The Dragons and the Snakes: How the Rest Learned to Fight the West

Just a few years ago, people spoke of the US as a hyperpower- a titan stalking the world stage with more relative power than any empire in history.

Yet as early as 1993, newly- appointed CIA director James Woolsey pointed out that although Western powers had "slain a large dragon" by defeating the Soviet Union in the Cold War, they now faced a "bewildering variety of poisonous snakes." In The Dragons and the Snakes, the eminent soldier-scholar David Kilcullen asks how, and what, opponents of the West have learned during the last quarter-century of conflict.

Applying a combination of evolutionary theory and detailed field observation, he explains what happened to the "snakes"-non-state threats including terrorists and guerrillas-and the "dragons"-state-based competitors such as Russia and China.