President Putin made three foundational assumptions in launching his war against Ukraine that should have been correct but were not. First, Putin assumed the invasion of Ukraine would be a quick and easy fight. Second, he assumed the world would denounce the invasion but tacitly allow it. Third, Putin assumed the war would deter NATO expansion.
In his novel The Lone Leopard, Sharifullah Dorani provides a sweeping view of the struggle that Afghans endured under the burden of foreign influence, ethnic and religious seams, and the clash between traditional conservative cultural norms versus more modern liberal western ideals. The book does an excellent job of bringing the reader into the complicated societal mosaic that makes Afghanistan so unique.
Despite its omissions, Paths of Dissent is an exceptionally substantive and moving book for anyone interested in personal accounts at the intersection of ethics and military service…As America exits another costly decades-long counterinsurgency era into an uncertain future, it requires courageous dissenters…to avoid national security malpractice. It is only by capturing the perspectives of those who are willing to make personal sacrifices in informing the public’s understanding of war that principled countries can avoid waste and hypocrisy in its conduct.
Mara E. Karlin’s new book, The Inheritance: America’s Military After Two Decades of War is a sobering yet necessary read. In looking at the effects of the post-9/11 wars on the U.S. military, she asks—and proposes answers to—two questions. First, “[h]ow did the most capable military in U.S. history—indeed in the history of the world—fight to, at best, a draw in its longest contemporary conflict?” And second, “why has this not been the subject of greater reflection and debate.”
Innes’ work is an important starting place for any scholar or practitioner seeking to understand the significance of sanctuary as a guiding concept as well as the evolution of Cold War thinking through the era of globalization and the U.S. Global War on Terror. His book is a superb example of blending real world experience with in-depth research and analysis. Its insightful examination of the shifting definitions and uses of the concept of sanctuary offers important cautions for the present as it reveals the blind spots of the past.
Annie Jacobsen shows the reality of the concept of identity dominance over a population in First Platoon. She weaves together her main themes through four questions—what are the boundaries of a persistent surveillance state enabled by advances in biometrics; who should own and have access to biometric data of a population; how has the face of battle changed in an identity dominance environment; and what is justice in this new environment?
Wars rarely follow straight paths from beginning to end. Belligerents constantly shift, seeking advantage and adapting to change, and the interaction takes its participants to places unimagined at the war's inception. Such has been the case for the American' war in Afghanistan. The U.S. started with clear strategic aims: defeat al-Qaeda and their Taliban hosts. Within months, military action had accomplished both. Yet, having achieved those aims, the war continued to escalate, and the war deviated from its expected path.
America is on the precipice of a credibility crisis in public diplomacy. The world has little faith in our most important messenger, and the proliferation of social media use at all levels of government makes deliberate message management more difficult to execute than ever. Sienkiewicz’s ideas about the soft power value of reproducing American forms while ceding actual content creation to local producers serve as both a basis for policy innovation and a warning. Ultimately, Sienkiewicz’s ability to pack both granular history and broad theory into a concise package makes his book a rare treat among academic titles. The Other Air Force isn’t written with strategists in mind, but anyone with an interest in the future of soft power would do well to read it all the same.
Simply, Victor in the Rubble is a delight. It produces that same sense of glee that comes from opening an MRE to find a pop tart perfectly whole rather than smashed into a gazillion crumbles. Alex Finley, a former CIA officer, has crafted a magical satire of the Intelligence Community post-9/11, Iraq, and the 2004 intelligence reforms.
