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.
The contributions in the text are easy to follow and highly interesting to read. The book is also very timely. It contributes a wide range of interesting material to ongoing debates about the future of war, the place of hybrid or grey operations as well as reminding us about the role of narratives, myth, and belief in shaping our understandings of what constitutes a win.
In Mars Adapting, Frank Hoffman studies bottom-up adaptation through the lens of organizational learning theory to explain its dynamics. This theory states that business organizations must continuously evaluate their performance in a competitive and shifting environment to prosper and even survive. Hoffman states that this notion applies to militaries during wartime as they seek to gain an advantage over their adversaries.
Wright’s “Africa in Global Society,” despite being twenty years old, contains a set of timeless lenses for viewing Africa in the contemporary era: Regionality, Continentality, New Issue solutions, and Democracy. When analyzed through this four-pillared framework, strategic and political engagement strategies may be more coherently framed and contextualized to facilitate the elusive whole-of-government approach.
In The Arab Bulletin, the origins of many of the region’s current instabilities can be found in the reports about restive tribes, dynasties, and leaders. Even today, the content, methodology, analysis, and writing style of the Arab Bulletin are relevant. In essence the Bulletin is a fourteen volume master class in the use of intelligence and hybrid warfare in immediate and long term strategy. T.E. Lawrence was the only officer who wrote comprehensively about his work with the Arab Bureau, and some of his work is suspect.
Telling the story of forever wars requires a long cast list. It is a lot of story—maybe even a forever story—not only because it must communicate an overwhelming amount of information about an event that has not yet ended, but also because it is the story about ourselves that Americans must compulsively return to, retelling it again and again in an effort to make sense of the imbroglio that has defined the United States for the last twenty years.
A mighty military with a global reach and a warrior tradition bogged down in the complexities of war waged in dispersed battlegrounds upon another continent. A fearsome host unable to achieve its goals despite outclassing the training, discipline, equipment, and resources of its foes. National leaders with every confidence in victory reinforced by a continuing stream of misleading and optimistic reports. Although evocative of a more contemporary conflict and military, war historian Rick Atkinson’s latest work is about the bloody birth of America and masterfully exposes the Revolutionary War in all its confusion, complexity, and discord.
Written in the style of an engaging spy thriller, the story takes the reader through a series of events involving real individuals with capabilities and intentions to harm others. The plot in a nutshell: a handful of individuals inspired–and in some cases trained–by al-Qaeda attempted to smuggle liquid explosives on board U.S.-bound transatlantic flights. If successful, they would have destroyed multiple aircraft, murdered thousands of people, and increased public fear worldwide about aviation travel. The economic toll could have been comparable to that of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. In the end, the most impactful thing these plotters did was provoke a change in aviation security wherein passengers can no longer bring over three ounces of liquids through the airport security checkpoints. This is a story, certainly a compelling one, about the failure of a terrorist plot.
Just and Unjust Uses of Limited Force by Daniel Brunstetter offers an insightful look into the permissions and limits of international force short of war. Brunstetter proposes a theory of justice for limited force (or vim in Latin). The need for such a study is indicated by the fact that most of the terminology used to describe morality in war does not adequately capture contemporary uses of force, which warrants additional vocabulary. This is what Brunstetter provides. Full of contemporary examples and counterfactuals, Brunstetter's work offers a relevant heuristic to aid in understanding the fights of today.
In 1932, Bolivia and Paraguay went to war over dry, sparsely populated territories in the Chaco region of South America. Three years of fighting had wide-ranging consequences. National consciousness developed among Bolivia’s disparate peoples and the war increased the importance of public opinion in political life. One postwar rallying cry of veterans, ¡Vamos a avanzar! (Let’s move forward), expressed their desire for reformist modernization.
In Beyond Blue Skies: the Rocket Plane Programs That Led to the Space Age, Chris Petty provides a basic, thoroughgoing primer on the history of rocket plane programs at Edwards Air Force Base, California, beginning with the X-1. This history connects directly both to the military and national security aims of the United States in the post-World War II world and the dawning of the space race.
