Michael O'Hanlon, 'The Future of Land Warfare'

From drones to cyberwar, armed conflict is increasingly technological and remote. But before we consign conventional warfare to the past, O’Hanlon, the research director for the Brookings foreign policy program and the author of many books on defense policy, including Healing the Wounded Giant and A Skeptic’s Case for Nuclear Disarmament, points out many hotspots where conflict could best be resolved by old-fashioned boots on the ground. His scenarios range from a Russian attack on the Baltic States to a Chinese incursion on the Korean peninsula to deployment of humanitarian security forces in the aftermath of epidemics in Asia or Africa.