The Western Way of War
Peter Roberts
Havant, UK: Howgate Publishing, 2024
Paperback 186pp RRP: $39.95
Reviewer: Robert Dixon, September 2024
The author, Professor Peter Roberts, is a Senior Associate Fellow of RUSI (UK), having been the Director of Military Sciences at RUSI for many years. His work centres around research on contemporary conflict and especially in trying to understand what the norms and behaviours will be in future conflict between major military forces. He hosted the 78 episodes of the Western Way of War Podcasts which garnered more than 200k followers. The podcasts were created between June 2020 and December 2021 and can be found at Western Way of War Podcasts | Royal United Services Institute (rusi.org). On his Social Media page Roberts explains that this book and the podcasts are linked. He writes: “After we ended the show there was … demand from listeners to have more on the topic. In trying to pen anything interesting that hadn't been said already - even with the luxury of time and perspective - I found myself struggling to express some of the ideas better than the guests had done in various episodes. As a result, we have ended up with a series of essays from various contributors to the show from over the years.” The essays focus on a number of topics including types of conflict, nuclear weapons, miliary procurement, education and training and the media and war.
The premise for the book is that by the 19th century there were several historical schools of military theory: Prussian, French, British, Russian, Italian and Japanese to name but a few. Arguably, these merged into a single school by 1990: An American-led way of fighting that was centred on a belief that technological superiority could overcome aggressors with minimal casualties whether it be counter-terrorism, counter insurgency, high intensity conflict, civil wars and conventional deterrence. Notice that the emphasis in the book is on ‘ways of fighting’ rather than the political construction of grand strategy. In between a brief and very clear Introduction and some not so clear Concluding Remarks are ten essays/chapters, each based on an interview with a particular person. Amongst those interviewed are General James Mattis and William Owen (editor of the Military Strategy magazine). Mattis urges that the military facilitate the development of ‘initiative and aggression’ on the part of NCOs and officers and also encourages them to become familiar with and learn from past battles. Summarising Owen’s contribution, Roberts writes that experience in the Ukraine has shown that: ‘the equipment a military fights with has become less important than the ingenuity they employ in undertaking combat operations’. Despite the repeated claim by the author that the book aims to stimulate conversations about new ‘ways of fighting’ none of the interviews address the key issue facing Western democracies today. How to deal with an adversary who: (i) attacks civilian targets and at times does this from a location which for political reasons cannot be targeted in return and/or cannot be targeted using the military’s preferred weapons and; (ii) uses civilians and civilian structures (such as apartment blocks, hospitals and schools) as a shield?
There is a good deal of overlap between the chapters but the book lacks an index which makes it hard for the reader to ‘compare and contrast’ the response by different interviewees to the same issue. Having said that, the chapters do emphasise the importance of thinking about and choosing one or more particular ‘ways of fighting’ before focusing on what equipment and training is required.
The RUSI – Vic Library is most grateful to the publishers for making this work available for review.