World Affairs Council of Dallas-Fort Worth presents Sir Lawrence Freedman

October 19, 2017 6:30 pm - 8:00 pm

When

October 19, 2017 | 6:30 pm - 8:00 pm

What

War is a mystery to many. But, there are those who study war and its influence on nations and the globe. After all, amidst cries for peace and understanding, war is among the most well-acquainted of international entities.


Sir Lawrence Freedman, regarded as “world-renowned military thinker,” has discerned elements of war that generally escape the common man and military strategists while also revealing likely consequences that go beyond the traditional mayhem and bloodletting.


Appropriately, his latest book is whimsically titled The Future of War: A History.

One summarizing paragraph says, “Freedman shows how those who have imagined future war have often had an idealized notion of it as confined, brief, and decisive, and have regularly taken insufficient account of the possibility of long wars-hence the stubborn persistence of the idea of a knockout blow, whether through a dashing land offensive, nuclear first strike, or cyberattack.”

There is also this unsettling thought that there was a “lack of attention paid to civil wars until the West began to intervene in them during the 1990s.” And this: “The boundaries between peace and war, between the military, the civilian, and the criminal are becoming increasingly blurred.”


Sir Lawrence has been Professor of War Studies at Kings College London since 1982 and 
vice principal since 2003. He was educated at the Universities of Manchester, York and Oxford. Before assuming his current post at Kings College, he conducted research at Nuffield College Oxford, IISS and the Royal Institute of International Affairs.


In 1995, he was elected a Fellow of the British Academy. The next year he was awarded the CBE (Commander of the British Empire) and, in 1997, he was appointed “Official Historian of the Falklands Campaign.”


In 2003, he received the KCMG (Knight Commander of St. Michael and St. George: and in June, 2009, was appointed a member of “the official inquiry into Britain and the 2003 Iraq War.”

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