A must-read book for any American interested in geopolitics

Legacy of Ashes by Tim Weiner

While by no means the definitive history of the CIA (which cannot yet be written), or even an objective look at the Agency (probably not yet possible), it is one of the best and most timely accounts of one of the prime instruments in the War on Terror — now the primary strategic concern of the US defense apparatus (see this for evidence).

One contributing factor to the debacle of the Vietnam War was the collapse of the State Department during the commie hunts of the 1950’s (a sub-text found in many accounts of that era, such as David Halberstam’s The Best and the Brightest).  In this sense, the long and expensive futility of the Iraq War results from the long decay of our intelligence apparatus — which Legacy chronicles.  That leaves a future historian the task of recording the collapse of our military agencies, the only leg so far standing in our geopolitical tripod.

There is no need to review this thoroughly researched and footnoted work.  It can speak for itself, as any excerpt shows its quality.  Here is one such, giving concrete illustrations of the post-9/11 militarization of intelligence and the hollowing-out effect of privatization on our intel agencies.

The Constitution: wonderful, if we can keep it

Many reviews of books about public policy give the impression that the reviewer went directly to the last chapter, which describes the author’s recommendations.  Going to the good stuff works when reading Penthouse, but not Shakespeare (Hamlet:  everyone dies, so it is a tragedy).  The path to understanding the recommendations is a book’s content.  The destination may be wonderful, but is the path like a Roman road, or just two ruts in the dirt?

Chet Richard’s new book If We Can We Can Keep It recommends a new geopolitical strategy for America.  It is a heavy work.  Not in length (if a Nobel Prize is awarded to the book in 2008 with the greatest content/length ratio, Richards should start writing his acceptance speech).  It is heavy with detailed, clear, and innovative reasoning.

It deserves a review (I’ll do one eventually).  First, however, we should see the context - which tells us if the book is important.  Where is his book in the larger flow of thought about 4GW?

The art of war advances, like science, in two ways.  First and most common, are tool-driven revolutions.  Most of the progress in science has been from development of new tools:  from the telescope and microscope to X-ray diffraction (which revealed the DNA helix).  The same is obviously true of war:  iron, steel, breeding larger horses, the stirrup, gunpowder, internal combustion engines … and atomic weapons.

Second, there are concept-driven revolutions — famously described by Thomas Kuhn in his great book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (a must-read for anyone seeking to understand modern military theory and practice).  In science they are often personalized, as in the revolutions of Copernicus, Newton, Darwin, Einstein, and Freud.  (Some, like quantum-mechanics, are associated with no one man.) ***

So it is with the military arts.  New concepts of warfare can be revolutionary (in several senses).  The feudal knight was supreme in Europe until the rediscovery that a body of men on foot could stand against cavalry.  Napoleon’s armies had the same technology as their foes, which Napoleon repeatedly crushed until they adopted his new ideas of organization and deployment.  Sometimes new ideas require new technology, such as the combination of German infiltration tactics and the internal combustion engine to yield blitzkrieg.

Lest we forget, “Black Hawk Down”

During 3 - 4 October 1993 American Rangers and Delta Force fought The Battle of Mogadishu– the largest firefight in the three decades between the Vietnam and Afghanistan wars.  Black Hawk Down, the book by Mark Bowden and the movie based on it, tell powerful stories of American skill and valor under fire. The discussions about these events usually examines events before and during the battle, debates about “what if” and “should have”. However the most poignant and valuable passages are, I believe, at the end of the book — describing the worst failure of this battle.

Even inside the military, where one might expect to find strong professional interest in the biggest firefight involving American soldiers since Vietnam, there appears to have been little in the way of a detailed post-mortem.

… Since I was starting my work three years after the battle, I expected the historical portion of the work had already been done.  Surely somewhere in the Pentagon or White House there was a thick volume of after-action reports and exhibits detailing the fight and critiquing our military performance.  I was wrong.  No such thick volume exists. While the Battle of the Black Sea may well be the most thoroughly documented incident in American military history, to my surprise no one had even begun to collect all that raw information into a definitive account.

… I have spoken to hundreds of active US military officers … who contacted me seeking copies of {my} newspaper series or more detailed information about certain aspects of the fight.  Among that number have been teachers at the military academies and the Army War College, the National Defense Analysis Institute, the Military Operations Research Society, the USMC training base at Paris island, the Security Studies Program at MIT, and even the US Central Command.

I was flattered, but uneasy with the idea that our armed forces would rely on a journalist with no military background to inform them about a battle fought by many men who are still on active duty. As one of the former Delta team leaders remarked after hearing of yet another invitation I’d received, “Why aren’t they talking to us?”

“Lessons learned” are among the most valuable fruits of battle, but they must first be harvested. It is disturbing that NFL teams routinely spend more effort reviewing films of their games than the US Army appears to have done reviewing the the Battle of Mogadishu (until Bowden published his book).

