Zones of Conflict: An Atlas of Future Wars

by John Keegan, Andrew Wheatcroft

Examines the political, economic, and military factors which may cause outbreaks of war in areas around the world

Genres: War, Reference

1158 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1986

About the author

Sir John Desmond Patrick Keegan, OBE, FRSL was a British military historian, lecturer and journalist. He published many works on the nature of combat between the 14th and 21st centuries concerning land, air, maritime and intelligence warfare as well as the psychology of battle.

Reviews

[The_J]

Perhaps not as prescient as it would have liked to be

[Nick]

For a book written in 1986 called "An Atlas of Future Wars" the first question which comes to mind is "did it call any good shots?" Well, it called a few, particularly in the middle east. But predicting future wars is really not the point of this book.

The book tackles the question of future conflicts from a grand strategy perspective. It tries to examine what the military "choke points" have been throughout history in all the examined regions, as well as perstent ethnic/religious/national conflicts, where internal political instability is rife, where natural resources are located, and where borders are ill defined. This is, obviously, quite a lot of places.

It fails to predict the significance of cyber warfare, and its chapter on space warfare is limited to the Star Wars program. It fails to predict the consequences of a global single superpower, or of the dominance of guerilla/decentralist tactics over set piece battles.

[Tom]

A good survey of the world and areas of tension. The author is well established military historian.