It was a contagious conflict, not simply because new technologies allowed for military engagements over global distances, but because it also employed unprecedented information technologies It was a war of existential importance to the UK and its dominions: rules, behaviours and norms of conflict that we recognise today were broken, remade and broken again.
The 1914–18 conflict has been characterised by some as consisting of heroic endeavours and national pride in resilience, yet it was also a conflict waged in a brutal way total war that exploited tactics viewed today as barbaric. It would be hard not to draw specific conclusions that link to today’s security environment, but that is not the primary aim of RUSI’s reflections on the Great War instead, it is to highlight nearly half a decade of subsequent careful analysis of that conflict.
