Listen to the new episode of Pagecast! Mike Martin chats about How to Fight a War, an indispensable guide to understanding modern warfare
More about the book!

This week on Pagecast, the podcast from Jonathan Ball Publishers, Prof. Abel Esterhuyse interviews Mike Martin about his new book, How to Fight a War.

How to Fight a War is an indispensable guide to understanding modern warfare, especially the decisions made by politicians and generals, both good and bad.

Has any war in history gone according to plan? Monarchs, dictators and elected leaders alike have a dismal record on military decisionmaking, from over-ambitious goals to disregarding intelligence, terrain, or enemy capabilities. This not only wastes the lives of civilians, the enemy and one’s own soldiers, but also fails to achieve geopolitical objectives, and usually lays the seeds for more wars down the line.

Conflict scholar and former soldier Martin takes the reader through the hard, elegant logic to fighting a conclusive interstate war that solves geopolitical problems and reduces future conflict. In cool and precise prose, he outlines how to orchestrate military forces, from infantry to information, and from strategy to tactics.

How to Fight a War explains the unavoidable, yet seemingly elusive, art of using violence to force your enemies to do what you want. It should be read by everyone seeking to understand today’s wars, as well as those wishing to lead us through the coming decades of conflict.

Martin is a Senior Visiting Research Fellow in the Department of War Studies at King’s College London, where he speaks and writes on conflict. His previous books are An Intimate War, Crossing the Congo and Why We Fight.

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