War and Power: Who Wins Wars—and Why

Authors

• Frank Hoffman

Abstract

Frank Hoffman reviews Phillips Payson O’Brien’s War and Power: Who Wins Wars—and Why, which proposes a multidimensional framework for assessing national power and explaining military outcomes. O’Brien argues that success in war depends on more than the size of a state’s armed forces or inventories of weapons. His concept of “Full Spectrum Powers” evaluates five interacting elements: economic and technological strength, political leadership, social and governmental structures, military effectiveness, and alliances. Drawing on conflicts including the world wars, the Cold War, Kosovo, Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Russo-Ukraine War, the book examines how states generate, adapt, and sustain military power. Hoffman finds the framework valuable for understanding the interaction of national capabilities and for challenging analyses based primarily on military order-of-battle comparisons. He also identifies limitations, including the absence of information power from the framework and its limited ability to predict wartime outcomes. Nonetheless, he concludes that the book offers an important contribution to the study of war and is particularly useful for joint professional military education.