Three Dangerous Men is a fast read that is also full of details and insights into the lives of Russian Chief of Staff Valery Gerasimov, the late Iranian Quds Force Commander Major General Qassem Soleimani, and Vice Chair Zhang Youxia of China’s Central Military Commission. Jones presents the reader with formative experiences in the life and professional development of the three military leaders and how they each contributed to shaping the 21st century military and foreign policies of their respective countries.
Before you finish the author’s introduction of Thomas Gordon’s Marine Maxims, Gordon confronts you with the assertion that there is nothing new in this book, that it is an accumulation of others’ ideas. On the surface, Gordon is correct. The concepts he discusses are not new. But dig a little deeper and Gordon’s assertion is also irrelevant. The value of Marine Maxims is in Gordon’s organization and synthesis of the material; his summation of each section; and the massive bibliography he provides for readers’ personal growth through further reading.
Given the profusion of books, articles, websites, and documentaries about Japan’s surprise attack at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, even someone with a passing interest in this historic event may wonder what another scholarly title could possibly add to the discussion. Japanese-German historian Takuma Melber’s answer in Pearl Harbor: Japan’s Attack and America’s Entry into World War II is two-fold: his book eloquently synthesizes both Japanese and American secondary and primary sources on the attack, and the narrative is told primarily from the perspective of the Japanese.
It is no small task to write a book that begins with the evolutionary history of humans and ends with artificial intelligence and the “Skynet” problem, but Coker has a long track record of wide-ranging analyses of war and warfare. Despite being retired from a professorship of International Relations at the London School of Economics (LSE) and Political Science, he continues to direct the LSE’s foreign policy think tank and is a regular participant or consultant in UK and NATO military education and strategic planning circles. Crucial to this book, he has published a number of other works, many of them full length treatments of subjects that are revisited more briefly in this impressive synthesis.
Elbridge Colby, a former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Strategy and Force Development and a leading official in the development of the 2018 National Defense Strategy, has the curriculum vitae to provide an authoritative reassessment of U.S. defense strategy. Anchored in theory and bolstered by historical references, the book provides valuable nuggets of information, but it stops short of being groundbreaking—particularly for readers who are already well abreast of Chinese affairs and the principles of strategy.
Taking over forty years to complete as Stillwell worked on other projects for the United States Naval Institute, the final result was well worth the wait since it not only demonstrates Lee’s importance to American naval professionalism in his own day, but also his legacy of leadership for today’s Navy. The particular goal for Stillwell was to revive the memory of Lee to illustrate these leadership traits. Whether Stillwell succeeds in bringing Lee to our generation of sailors in the United States Navy—much less general American society—remains to be seen, but the biography is top notch.
Out Standing in the Field gives valuable insight into what women go through in the armed forces. While it is a military-specific memoir, it will also resonate with many women who are in any traditionally male-dominated professions. Perron’s experiences are important to understand for those looking to bring about change, a popular topic in this Me Too era. What Perron endured, and the response of those in leadership roles, highlights what needs to be addressed to put the military on track for improvement.
Morningstar succeeds in his stated intention to “provide a basis for a fuller discussion of resistance during war as experienced in the Philippines during World War II.” As his work makes clear, localized regional insurgencies, both unified and fragmented, can coincide with and fit into larger symmetric conflicts. However, he ignores the evolution of the scholarship in elucidating the nature of asymmetric war. Specifically, he stops short of critically explaining the conflict that he otherwise ably narrates.
On Operations is both well-written and a solid work of theory supported by strong historical research. One may argue against Friedman’s conclusions on the utility of the operational level of war as a valid concept, and a much smaller and more logical SOT Snowman, but one cannot argue that the arguments are not well constructed. Similarly, his articulation of operational art and its constituent disciplines are both logical and clear. Operational art represents something of a niche topic, but for those studying it, Friedman’s work is the proverbial must read.
The book is bold and provocative. Its ideas deserve serious consideration across the services—particularly in the Marine Corps, where maneuver warfare was most fully adopted. It is nonetheless paradoxical: strong in many respects but not in others, beautifully balanced in several key arguments but also weaker in others, ultimately reducing the strength of Robinson’s central argument that Boyd was a blind strategist whose theories did much more harm than good in the American military establishment. Specifically, while Robinson addresses specific weaknesses in Boyd’s theory and approach effectively, he misses or ignores its strengths.
