Command: The Politics of Military Operations from Korea to Ukraine

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For example, British General David Richards has written that the modern commander must be an ‘entrepreneurial networker and communicator rather than a dictator’.

Financial Times Russia faces defeat in Ukraine - Financial Times

It is distinctive not only in the sociological perspective he brings to the topic but also his focus on major changes in the practice of command, even since the end of the Cold War.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. But there’s no question that what really counts in the long run is Freedman’s perspective, examining the decision-making and the interplay between governments and military commanders. The prime ­minister asked him what he meant, and he told her “because if we do not… in another two months we shall be living in a different country whose word counts for little”.

Command: the politics of military operations from Korea to Command: the politics of military operations from Korea to

The danger, I think, for them is that they get overextended, that they just push a little bit too far and leave some forward units vulnerable. So obviously, anything we say about what’s likely to happen now has to have all sorts of caveats around it. Footnote 2 Eliot Cohen made a major contribution with Supreme Command but that was from the perspective of political as opposed to military leadership. A commander burnishing a heroic image might neglect these aspects of a job, and when operations are at their most intense might be forgiven for asking others to take care of them, but once a command position has been accepted a ‘command regime’ must surely follow. King’s achievement is to use his distinctive focus as a means of opening up questions about how senior commanders organised their headquarters and fight their battles.

Nonetheless, although there are therefore limits to what can be achieved with regard to a general theory of command simply by looking at the divisional level, this book does work as a means of exploring the impact of the changing character of warfare on command arrangements. Christopher Clark, "'This Is a Reality, Not a Threat'" (review of Lawrence Freedman, The Future of War: A History, Public Affairs, 2018, 376 pp.