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WAR IN THE MODERN WORLD

Welcome to the website!

Most of the papers here are from my studies at King's College London in an online "programme" for mid-career British Army officers called War in the Modern World. About half were indeed British Army, including a captain who deployed to Afghanistan midway through the four years. (Alas, upon his return he dropped out of the course, left the army, and began to study law instead.) The rest of us were from militaries and civilian life, from a Danish pilot to an assistant to the prime minister of Singapore. I learned a great deal, and this website is to share it more broadly.

From Dan Ford's blog:

Something else to be thankful for!

[November 25] Too many Americans today are recovering from a too-ample Thanksgiving dinner and searching for Black Friday bargains on the internet. Meanwhile, in Kyiv, one-third of the Ukrainian capital's homes are without electricity, and the lucky ones have power only for two or three hours a day. We had a scheduling problem and moved our Thanksgiving dinner forward (or is it back?) a day, and soon I'll build the fire in front of which we'll roast a thirteen-pound bird in an 18th-century oven -- not quite as primitive as the Pilgrims and the Wampanoags, but refreshingly old-fashioned.

I began to wonder how I could reconcile our good luck with the misery that Vladimir Putin has visited upon his neighbor. I found it in a story in the online Wall Street Journal about a Ukrainian woman who found refuge in North Carolina through an expedited government program.

Yes, the government can move fast! The Trump administration did it with Operation Warp Speed, which in 2020 developed Covid vaccines in a few months instead of the years normally taken. And now the Biden administation has done it with Uniting for Ukraine in which 85,000 Ukrainians have been granted refugee status in the US. Even more heartening, 171,000 Americans have signed up to sponsor someone. Read the Journal story, and give thanks you're privileged to live in such a country. Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

The essays (in more or less chronological order)