How have the character and technology of war changed in recent times?
Why does battlefield victory often fail to result in a sustainable peace?
What is the best way to prevent, fight and resolve future conflict?

The world is becoming a more dangerous place. Since the fall of Kabul and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the US-led liberal international order is giving way to a more chaotic and contested world system. Western credibility and deterrence are diminishing in the face of wars in Europe and the Middle East, tensions across the Taiwan Strait, and rising populism and terrorism around the world. Can peace, mutual respect and democracy survive, or are we destined to a permanent chaos in which authoritarians and populists thrive?

Using decades of experience as policy advisors in conflicts in Iraq and across Africa, and on recent fieldwork in Israel and Taiwan, the authors analyse the nature of modern war, considering state-on-state and intra-state conflicts. They investigate how technology can be a leveller for small powers against larger aggressors and the role of leadership, diplomacy and economic assistance.

Weighing up past lessons, present observations and predictions about the future, The Art of War and Peace explores how wars can be won on the battlefield and how that success can be translated into a stable and enduring peace.

Sir Nick Carter, former UK Chief of Defence Staff says in his foreword:

“The strategic content is increasingly complex, dynamic and competitive. The free world, and the multilateral system that has assured our security and stability for several generations, are facing ever increasing and -proliferating threats from resurgent authoritarian powers, hostile alliances and non-state actors.

These threats blend old elements — competition for resources, territory and political power — with new approaches. Our rivals engage in a continuous struggle involving all the instruments of statecraft, ranging from what we call peace to the threat of nuclear war. Their strategy of ‘political warfare’ is designed to undermine cohesion to erode economic, political and social resilience, and to challenge our strategic position in key regions of the world.

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The pervasiveness of information and the pace of technological change are transforming the character of warfare. Old distinctions between ‘peace’ and ‘war’, between ‘public’ and ‘private’, between ‘foreign’ and ‘domestic’, and between ‘state’ and ‘non-state’ are increasingly out of date. The triumph of the narrative increasingly determines defeat or victory.

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[The authors comprise of] an American-Australian and a South African…a metaphor for the international cooperation necessary by which the efforts of good people can success over evil. …I had the privilege of working with both of them in Afghanistan, two men who care deeply about ending conflict, both brave to a fault.

This is a book about strategy, about how to plan, prevent and fight modern wars and, once the fighting has stopped, how to win the peace. It is a book about how to re-establish deterrence, a product of assiduous planning, painstaking training, selfless sacrifice and enlightened allies.

For there are no instant wins in standing up to authoritarianism.

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Read an extract from the book on Moneycontrol. It is published by HarperCollins India.

Martin Niemoller, the German theologian and pastor, is best known for his opposition to the Nazi regime and his 1946 poem on the dangers of inaction in the face of terror: “First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out — because I was not a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out – because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out – because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me — and then there was no one left to speak for me.”

Dr. David Kilcullen is Professor of International and Political Studies at the University of New South Wales, Canberra, Professor of Practice at Arizona State University, and CEO of the geopolitical risk analysis firm Cordillera Applications Group. He is a leading theorist and practitioner of guerrilla and unconventional warfare, counterinsurgency and counterterrorism and the author of five prize-winning books. He was awarded the 2015 Walkley Award (Australia’s equivalent of the Pulitzer Prize) for longform journalism for his war reporting on the rise of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.

Dr Greg Mills heads the Johannesburg-based Brenthurst Foundation, established in 2005 by the Oppenheimer family to strengthen African economic performance. He holds degrees from the Universities of Cape Town (BA Hons) and Lancaster (MA cum laude, and PhD), and was, first, the Director of Studies and then the National Director of the SA Institute of International Affairs from 1994-2005. He is the author of the best-selling books Why Africa Is Poor and Africa’s Third Liberation. His writings won him the Recht Malan Prize for Non-Fiction Work in South Africa.

3 August 2025