WWII cost $4 trillion dollars and 425,000 Allied and German troops died on D-Day alone, but at least it ended. Since 9/11, America’s worldwide wars have cost 6 TRILLION DOLLARS and cost the lives of half a million people, with no end in sight. Is this some failure in our policies or military strategies? Is this the way our military/industrial complex wants it; a goose laying an endless stream of poisonous golden eggs? Do new global alignments or societal threats demand this drip, drip, drip of endless war? Dr. Sean McFate, a professor of War Studies at the National Defense University, says one reason we’re failing is we’re fighting the last war… wars from 50 years ago or longer, actually. 
He says the days of grand armies maneuvering for control of large swaths of land are gone, and that Special Ops, plausible deniability, shadow war, and propaganda will characterize the wars of the future…
The New Rules of War: Victory in the Age of Durable Disorder
by Sean McFate
Synopsis-
War is timeless. Some things change–weapons, tactics, technology, leadership, objectives–but the propensity for humans to do battle does not. Today, more than eighty years after World War II and thirty years since the fall of the Berlin Wall, we are again living in dangerous times. It is the age of Durable Disorder–a period of unrest created by numerous factors: China’s rise, Russia’s resurgence, America’s retreat, the Middle East aflame, global terrorism, international criminal empires, climate change, dwindling natural resources, and bloody civil wars. The number of armed conflicts being waged has doubled since World War II, and of the approximately 194 countries of the world, nearly half are involved in some form of armed conflict. Millions of have been killed and millions more have become refugees, upending Western democracies.
This devastating turmoil has given rise to difficult questions that hold meaning for us today and in the years to come. What is the future of war? Who and how will people fight? What factors will lead to warfare? How can we survive? If Americans are drawn into major armed conflict, can we win? In this thorough, insightful analysis, Sean McFate–a modern heir to Carl von Clausewitz, author of the classic On War– carefully constructs ten rules for the future of military engagement, explaining how to fight and win in an age of entropy and a global system very different from the past: one where corporations, mercenaries, and rogue states have more power and ‘nation states’ have less. McFate’s new rules distill the essence of war, describing what it is in the real world, not what we believe or wish it to be.
