Musings on the future of war from the guy who wrote the Future War series. SPOILER: this starts dark but has a happy ending!
ON THE NATURE OF WAR
You'll read and hear a lot of commentators at the moment who say the nature of war has changed dramatically in recent years. Uncrewed air, sea and ground vehicles. Cyber and hybrid warfare. Omnipresent battlefield surveillance from the air and space. Data fusion. AI taking humans out of the kill chain. Autonomous targeting. Slaughterbots.
Sound familiar?
The way we wage war changes, but the essence of warfare hasn't changed. Humans just become more efficient at killing each other with each generation. From sticks and stones to slingshots, bows and arrows. Armor, shields and swords to rifles and gatling guns. Cavalry to tanks. Blimps to supersonic jets. V1 rockets to intercontinental ballistic missiles to lasers and drones. Carpet bombing to nuclear weapons and very soon, antimatter bombs.
The weapons of war, the means of waging war change, but war remains the same. Clausewitz called it 'the continuation of politics by other means.' John Keegan called it 'an expression of national identity for militant states.' Charles Tilly looked at it as a natural extention of nation building: 'the war made the state and the state made war.' Mary Kaldor called the military industrial complex 'a self perpetuating economic enterprise' fueled by blood, and you could apply the same argument to militant ethnic groups.
No matter what lens you look at it through, war has not changed. Any of the above perspectives may be true, or none of them, but war persists.
ASYMMETRY IS THE NEW BLACK
Another popular argument right now is that the balance of power between 'The Great Powers' and smaller states is at a tipping point. New, cheap weapons like drones which can be mass produced at scale, can render the air forces, navies and armies of the superpowers impotent. Look at Afghanistan! Look at Ukraine! Look at Iran!
Sure, let's look at Afghanistan - 'the graveyard of empires'. Go back to the 13th Century and Genghis Kahn, who didn't so much conquer it as obliterate entire cities, creating the fragmented tribal society that still exists today. Alexander the Great tried to rule it, and failed. The British waged three campaigns over eighty years, and failed too. Russia gave it ten years before pulling out. The US and its allies gave up and withdrew after 20 years. Aghanistan didn't change, and neither did the nature of war there. Afghanistan is the perfect example that the so called 'great powers' often bite off more than they can chew.
OK, what about Ukraine? A country of 40 million resisting a nuclear superpower of 150 million, not just surviving, but becoming without peer, the most lethal, modern army in Europe (and that includes its enemy). Has Ukraine changed the nature of war as we know it? Hardly. The historical ancestors of modern Ukrainians (Zaporozhian Cossacks, Ruthenians, and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania) fought numerous wars against the precursor of the modern, much larger Russian state (the Grand Duchy of Moscow/Tsardom of Russia) and inflicted several crushing military defeats on them. So how is today any different? Russia underestimates Ukraine, Ukraine hands Russia a beating. History repeats, the weapons of war change, war remains the same.
So, Iran. A nation of a hundred million ruled by morally bankrupt despots, with virtually no air force, attacked (by air and sea) by no fewer than two nuclear powers with world leading militaries. Three months after the start of hostilities, it still refuses to capitulate. Like Ukraine, it fights back with drones, missiles and uncrewed boats. Is this not the perfect example of how war has changed, if military powers like Israel and the US cannot force Iran to 'cry Uncle.'
The answer of course is no. One constant in war, is that no war has ever been won from the air alone and both the US and Israel have so far declined to prosecute a ground war with Iran. Secondly, like Afghanistan, Iran is also a 'graveyard of empires', but with a twist. Like Afghanistan, it is made up of brutal, mountainous terrain making it essentially a mountain fortress. It has never been defeated quickly and historically, Iran has not just outlasted its invaders, it has absorbed them, making them Persian rather than letting itself be transformed. (Again, look at the history of Alexander in Persia, the Islamic Caliphate, Genghis Kahn, or the failure of the Russians, British and Americans to exert control over Iran last century.)
So no, the US struggle to force Iran to submit is not indicative of a change in the nature of warfare, but rather a testament to power of geography and the stubborn persistence of intangible and intransigent Persian national identity. The US and Israel might be wise to consider a saying coined by FX Holden (right here, you read it first): Be wary, those who would conquer Persia, for they will surely become Persian!
THE SILVER LINING
Though the craft of war may change, the nature of war does not. And that means one truth remains immutable - all war ends in peace. Eventually the combatants tire, lay down their swords and shields, and either yield, or negotiate a peace. That peace may last weeks or months, years, or generations. It may not be a just peace. It definitely won't be permanent.
But since war itself has not changed, take heart! The war in Ukraine WILL end in peace, as will the war between the US, Iran and Israel. All wars end, and we must make the best of the peace that follows, for as long as it lasts.
AN AUTHOR-Y NOTE
Perhaps this belief is why I write about war as I do. Every book I write (spoiler) ends in peace. I get to write my own 'happy endings' to the conflicts of the future, in the naive hope that the conflicts they describe will never happen.
(Sure, not all of the characters in these novels make it through unscathed, but hey, that's war.)
PICTURED: the Gods of War, Ares and Athena