Three Dangerous Men: Russia, China, Iran and the Rise of Irregular Warfare

by Seth G. Jones

B. H. Liddell Hart once told a story of a conversation between the Irish statesman John Wilson Croker and Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington.20 Walking on a country road in the early nineteenth century, they amused themselves by guessing what sort of country they might discover over the next rise. When Croker marveled at Wellington’s accuracy, Wellington replied, matter-of-factly: “Why, I have spent all of my life in trying to guess what was at the other side of the hill.” Wellington went on to explain, “All the business of war, and indeed all the business of life, is to endeavor to find out what you don’t know by what you do.”21 For Wellington, a great general was defined by an ability to understand what was happening on the “other side of the hill”—behind the opposing lines and in the enemy’s mind.