Command: The Politics of Military Operations from Korea to Ukraine

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Freedman argues that such strategies inevitably breach the social contract of the military – based on ethical decision-making, trust and loyalty – with troops losing the will to fight and ultimately failing in the mission. Promises of flat management can be a form of flattery, a pretence that everybody’s view has some value and all can make equivalent contributions.

Command: The Politics of Military Operations from Korea… Command: The Politics of Military Operations from Korea…

Freedman ends the book with a meditation on the future of command in a world that is becoming increasingly reliant on technologies like artificial intelligence. Both understood that they were not responsible for the political direction of war and that the front was the worst position from which to command a modern battle.

For example, British General David Richards has written that the modern commander must be an ‘entrepreneurial networker and communicator rather than a dictator’. Freedman helped to prepare of the 1999 Chicago speech in which Tony Blair set out the 'Blair doctrine'. King draws on McCrystal’s distinction between the challenges resulting from greater complication and those from greater complexity.

Book Review: “Command” by Lawrence D. Freedman

Photograph: Mikhail Klimentyev/Sputnik/AFP/Getty Images Vladimir Putin attends a meeting about the development of the shipbuilding industry via video conference in Sochi.

Secondly, you want the targets to be pretty far away from your own people, to the extent you care about your own people. Because of complexity, the trend favours forms of leadership that are ‘distributed, pervasive, invited from all members, and instilled in the culture of successful enterprises’ Footnote 7. The Financial Times and its journalism are subject to a self-regulation regime under the FT Editorial Code of Practice. For some weeks, there’s been speculation that Ukraine was poised to launch a counter-offensive near Kherson in the south of the country. He provides a vivid account of Bernard Montgomery’s approach to divisional command while he was in charge of the 3rd Division in France until May 1940.