insight.

[Socrate · Rating 3 out of 5]

In mitologia greaca, zeii razboiului aduceau suferinta si haos. Ares, odata ce era lasat liber, devenea periculos si infricosator. Partenera sa, Enyo, distrugea orase, iar copiii lui erau intruchiparea dezbinarii, a fricii si a groazei. De la numele fratelui lui Enyo, Polemos, provin termenii „polemologie", care inseamna studiul razboiului, si „polemica", adica limbaj agresiv. Polemos a aparut in literatura greaca drept personificarea razboiului. Una dintre fabulele lui Esop descrie cum, atunci cand zeii si-au ales perechile, Polemos a intampinat dificultati in gasirea unei partenere. Pand la urma, a ramas doar Hybris, zeita mandriei nemasurate si a infatuarii. Polemos s-a indragostit nebuneste de Hybris si a inceput s-o urmeze pretutindeni. Morala fabulei era ca popoarele lumii nu trebuiau s-o lase vreodata pe Hybris sa apara in mijlocul lor pentru ca, de indata ce avea sa se intample acest luau, razboiul ar fi urmat inevitabil.

[Julius · Rating 3 out of 5]

No es un libro novelesco, o que cuente una historia. Es un tratado sobre cómo las naciones han imaginado la guerra, y por tanto, cómo la plantearon. El libro apabulla con sus datos, conocimientos, personajes y detalles. Por eso mismo, creo que no es un libro apropiado para nadie que no esté muy muy interesado en el tema. A mí particularmente me interesó la primera parte, donde se describe la influencia de los medios de comunicación en el siglo XIX y XX para manipular a la población, crear pánico social, o hacer presión a los gobiernos. Presiones de la prensa llegaron incluso a crear el famoso MI6 británico. Las fake news no son cosas de nuestro tiempo, sino que vienen de mucho más atrás.

En resumen, una gran investigación, pero quizás no para leer por entretenerse.

[Chris · Rating 2 out of 5]

The book is a review of the literature on how the future wars were historically predicted to be. I found the result disappointing, as I was left with the impression that the author intended to get it over with as I read through the chapters. I found the approach in the Balkan wars of the 90s superficial and I was surprised to find a couple of outright wrong dates on conflicts other than the major wars. I also found the use of punctuation marks terribly disappointing, ri the extent that I had to read certain sentences a couple of times to understand what the author means.

[Alberto Illán Oviedo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excelente ensayo sobre los tipos de conflictos bélicos a lo largo del tiempo, las predicciones que nunca fueron realidad, el presente de los conflictos y quizá un futuro.

[Andrew · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lawrence Friedman is undoubtedly a maestro of his profession. He displays exceptional knowledge in The Future of War: A History. And yet, there were troubling aspects of his work. It sometimes felt more like a collection of tangentially related arguments than a single discourse on the topic. I found myself wondering more than once how all of these pieces were meant to relate to one another. How was this book going to become more than the sum of its parts?

On this point, I was disappointed. The book contains three parts; each part rife with its own subjects and arguments. Part One, which is essentially a historiography of the evolution of thinking about war, is full of interesting analyses and relevant anecdotes. I was particularly struck by Friedman’s description of how the classical model of war – the one developed by Clausewitz and Jomini in the 19th century – has continued to underpin both the academic literature and professional discourse about war. All this despite the relentless progression of technology and the ever-swelling body of evidence testifying to the model’s limitations. More than once while reading my thoughts drifted to modern doctrine. Both Joint Publication 1 and Marine Corps Doctrinal Publication 1 make allusions to such culminating moments and decisive operations. I wondered how things might have been different without the classical model. Regardless, I found Part One to be a lucid exploration of the history of thinking about war. It is well worth your time.

Part Two is less consistent. The chapters in part two definitely contain some interesting material. Although somewhat dry. It was hard to feel especially excited about the chapters discussing the shortcomings of the correlates of war database, for example. But more than that, part two lacked some of the coherence of part one. To be sure each chapter contained their own brilliantly researched and cogent arguments, but together it felt more like a series of individual sermons rather than part of a broader contention.

Part three was a welcome respite. He offers keen insights on a variety of topics that one might expect in a book about future war. He addresses drone technology, so-called hybrid warfare, crypto-conflict, and much else. Friedman’s analyses are astute. But he also exhibits humility. He proclaims the virtues of various forms of future war without promising a new “revolution in military affairs.” His reluctance to evangelize the merits of a particular vision exhibits his integrity and shows why he is such an authority in his field. It is a welcome dash of perspective in a field full of epistemologically unreliable prognosticators.

I can’t say that I recommend this book for most readers. But if you have an interest in the subject, it is definitely worth your time. I feel like I will need to revisit this book on occasion. It is so packed with good material that I am certain that I missed some. That said, the flip side to this book is its density. It’s a challenge to get through; It is clearly the work of a master.

