A lesson in Strategy

McFate has written a book that will either disturb or suprise you, he utilises the folly of military strategic history to demonstrate his point on how western ideals of war are placing western forces and its public in needless danger.

From a strategic viewpoint, McFates strategic tales offer the strategist a perspective that can assist them in better understanding situation(s) that may not be as they appear.

For the casual leader McFates provides a blend of historic and present day military accounts that will raise more than one eyebrow, furthermore his message of what furture wars will look like will provide all readers with food for thought long after reading.

Overall this book and audiable performance was excellent with my omly criticism being that somepoints need not have required such lengthy explanations.

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A must read

Blew me away. Now think differently about lots of issues at my current workplace and flag them up the chain!

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critique of empire.

west could be dominating the globe cheaper, washington still the city on the hill,

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A salutary warning for future leaders

Sean McFate brilliantly showcases the necessity for change in the way the West thinks about it's security. More importantly, McFate sees the potential for future conflicts to fail in exactly the same way as previous wars, unless a radical re-think at every level of our security infrastructure takes place, and soon!

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Call to arms

What a work. So much to think about. Thank you Sean. Time for us to wake up and smell the coffee.

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Has aged poorly since Ukrainian invasion

Firstly - positives - delivery by the narrator is good.

I have three main issues with this book-

1) In making the material accessible, a lot of the discussion on military kit and capabilities loses a lot of nuance and borders on reductive. Other reviewers have pointed out factual errors but “expensive kit is a waste of money” is done to death in this book and frankly it begins to treat the reader like an idiot.

2) The narrative themes in this book(“conventional war is dead - why are we spending so much on preparing for it? Our enemies are doing asymmetric warfare and we’re being left behind”) now serves more as a record of American post-GWoT thinking on the fringes and less as the stark warning it was written to be. The west appears to have achieved a strategic asymmetric/hybrid/grey-space victory given what Russia has done to itself in Ukraine, and through that lens this book feels very dated in places.

3) the writing style labours some of the author’s key points to the point of nausea and the first chapter in particular could be significantly shorter. The repetition gets quite annoying when combined with the dated bits mentioned above.

I persevered as long as possible but gave up about a third of the way in.

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A few thought-provoking points but nothing new.

Overly simplistic and often wrong about his historic references which are twisted to attempt to reinforce his shaky arguments; ie. Brexit didn't happen due to Syrian refugees (Bexiteers' xenophobia pre-dates the Arab spring), Churchill wasn't a career civilian (he served for years in the British Army in Africa and the 1st WW) , Patton's forces didn't land on D-day (it was several days later) etc etc. He uses long and rambling 'first person accounts' of current and ancient world events to paint a picture which just come off as weird. He also puts in his own, obviously embellished, memories of his time in the field as odly placed examples which don't add any value other than to fluff his own ego.

He seems to have re-labelled Hybrid Warfare as 'Shadow Warfare' but claims they are different without explaining why. McFate seems to be constantly attempting to coin phrases which are repackaged from other academics. I agree with some of his challenges of modern received wisdom on what success looks like but he comes across as revisionist for the sake of it, and to sell a book to military commanders who want to appear modern!

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