From Normandy to Bondi |
On morning of June 6, 1944, the beaches of Normandy witnessed one of history’s massive military operations. Thousands of Allied soldiers stormed the French coast under heavy fire, as part of a landing force. It was war in its most recognisable form: states fighting states, armies confronting armies, territories to be seized, territories to be defended, victory to be scaled in miles advanced and defeats in retreats from the frontlines and battalions lost. In short, Normandy symbolised the classic symmetric warfare where opposing forces composed on organisational structures, operated under known hierarchies, where friends not only knew the common foes but also shared woes.
Eighty years later, another beach makes its way to international headlines, across print, electronic and social media, but for very different reasons. Bondi a beach in Sydney, like many public spaces around the world, did not expect to be associated with invading fleets or military objectives, but with leisure. The contrast between Normandy and Bondi is not merely geographic or historical; it captures a fundamental shift in the nature of warfare itself.
The Second World War marked the peak of symmetric, state-on-state warfare, but its aftermath transformed conflict fundamentally. Nuclear weapons made direct confrontation between major powers existentially dangerous, forcing war to fragment rather than disappear. In the decades after 1945, decolonisation, proxy wars, and insurgencies replaced set-piece battles, as seen in Korea, Vietnam, and Algeria, where weaker actors offset military inferiority through political warfare and popular mobilisation. As a result, conflict mutated and morphed. It became irregular, prolonged, and........