On 22 January 1879 at Isandlwana some 20,000 Zulus armed with stabbing spears and some old rifles killed 1300 British soldiers armed with the most modern weapons of the time. The military campaign to invade Zululand went temporarily into reverse and Victorian Britain’s confidence was shaken. …

The United States’ relative global power is reducing just as the United Kingdom’s was 100 years ago. Modern wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are worth comparing to Zulu Wars of 1879. In both cases there was a near identical collective failure to integrate easily available local knowledge into a coherent…