In September and October of 1918 Australian and French troops had fought side-by-side against the...

Happy Birthday to the Royal Military College, Duntroon, which turns 115 years old on 27 June....

Australian military history often celebrates battlefield success. But this week I want to look at...

Last week’s newsletter used an image of a political cartoon taken from the radical Sydney...

This time of the year, 141 years ago, the New South Wales Contingent to the Sudan was steaming...

Wars are not always popular, despite claims from governments and rulers that they are just,...

In late April 1952 the Treaty of San Francisco, which ended the war between Japan and the Allies...

Towards the end of April each year, Australians and New Zealanders mark Anzac Day. It is not the...

Echoes of War is about history, not current events or potential futures. There is no shortage of commentary offering hot takes on what is happening now, what it supposedly means or what future it portends. As Sir Lawrence Freedman, probably among others, has pointed out, history is littered with futures of war. That is, predictions about the future of war are plentiful and always have been. He also pointed out that most of them turned out to be, shall we say, utter balls (my words, not Professor Freedman’s).

History, that is where we live, not the academic discipline, is rather complicated and many, probably almost all, predictions about the future prove well wide of the mark. The accurate ones only seem fully perceptive in retrospect, and even then, the accuracy is likely only partial or reliant on the lens used to examine it.