Review Essay 557 War and media since 9/11 Romy Fröhlich (ed.) Media in War and Armed Conflict: The Dynamics of Conflict News and Dissemination, Routledge: Abingdon, 2018; 354 pp.: £110. ISBN: 9781138051621 (hbk) Lindsay Palmer Becoming the Story:War Correspondents since 9/11, University of Illinois Press: Chicago, IL, 2018; 202 pp.: $22.95. ISBN: 9780252083211 (pbk) Reviewed by: Piers Robinson, Organisation for Propaganda Studies, UK Overview: War and conflict post 9/11 The occurrence of war and armed conflict in the international system has not abated. For a brief period following the collapse of the Soviet Union, many Western academics celebrated the emergence of a new world order and looked positively towards a more democratic, rule-governed and peaceful international system (e.g. Fukuyama, 1989). The use of force, rather than for territorial gain and self-interest, would instead be deployed in order to protect civilians and uphold human rights by way of a new norm ‘humanitarian intervention’ (e.g. Shaw, 1996). Since 9/11, however, we have witnessed a series of major conflicts in the international system many of which have occurred under the auspices of the so-called ‘war on terror’. Both Afghanistan (2001) and Iraq (2003) were the target for US-led military action and resulted in violent conflict that continues to this day. Later, but not entirely disconnected from the early phase of the ‘war on terror’, came US-sponsored action in both Libya and Syria. Although at face value part of the so-called ‘Arab Spring’ uprisings, both of these countries had also been targeted by Western states (e.g. the United States, France and the United Kingdom) who have worked with regional allies (e.g. Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Israel and Qatar) in order to fund and support proxy forces fighting to overthrow both governments. In both these countries, this has led to the US and some of its European and Middle Eastern allies to variously provide direct or indirect support for Al Qaeda and jihadist linked groups (see Anderson, 2019; Curtis, 2018; Ripley, 2018). For example, US involvement in Syria has involved the largest ever covert CIA operation (Timber Sycamore) in co-operation with Saudi Arabia (Mazzetti et al., 2017). In Syria, Russia and Iran have supported the Syrian government against these attacks. The death toll associated with all the post-9/11 wars has almost undoubtedly run into the millions. It is highly unlikely that this almost constant state of war has been coinci- dental: retired US general Wesley Clark and former chief of staff to Colin Powell Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson (2019) have both publicly stated the existence of plans to engage in multiple ‘regime-change wars’ following 9/11 while the UK Chilcot report published documents which provided corroboration of these claims (Robinson, 2017). ‘Regime