Fighting in the shadows

Book review of The New Rules of War: Victory in the Age of Durable Disorder

Several authors have analysed the shifting templates of modern warfare, but few have the credentials that Sean McFate brings to his writing. He has served as a paratrooper in the United States army’s elite 82nd Airborne Division. He then went on to become a mercenary soldier in Africa, with one of the shadowy “private contractors” that rent out armed forces, no questions asked. Adding academic rigour to that battlefield perspective, he is currently professor of strategy at the National Defense University and Georgetown University, both in Washington DC, USA. This is his second non-fiction book on war, after his 2017