[Adrian · Rating 5 out of 5]

War and its future has long had people speculating, ranging from academics, to policy makers, to novelists. The book itself is about the musings on the future of war, the anticipated developments, and how those developments played out. Sounds abstract, but it all makes perfect sense.
As one would imagine, musings on the future of war have oscillated from sanguine (the abolition of war) to the predictably fatalistic.
Among the most notable speculators on war's future were the novelists H.G. Wells and much later Tom Clancy.
H.G. Wells gravitated to the idea of One World Government dedicated to dispute resolution, an idea he postulated for many years with a limited reception. Yet his most notable predictions was harnessing the power of the atom, made around 1916.
Tom Clancy, on the other hand, used a very well researched technical knowledge of weaponry to write entirely believable novels that caught the attention of Ronald Reagan. However, it must be noted that Tom Clancy's novels (Hunt for Red October and Red Storm Rising) didn't so much influence Ronald Reagan, but rather reinforced his pre-existing ideas of the winnability of a conventional war against the Soviets.
Most of the early part of the book may be very familiar to any international relations specialists who have studied the evolution of war, however later chapters on the use of cyber war, drones and hybrid warfare are more notable as they conceptualise new and evolving concepts.
Freedman's study is a very useful piece for anybody who wants to study the concept of warfare futurology and as a reminder that the prediction game is all too often a fool's errand.
What matters is that this volume is insightful, filled with eye opening knowledge and thought provoking in the extreme.

[Gordon · Rating 4 out of 5]

Superbly written as are all of Lawrence Freedman’s works. This book analyzes how theorists, strategists, futurists and others interested in predicting the evolution of conflict have faired over time. Starting generally from the early 19th Century Freedman covers themes and the precursors as well as aftermaths of war to analyze what authors predicted that came true, partially true or not all. Needless to say, few have ever gotten much right, which in itself is an important takeaway for those whose career it is to prepare for conflict, or plan and develop defense capabilities, or shape the conditions for peace and stability.

[Stijn · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting read about the history of warfare and the way 'the future of war' was predicted over the last decades. In my opinion it became dry when the author went too much into the different works of fiction describing each phase in time. Although, trends were established by doing this, the reading became dry and difficult to follow at times. 3* since it did have some interesting insights but was dry and lacked some solid predictions or conclusions.

[Nick Quenga · Rating 2 out of 5]

The first third was excellent: the history of predicting the future of war. The rest seemed a bit all over the place, then fell into the same traps of trying to predict the future without pulling from the past. Audio presentation definitely fit the theme of the book.

[Denis Vasilev · Rating 4 out of 5]

Адекватная книга про войны и военную стратегию. К сожалению ничего нового и без интересных свежих мыслей и идей, обычное историческое повторение очевидного

[Leroy Rodriguez · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting and thoughtful study on the development of thinking about war. The acedemic thoroughness almost makes you forget that the sacrifice of women, children, and the underclass are the textbooks for this thinking.
I expect the thinking of pre-emptive first strikes and acceptable losses is a way of naming the beast to try and control it but it feels like I’m looking in on feeding time at the demon’s cage.
Fascinating....

[Dorin · Rating 4 out of 5]

This one was a very interesting take on the nature of war. Freedman provides a history of war by going through what people used to think about the future of war and warfare. He takes on popular culture, science-fiction, strategical analysis, academia etc. It seems that everyone, everywhere, misses the point when predicting how the next war will look. They tend to focus on some parts and ignore others. When looking at the next war, be it for strategic planning or fiction, somehow they are always stuck in the past, unable to see that the future might look different (even with all the necessary data available). They confidently bet on something, only for the reality to strike back with something else. Over and over again. We are nothing if not creatures of habit! (When we imagine future wars, not when we wage them).

Fun to read.

[Jorge Rivera · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sir Lawrence Freedman is Emeritus Professor of War Studies at King's College London. Widely considered an expert on warfare and history, his book on the subject is an excellent history lesson in the evolution of warfare and clearly demonstrates his expertise in both classical subjects. His book, however, is not for the amateur reader. Freedman’s passive voice and almost poetic writing style can make the book difficult to absorb at times. It is aimed not only to the history buff, but also to the warrior who seeks to better understand their chosen profession.

Professor Freedman covers a significant amount of history both from literature and from actual events in history. While he is a great historian and this book appears to be accurately researched, his arguments provide some contradiction. This is a superb story, but many parts are redundant. He articulates a point and continues to provide more examples. Additionally, he categorically criticizes the scientific method in war studies, presumably political science. Yet, he refers to studies, trends, statistics, and analysis to provide a source of evidence to some of his arguments. Finally, this book is not really about the future of war as much as it is about the documentation and speculation of future war and how that has played out in history. He makes no claim to predict future warfare and provides a clear warning of any one who claims to have a vision for future warfare.

