British historian and writer specialising in the Second World War, author of the War in the West series and co-host of the podcast We Have Ways of Making You Talk.
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Their wordsI think there are so many lessons from World War II that could have been brought into the history of the last 30 years, which weren’t, such as if you decapitate an incredibly strong leader, you get a power vacuum. And if you don’t have a solution for that power vacuum, lots of bad elements are going to sweep into that in very quick order, which of course, is exactly what happens in Iraq.
Their wordsThere is just no stomach to do that again. So that makes them risk averse. And by being risk averse, you’re actually taking a far greater risk. That’s the irony of it.
Their wordsWhereas, there’s also another point, which is having large armies is actually inherently impractical and inefficient, because the larger the army, the more people you’ve got to feed, the more barracks you’ve got to have, the more space you’ve got to have for training, the more people you’re taking out of your workforce to produce tanks and shells, and all the rest of it, because they’re tramping around with rifles.