Introducing Behind the Front

• Aaron Stein
• July 22, 2024

As the world was in the throes of World War I, H.G. Wells reluctantly sat down to write War and the Future, a work of war propaganda, wherein he called stridently for “the Allies fight for a permanent world peace.” Wells was a pacifist, but he believed that it was in the world’s best interest for the Allies to prevail and that despite their faults as nation states, “they do not make war but resist war.”

The world is once again at war. The Russian expansion of its war in Ukraine in 2022 shows no signs of abating. Israel and Hamas remain embroiled in a conflict that risks expansion into Lebanon and Yemen. Tensions in the South China Sea have spiked. The specter of nuclear conflict has returned.

Behind the Front was one of the chapters in Wells’ tome. As the namesake of this publication, it is meant to capture the moment that the United States and its allies now find themselves. It has been three decades since the American triumph over Iraq in 1991. During those intervening decades, the defense industrial base has atrophied, the military has shrunk, and U.S. national security decision-making has revolved around decisions to use force in low-intensity conflicts that have little risk of escalation.

To address these challenges, the Foreign Policy Research Institute (FPRI) is launching a new project, Behind the Front, to serve as a forum for analysis on the future of American and global security.

Featuring weekly analysis on topics such as the defense industrial base, lessons learned from ongoing conflicts, and challenges and opportunities in the technology and space sector, Behind the Front aims to share new thinking on security policy. 

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