His criticisms of the literature and political science are both direct and passive. Yet, he is very clear on how wrong the majority of literature of future war has been as well as the inadequacy of data collection and numbness of analysis to the realities of war. Finally, his claim that while technology has changed the effects of war, it has not changed the purpose of war. His last chapter provides clear warnings that any prediction of future war is nothing more than speculation and imagination. Ultimately, there is a spirit throughout the book that the nation’s leaders must still be able to plan for the future.

[Diego · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lawrence Friedman presenta un análisis histórico sobre la guerra, pero no desde un punto de vista tradicional, lo hace sobre la historia de como las sociedades y las personas en distintos momentos han pensando las guerras del futuro.

El libro nos cuenta como novelistas, analistas, militares y políticas en distintas eras anticipaban los conflictos del futuro, tanto en términos estratégicos, geopolíticos y tecnológicos. En el proceso cometiendo muchos errores, como pensar que la historia simplemente se repetiría, que la tecnología al final haría las guerras más rápidas, que la sorpresa sería el elemento de ventaja definitivo. Al mismo tiempo dejaban de lado en su análisis las cuestiones políticas sobre cómo reaccionarían las sociedades, como se comportarían otros estados, que amenazas podrían emerger de sus decisiones estratégicas del momento.

El libro es una lectura muy amena, con una discusión bastante sofisticada sobre los distintos tipos de enfrentamientos militares, desde las batallas de grandes ejércitos de las guerras Napoleónicas hasta la guerra nuclear, la ciberguerra y las guerras civiles y criminales. Al final el libro nos pinta un escenario más complicado del que solemos leer o escuchar de los análisis convencionales en los medios y nos advierte que hoy al igual que desde hace siglos podemos cometer los mismos errores al pensar en el futuro, al subestimar lo que no sabemos y no prestar suficiente atención a la política.

Una lectura recomendable, sobre todo en los tiempos extraños en que vivimos.

[Urban · Rating 1 out of 5]

Ich habe dieses Sachbuch auf Empfehlung einer Rezension im Deutschlandradio im März 2022 gekauft, nachdem Russland die Ukraine überfallen hatte. Es wurde positiv besprochen als eine gelungene Übersicht über Kriege in der Zeitspanne vom Ende des 19. Jahrhunderts bis 2017. Der einzige negative Aspekt, der herausgestellt wurde, lag in der stark anglo-amerikanischen Perspektive, die der Autor einnimmt.

Ich kann mich dieser positiven Rezension leider nicht anschließen. Nach einem Drittel habe ich das Buch beiseite gelegt. Es handelt sich um eines der wenigen Bücher, die ich für den normalen Leser als Zeitverschwendung einstufe.

Das Buch stellt einen Bericht dar, wie sich in der Vergangenheit Militärexperten, Journalisten und Politiker jeweils den nächsten Krieg vorgestellt haben. Der Autor stützt sich dabei erkennbar nur auf schriftliche Quellen. Schon nach den ersten Kapiteln wird klar, dass sich Kriege nicht voraussehen lassen, schon gar nicht mittels einer datengestützten, wissensbasierten Herangehensweise. Der Leser lernt somit nur, welche Fehler in den jeweiligen Epochen gemacht worden sind. Analysen, warum Voraussagen schwierig sind, oder gar eigene Theorien fehlen.

Das Buch mag für Erstsemester auf einer Militärakademie eine sinnvolle Lektüre darstellen, mehr nicht.

[Chad Manske · Rating 4 out of 5]

War can only technically be thought of in terms of past and present—the notion advanced by eminent historian Sir Lawrence Freedman in this 400-page 2017 work. Technological advances evoke how wars may be fought and in what manner in the future, but they are just notions. Predictions such as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s early 20th century idea that submersible watercraft (submarines) seemed ridiculous at the time, as did the idea of using remotely piloted aircraft to prosecute war, yet it isn’t the technological advances that limit our ability to employ those weapons, but the crossing of previously moral red lines we surpass to do so. A big takeaway here demonstrates we should not put all of our eggs in the basket of surety to fight future war, but to instead think and plan with reflection of the human dimension ever present.

[TS Allen · Rating 1 out of 5]

A meandering, delightful, thought-provoking, fundamentally pointless, misleading book. Just like a lecture at King's, really. I highly recommend Stephen Peter Rosen's reivew of this in Foreign Affairs "The Future Fights: Planning for the Next War" (February 2018) for a corrective. Still happy I read it.

[Nick · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting but disappointing. Amounts to nothing more than a literature review of how others have predicted what wars will look like. Author offers none of his own conclusions despite what was surely voluminous research.

[Bastiaan Huesken · Rating 3 out of 5]

Most worthwhile.