Description
Set against the backdrop of the COVID-19 crisis, Future War and the Defence of Europe considers in the round how peace can be maintained on a continent that has suffered two cataclysmic conflicts since 1914. COVID-19 and the trend-accelerating impact of such pandemics is first considered. The book then weaves history, strategy, policy, and technology into a compelling analytical narrative that sets the scale of the challenge Europeans and their allies will face if Europe’s peace is to be upheld in a transformative century. The book challenges foundational assumptions about how Europe’s defence is organized, the role of a fast-changing transatlantic relationship, NATO, the European Union, and their constituent nation-states. At the heart of the book is a radical vision of a technology-enabling future European defence built around a new kind of Atlantic alliance, an innovative strategic public–private partnership, and the future hyper-electronic European force it must spawn. Europeans should be under no illusion: unless they do far more for their own defence, and very differently, all that Europeans now take for granted could be lost in the maze of hybrid war, cyber war, and hyperwar they must face.