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  Edited by Catherine Grant, Alessio Patalano and James Russell Georgetown University Press , 2023, 360 pp Hardcover ISBN: 9781647123383 Paperback ISBN: 9781647123390 Ebook ISBN: 9781647123406 Reviewed by: Dongkeun Lee We are currently witnessing the age of naval power, where the competition between the United States (US) and the People’s Republic of China (PRC) primarily unfolds at sea. Notable areas of potential conflict, such as the Taiwan Strait and the South China Sea, underscore the critical role of …

Chaos, Cohesion, and Consequences   Edited by Timothy Heck and Walker Mills Army University Press, 2023, 436 pp Paperback ISBN: 9781940804873 Reviewed by: Liam Kane When should military leaders break off an engagement with their enemies? What is the difference between a retreat and a rout? What is the significance of retreat? These are the some of the questions that the contributors to Armies in Retreat  seek to answer. The book’s editors, Timothy Heck and Walker Mills, were motivated to undertake this …

British Grand Strategy, 1919–1940   by David French Oxford University Press , 2022, 623 pp Hardcover ISBN: 9780192863355 Reviewed by: Jordan Beavis David French is an illustrious name in British military history. For decades he has made significant contributions to our understanding of British strategy and Britain’s Army in both peace and war, in the latter case frequently rebalancing an often stereotyped view of the military force that was once responsible for the land defence of the world’s largest …

From the Ancient World to the Digital Age   Edited by Hal Brands Princeton University Press , 2023, 1158 pp Hardcover ISBN: 9780691204383 Reviewed by: Nick Bosio Since the early 1950s, one book, The Makers of Modern Strategy , has consistently been compulsory reading at staff and war colleges around most of the Western world. Each edition has provided practitioners and scholars with insights into strategy, strategic thinking, and the issues of strategic culture. Furthermore, each version of this …

The Indo-Pacific and Beyond Speech to the Chief of Army Symposium 2023, Perth Convention Centre, 30 August 2023 [Editorial note: This speech has been edited and condensed for clarity.] At the Shangri-La Dialogue last year, the Prime Minister of Australia, Anthony Albanese, and the United States Secretary of Defense, Lloyd Austin, both spoke to the importance of guardrails—that is, simple practical structures to prevent a worst-case scenario. The bases for these guardrails are dialogue, communications, …

A Historical and Strategic Perspective Speech to the Chief of Army Symposium 2023, Perth Convention Centre, 30 August 2023 [Editorial note: This speech has been edited and condensed for clarity.] To help focus our topic today, let us first consider my favourite map. If you haven’t seen it before, it is the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) planning map centred on Darwin, but spun 45 degrees (Figure 1). It gives you a sense of Australia hanging off Asia, and what Indonesia’s President, Joko Widodo, called …

Speech given at the Synergia Conclave, Bangalore, India, 18 November 2023 [Editorial note: This speech has been edited and condensed for clarity.] I am going to discuss the ways advanced computing might change warfare, and the ways it might not. My aim is to recommend where advanced computing applications are likely to get the biggest return on investment. In order to avoid the trap of prediction, I intend to look at the past—particularly the recent past—to give us some sense of how best to focus the …

Australia’s strategic environment is deteriorating. The scale, scope, concurrency and intensity of conceived future operational tasks will require some level of land force mobilisation. However, the allocation of resources to, across and between tasks will vary as the strategic context and direction changes. As recognised in the 2023 Defence Strategic Review   (DSR), this level of uncertainty combined with a reduction in strategic warning time [1] requires Defence to increase preparedness, thereby …

A 100-year-old bullet-riddled steel landing craft recovered from Gallipoli is one of the first items seen by visitors to the Australian War Memorial, furnishing silent testimony to the Australian Army’s lengthy amphibious tradition. This heritage includes several division- and corps-level amphibious and littoral operations across the South-West Pacific during the Second World War. However, despite some important capability acquisitions, the recent experience of the Australian Defence Force (ADF) has led to …

Introduction The results of humanity’s addition of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere are now being felt. The atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide and other greenhouse gases has increased alarmingly since the Second World War, and as a consequence the earth is warming, and is doing so at an accelerating rate. Humanity’s modification of the atmosphere began in the 18 th century with the onset of industrialisation and the burning of fossil fuels. To date, international efforts …