THE DRAGONS AND THE SNAKES: How the Rest Learned to Fight the West.

• Author: Hoadley, Stephen

THE DRAGONS AND THE SNAKES: How the Rest Learned to Fight the West

Author: David Kilcullen

Published by: Scribe, Melbourne and London, 2020, 325pp, $40.

The Western way of war 'is no longer working', warns David Kilcullen. It peaked at winning battles against Iraq in 1991 and 2003, but subsequently has failed to win the peace in the Middle East and Africa. Its focus on weapons, operations and tactics detracts from longer-term strategies and undermines diplomacy and political management. It is increasingly unsustainable financially and politically.

Worse, adversaries have proved adept at countering Western military prowess. These adversaries include not only the 'dragons' (Russia, China, North Korea, Iran) but also the 'snakes' (al-Qaeda, ISIS, criminal syndicates, militia warlords and lone wolves). These enemies of Western civilisation have proliferated and spread their influence by surviving brutal trials-by-combat and then by learning from each other as well as from the West. State adversaries increasingly adopt the hybrid or grey area tactics of guerrillas, and terrorists attempt to agglomerate into quasi-states such as the erstwhile Caliphate in Syria. All oppose the West's benign hegemony.

Furthermore, Western leaders are hobbled by the rules-based order they have created, entailing the distinction between competition and war, with different norms governing each. In contrast, the adversaries regard competition as part of a wider, inclusive war against Western liberalism, democracy and globalisation. The current momentum favours the adversaries, Kilcullen warns. The West must wake up to the threats, or succumb.

The reader is cautioned that Kilcullen was writing this book prior to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which galvanised the US-led Western coalition into a unity of purpose and action not seen since the Cold War. Nevertheless Kilcullen, speaking at the Auckland Writers Festival in mid-2022, attended by this reviewer, argued that his diagnosis remains accurate. The challenges posed by China, North Korea and Iran have intensified in light of Russia's bellicosity, and the challenges by snakes have spread from the Middle East into Africa (Al Shabab, Boko Haram). Therefore, his policy prescription --'going Byzantine'--is still relevant.

Kilcullen employs historical analogies to posit the gradual decline of Western hegemony, relative if not absolute, in the face of the asymmetric global challenges by the dragons and snakes, and in the...