British Generals In Blair's Wars.

• Jurisdiction: New Zealand
• Date: 01 March 2014
• Author: Steadman, Hugh
• Published date: 01 March 2014
• Author: Steadman, Hugh

BRITISH GENERALS IN BLAIR'S WARS

Editors: Jonathan Bailey, Richard Iron and Hew Strachan

Published by: Ashgate, Farnham, 2013, 346pp, $39.27 (pb).

This short review can do scant justice to this exceptionally interesting edited volume of 26 contributors, including first-hand accounts and commentaries, by a selection of those who held senior positions in the recent campaigns fought under the premiership of Tony Blair. No one has yet discredited Bismarck's adage about politics being the art of the possible. This book documents the way in which Britain's political leadership's demanded the impossible of its military and of how the latter have striven to adjust to the daunting situations in which, as a consequence, they have found themselves. Major-General Jonathan Bailey's initial chapter, 'The Political Context: Why We Went to War and the Mismatch of Ends, Ways and Means', provides an excellent insight into how abuse of the British Cabinet system of government helped further the march of folly. (When General Bailey retired in 2005 he was director general development and doctrine.) The book deals initially with the 'successful'...