THE YEAR 2023 HAS BEENrich in works composed in tempore belli. The most impressive is Conflict: The Evolution of Warfare from 1945 to Ukraine (William Collins, £26) by General David Petraeus and the historian Andrew Roberts. This is an ambitious and deeply researched volume which does not shy away from the gritty details of combat, as one might expect from a collaboration between the most distinguished commander of the Iraq War and the tireless chronicler of warriors ranging from Napoleon to Churchill. They show how UN ceasefires have been a tactic used by the losing side in every Arab-Israeli war. As the great Middle Eastern scholar Bernard Lewis put it, “We cease, they fire.”
Petraeus and Roberts focus on the outstanding commanders whose strategems and strategies were not only grand, but actually worked. The contrast they draw between Zelensky’s leadership qualities and Putin’s lack of them is telling. Yet their “existential war” has lessons for the
