Command: The Politics of Military Operations from Korea to Ukraine

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Contrary to Putin’s claims, Russia’s armed forces may instead be approaching a crisis point, not only as they face an increasingly challenging fight in Ukraine but because they risk the long-term degradation of their capabilities. Facilities Navigation link in category Research & Innovation. Press escape key to return to main menu

One of the things they’ve always emphasised is, you know, war is unpredictable. So obviously, anything we say about what’s likely to happen now has to have all sorts of caveats around it. But how do you expect the war to develop over the next couple of months? He was made a member of the Privy Council of the United Kingdom when appointed to the Iraq Inquiry in 2009. [23] Personal life [ edit ] Lawrence Freedman, emeritus professor of war studies at King’s College London, has written a new study about command in military conflicts. Photograph: Roberto Ricciuti/Getty Images Dentistry, Oral & Craniofacial Sciences Navigation link in category Our faculties. Press escape key to return to main menuAnd on the flip side, the Ukrainian command looks pretty triumphant right now. I remember at the beginning of the war a lot of people in the west saying, “Well, you know Zelenskyy, he came up through reality television, the kind of worst possible person you could have in charge in a war”. And yet he’s been a pretty inspirational and effective leader. Although I have concentrated on Russian deficiencies here, I would not play down the casualties taken by Ukraine or its forces’ dependence on Western countries for continuing supplies of equipment and ammunition, or ignore the concern that they still do not have enough. Their performance in the coming battles will be watched closely for evidence that they can take the initiative in the next stage of the war, requiring Russian commanders to concentrate on a defensive battle in Kherson instead of more offensives in Donetsk. If they fall short in this effort then the debate in the West will continue to be dominated by the question of how to cope with a long attritional war with little movement.

Another interesting factor lays in the personality traits of military and political leaders, and their ability to work together. As simple as this may seem to be, it is a condition for the success of a military campaign. A realistic definition of policy that is informed by military advice and the crafting of a military strategy which is tailored to the fulfilment of a policy are therefore two sides of the same coin. Freedman shows convincingly how the detachment of a war's political objectives from military realities often leads to operational failure, as do generals pursuing strategies in disregard of the political objectives/limits set by the government. Freedman’s case studies range widely. Once the official historian of the Falklands war in 1982, he distils his two volumes on that conflict into a crisp study of the problems of “command in theatre”, when the army, air force and navy have different priorities and the government is acutely sensitive to the politics of public morale and international opinion. There are several chapters on generals who used their control of the armed forces to seize political power, such as Yahya Khan in Pakistan. Freedman is particularly interesting on Saddam Hussein, a revolutionary leader with no military experience, whose totalitarian rule enabled him to “coup-proof” his armed forces – but at the expense of battlefield effectiveness. Yet that same totalitarianism enabled him to survive a catastrophic defeat in Kuwait in 1991 that would have toppled most Western leaders, because he controlled the narrative by which the war was represented at home. “Saddam the political leader could rescue Saddam the military leader.” Yeah, I think that’s an important distinction. I mean, the view was that a lot of your best units get used up and suffer in the early stages of the war. And certainly the Ukrainians lost quite a lot in the fighting in Luhansk and Donetsk in the summer. But I mean, they did mobilise, unlike the Russians, they are training people up. The UK’s got a big training centre now which I think there’s some evidence that may have made a difference. And they’re pretty determined people. So I think they have upped their game. They’re strategically quite canny and they’ve got the advantages of fighting on terrain they know and the real motivation. I mean, some of the forces facing them in Kharkiv were pretty cobbled together. It’s not as if they’re taking on the Russia of February. But that just indicates that they’ve played quite a clever strategic game themselves, first to stay in the war and then to turn the tables on the Russians. Letter Freedman wrote to John Chilcot explaining his role in the Chicago speech" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 18 April 2016. The Russian military has shown that it is ready to withdraw from beleaguered positions – most seriously when it gave up on Kyiv and most recently when it abandoned Snake Island. Giving up on all of Ukraine would be a far more significant step, and no doubt this will be resisted for as long as possible. Russia may even hope that withdrawal can be managed with some dignity as part of a negotiated settlement.

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Formatting and Grammar. I do not know if I simply had a rotten apple copy of this book but what I do know is that the grammar and formatting of sentences was, in some instances, atrocious. Whole sentences were joined together without spaces and I had to do a double take of countless sentences and paragraphs because I simply could not understand the way in which they were written. Whilst it did not detract from the content of the book, it certainly made the reading experience far less enjoyable. Mr Secretary,” Anderson had the temerity to reply, “if you’ll keep your fingers out of this situation, we’ll carry it out successfully.” According to Freedman, the Royal Navy under the command of Rear Admiral John “Sandy” Woodward was very enthusiastic about the mission – using aircraft carriers recently targeted for destruction in swingeing defence cuts. The army and Royal Air Force were less enthusiastic, with Air Chief Marshal Sir Michael Beetham and Chief of Staff General Sir Edwin Bramall concerned at where the Royal Navy was bringing them – on such an extended projection of force – and “to where it all might lead”. Moral vs operational victory If you, you know, look at Chechnya, say, which is one of the chapters in my book, similar things were happening there. I think people thought that the Russians must have sorted out some of their problems because since Chechnya, their military operations have been at least successful. I mean, Georgia in 2008 showed quite a lot of problems. But their operation in Crimea, which didn’t involve a lot of fighting with the way they beat up the Ukrainians in 2014, suggested that they were in pretty good state, and Syria, of course. So the assumption was that they’d made great strides in modernisation, but it turns out they haven’t. And, you know, the postmortems in Moscow, I think, will show a lot of corruption, the problems of very hierarchical organisations. All of those things will now be gone over and we’ll get a better understanding of why they weren’t the great force that they thought they were. They clearly thought they were, and they turned out not to be. Also, they just don’t treat their troops well. And, you know, there’s a sort of stoicism on the Russian side, which is still evident. They haven’t all collapsed in a heap in the fighting. But there’s not a lot of loyalty shown by officers to men and men to officers. And that, again, affects your ability to fight. So, no, I wasn’t wholly surprised. And I think it was pretty evident, even on day one, that there were big inefficiencies in the way that the Russians were using their armed forces.

Current research & consultancy projects: Lawrence Freedman". King's College London . Retrieved 25 November 2009. Freedman predicts (not unlike Sabina Higgins) that eventually, the war in Ukraine will falter and stall to a deadly stalemate and ultimately to a negotiation. Unless Putin presses the nuclear button. King’s Culture Navigation link in category Research & Innovation. Press escape key to return to main menu Corn, Tony (9 September 2006). "Clausewitz in Wonderland". RealClearPolitics . Retrieved 30 March 2014.Hello and welcome to the Rachman Review. I’m Gideon Rachman, chief foreign affairs commentator of the Financial Times. This week’s edition is about the stunning change in the war in Ukraine. The rapid advances by Ukrainian forces in the east of the country have changed the momentum of the conflict. Suddenly, Russian defeat looks like a real possibility. My guest this week is Sir Lawrence Freedman, emeritus professor of war studies at King’s College London and author of a new book, Command: The Politics of Military Operations From Korea to Ukraine. So, is this the beginning of the end of the war in Ukraine?