The Unknowable Future of Warfare
By Cameron Ross
March 21, 2023
Nicole Avagliano
In 1960, British physicist and novelist C. P. Snow famously stated that it was a mathematical certainty that nuclear war would occur within the decade. Thankfully, despite his confident pronouncements about it being a scientific fact and something scientists knew “with the certainty of established truth,” nuclear weapons were never used in anger.[1] While Snow’s convictions seem silly today, he is by no means an aberration in his failure to foresee the future. After the Boston Tea Party, British Prime Minister Lord North assured the House of Commons that London could bring Boston back into compliance with four or five frigates and that military force was unnecessary.[2] French General Ferdinand Foch reportedly declared in 1904 that “airplanes are interesting toys but of no military value.”[3] Dick Cheney believed Iraqis would welcome Americans as liberators in Operation Iraqi Freedom. He also stated, “The Gulf War in the 1990s lasted five days on the ground. I can’t tell you if the use of force in Iraq today would last five days, or five weeks or five months. But it certainly isn’t going to last any longer than that.”[4] While all of these seem foolish in hindsight, they came from knowledgeable and intelligent people and were entirely reasonable in their context. And yet, they proved to be fundamentally wrong.
“Frederick North, 2nd Earl of Guilford” painted by Nathaniel Dance-Holland (Wikimedia)
Leaders and strategists would do well to remind themselves of past failures to predict the future, as they are just as fallible as their predecessors and equally susceptible to adopting visions of what is to come that later prove erroneous. Consequently, they should assume a more modest and skeptical approach to future projections and focus more on improving flexibility and critical thinking than correctly predicting what lies around the corner. Doing so offers the best chance to successfully navigate the unforeseen twists ahead.
https://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2023/03/21/the_unknowable_future_of_warfare_888464.html
