Political battles

ANDREW ROBERTS applauds a masterful exploration - required reading for any seeking high command - of why warfare and politics went hand in hand in the 20th century

- ANDREW ROBERTS

Command: The Politics of Military Operations from Korea to Ukraine by Lawrence Freedman Allen Lane, 608 pages, £30

When Britain’s leading historian of military strategy writes of the influence of politics on postwar global conflict, and includes a chapter on the present Russo-Ukrainian War, it behoves us all to take notice. When it is moreover couched in terms that are as wise as they are insightful, this is doubly so.

Sir Lawrence Freedman, emeritus professor of war studies at King’s College London, has effectively stood Carl von Clausewitz [the 19th-century Prussian general whose 1832 work