The Israel-Palestine conflict dominating world headlines began before 1948 when this book picks up the story, as rival nationalist forces, Jews and Arabs, fought for control of the remains of the Ottoman Empire. It had collapsed during World War I, and after WWII nationalist struggles against colonialism were a feature of wars.
American military chief General David Petraeus and English military historian Andrew Roberts, a biographer of Napoleon and Churchill, have combined their respective talents to analyse how warfare has been conducted under the nuclear deterrence umbrella since 1945.
The two atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki changed the nature of warfare and not necessarily for the better. Those weapons yielded about 14 and 20 kilotons respectively, but subsequent bombs quickly rose exponentially to far above 100 kilotons. The use of nuclear weapons remained hypothetical, though their destructive power wasn’t.
The authors have plenty of material to work with – from the first nationalist war after 1945 fought between the Chinese communist forces of Mao Zedong and Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek. Weakened by their fight against the invading Japanese, Chiang’s army was no match for Mao’s guerrillas backed by the Soviet Union.
Korea was the next theatre as the anti-communist West regrouped its forces under the fledgling United Nations and fought the communists, backed by China, to a standstill. That war remains technically unresolved, as both Korean countries failed to sign an armistice.
Events in Kashmir in 1948 had parallels to those in the Middle East, with a Muslim majority seeking to join Pakistan but being foiled by India. That conflict continues today. The declaration of the Israeli state in 1948 was supported by the UN but not the displaced Arab population.
Petraeus and Roberts say the three Rs of successful guerrilla insurgencies are revenge for a real or perceived wrong, renown that gives meaning to their lives, and a desire to provoke a reaction from the enemy. A fourth R, religion, adds another potent ingredient to the mix.
These elements can work both ways. The Malays fought a successful battle against an ethnic-Chinese communist uprising, whereas the Vietnamese communists and Algerian nationalists defeated the French empire.
The Israelis scored a comprehensive victory over invading Arab forces in the 1967 Six Day War, but as President Chaim Herzog later noted, “Israeli Command tended to credit itself with many other achievements that were in some cases more a result of Arab negligence, lack of co-ordination and poorer command at the higher level than of Israeli effectiveness”.
That complacency was tested in the Yom Kippur War of 1973 and seemingly again 50 years later. “Yom Kippur was a reminder that deterrence only works when it threatens overwhelming punishment,” the authors observe, using the kind of phrase being repeated today by Israel and Ukraine.
More than a dozen other wars are described in detail, with Petraeus providing his hindsight views on the American defeats in Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq.
This is high-level military analysis of 70 years of war that is being constantly changed by technological development.
