Command: The Politics of Military Operations from Korea to Ukraine

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It is clear from Freedman’s account of the command element of the Falkland campaign that the British had two immediate priorities. The first was what they termed a “moral victory” over the Argentinian junta – in other words, to simply frighten them, to terrorise and intimidate them. The second was to achieve an “operational victory” – to go ashore and defeat a demoralised enemy. Freedman, Lawrence (2013). Strategy: A History. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-932515-3. And finally, I mean, most of your career, or the beginning of it anyway, was during the cold war when the whole west was preoccupied by the Russian military threat, the idea that they might conventionally have the force to sweep through western Europe and so on. Are you surprised that this great, you know, “superpower”, as we used to refer to it, turns out not only to not be able to sweep towards western Europe, but not really to get out of eastern Ukraine? And since Russia’s first plan to topple Ukraine with a coup de main against Kyiv collapsed within the first few weeks amid fierce Ukrainian resistance and Russian logistical incompetence, Moscow has struggled to find a credible plan B.

Command by Lawrence Freedman review – inside the war room

Which I guess brings us to the topic of the book you’ve just brought out, which is command and the importance of military command. How much do you think what’s happened in Russia, both at the sort of top political level and on the battlefield, is a failure of command? Under his supervision, generations of students, as well as officers in Her Majesty's Forces learnt about the changing nature of war, and Britain's military history.

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You say that they’ve got very limited options. One of the things that’s very striking is they may be, to put it crudely, running out of men — or they seem to be. They’re just unwilling to mobilise the population. You may also opt to downgrade to Standard Digital, a robust journalistic offering that fulfils many user’s needs. Compare Standard and Premium Digital here. If you do nothing, you will be auto-enrolled in our premium digital monthly subscription plan and retain complete access for 65 € per month. At the heart of the problem, Freedman believes, is the rigidly hierarchical nature of the Kremlin’s decision-making and how those at the very top are immune to responsibility for mistakes. 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.

Command by Lawrence Freedman | Waterstones Command by Lawrence Freedman | Waterstones

And have the Ukrainians surprised you? They’ve certainly surprised the Russians. They’ve turned out to be a pretty effective fighting force and appear to be becoming more effective with the passing of time, unlike the Russians. How big are the constraints on what Ukraine itself can do? Because you still hear complaints from the Ukrainian side that the west is not supplying them with all the weaponry that they need. A particular kind of resentment towards, towards the Germans, but even sometimes towards the Americans. Using examples from a wide variety of conflicts, Lawrence Freedman shows that successful military command depends on the ability not only to use armed forces effectively but also to understand the political context in which they are operating. War, strategy, and international politics: essays in honour of Sir Michael Howard edited by Robert O'Neill, Lawrence Freedman, and Paul Hayes (1992); ISBN 0-19-822292-0 Commanding is nevertheless a challenge, even if commands must be obeyed. In this broad survey of command in war since 1945, Lawrence Freedman brings to bear his extensive knowledge to explain the many complexities commanders at the highest level must now face, from grasping new ways of warfare to managing military organisation and supply and, above all, coping with the mercurial behaviour of their political masters. If there is a theme to Freedman’s book, which ranges from the Korean War to Putin’s ‘special military operation’ in Ukraine, it is to be found in the tensions and conflicts between military leaders and the politicians who call the shots that he documents. How often must a supreme commander have wished he were free to do what he wanted? Usually, politics has to be factored in.

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Lawrence Freedman is one of our most distinguished military historians. In his thoughtful new book Command, drawing on decades of study, he looks at the marriage of authorities that takes place in the running of wars since 1945: where political power meets military expertise, and who ends up having the final say. 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. Yes. I mean, in the sense that you could have a meltdown, radiation released. It’s not the same as a tactical nuclear weapon. It would create an emergency and again, you know, the Russians are in charge of this place. It’s their responsibility. And the vulnerability is not because of shelling. The vulnerability is because they’ve detached it from the grid and relying on diesel fuel to keep it going. If that runs out, there’s a problem. That’s where the issues are. So the remedies to make the thing safe, which so far they haven’t availed themselves of. So it’s a worrying situation. But again, it’s not one that I think would change the course of the war. Lawrence Freedman, former professor of war studies at King’s College London, is first and foremost an academic. His latest work, Command, is a philosophical reflection on the nature of command in warfare from the aftermath of the second World War to the present day. That was Lawrence Freedman speaking from Washington and ending this edition of The Rachman Review. Thanks for joining me and please listen again next week.