Diagnosing the eagle, chapter IV - Alienation

I am often asked my opinion about the causes of America’s current geopolitical ills.  Why do we face so many serious problems at the same time?  The previous note in this series describes how we have changed, perhaps in ways so that the Constitution no long fits.

Another possible reason is our alienation from each other, a failure to see ourselves as fellows in a great joint venture.   Just as unit cohesion makes possible survival on the battlefield, strong social cohesion allows — makes possible if not certain – a society to survive what would otherwise be overwhelming threats.  Solon’s reforms gave Athens such social cohesion to achieve such greatness that they remain a beacon for us millenia later.  Alienation of individuals from the group disrupts cohesion, and can prove fatal to the group in times of great stress.

 This might explain the splintering of the American polity, our inability — as we have done so well in the past — to respond collectively to serious threats.

What is alienation?

Here is the Wikipedia entry on alienation (lightly edited, all links removed):

In sociology and critical social theory, alienation refers to an individual’s estrangement from traditional community and others in general.  … the atomism of modern societymeans that individuals have shallower relations with other people than they would normally.  This, it is argued, leads to difficulties in understanding and adapting to each other’s uniqueness (see normlessness).  …Many sociologists of the late 19th and early 20th century were concerned about alienating effects of modernization.  German sociologists Georg Simmel and Ferdinand Tönnies have written rather critical works on individualization and urbanization.  Simmel’s “Philosophy of Money” describes how relationships become more and more mediated through money.  Tönnies’ “Community and Society” is about the loss of primary relationships such as family bonds in favour of goal oriented secondary relationships.  The American sociologist C. Wright Mills conducted a major study of alienation in modern society with “White Collar” (1951) describing how modern consumption-capitalism have shaped a society where you have to sell your personality in addition to your work.

For a more poetic description of alienation…

The Marivaudian being is, according to Poulet, a pastless futureless man, born anew at every instant.  The instants are points which organize themselves into a line, but what is important is the instant, not the line.  The Marivaudian being has in a sense no history.  Nothing follows from what has gone before.  He is constantly surprised.  He cannot predict his own reaction to events.  He is constantly being overtaken by events.  A condition of breathlessness and dazzlement surrounds him. ” 

This is a summary of Georges Poulet’s analysis in The Interior Distance (1959) of the French playwright Marivaux, written by one of the first and best writers of postmodern fiction, Donald Barthelme, from his short story “Robert Kennedy Saved From Drowning” (1968).

For a deep understanding of our situation I suggest reading Allan Bloom (see chapter III) and Christopher Lasch.  Lasch discusses alienation in a clear and understandable way in his book The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations  (1991).  Men of action will find this uninteresting.  Unfortunately this analysis, like that of Bloom is diagnostic but not prescriptive.  We will have to find our own solution to these maladies of our collective psyche; analysis probably helps little in such matters.

Here are a few excerpts that give the flavor of his analysis…

Diagnosing the Eagle, Chapter II — book recommendations for 2008

The following note by Chet Richards was extracted from the comments on An important thing to remember as we start a New Year (Chet is Editor of Defense and the National Interest and writes at his blog):

Could you comment on what it is that gives the United States its enormous competitive strength? 

Let me throw out an hypothesis:  The competitive strength of any organization depends primarily upon its ability to inspire and then harmonize the creativity and initiative of its people in order to accomplish their common goals.

In the United States, the highest-level expression of our common goals is the Constitution.  In the United States, the free enterprise system is our mechanism for stoking and harmonizing creativity and initiative.  In addition to our legal system, other infrastructure, local market size, and access to capital, the US remains the easiest country in the developed world to start (or stop) a business.

So my hypothesis is that as long as we tend to the health of our constitutional free enterprise system, our future as a prosperous nation is assured. 

I agree with this, but the Constitution is not a complete answer to Chet’s question.  If the Iraq people voted to adopt the Constitution, would Iraq be on the road to success?  Also, we still have the Constitution — so our current ills must have other roots.

The Essential 4GW reading list: Martin van Creveld

The central role of Professor van Creveld in the development of 4GW theory is difficult to exaggerate. He has provided both the broad historical context — looking both forward and back in time — much of the analytical work, and a large share of the real work in publishing both academic and general interest books. He does not use the term 4GW, preferring to speak of “non-trinitarian” warfare — but his work is foundational for 4GW just the same.

Professor van Creveld has written about almost every significant aspect of war — technology, logistics, air power and maneuver warfare, the training of officers, the role of women in combat, military history (several books), nuclear proliferation, and strategy (several books).   He has written about the future of war –  The Transformation of War (which I consider the best work to date about modern war) and The Changing Face of War.  Then there is his magnum opus, The Rise and Decline of the State – the ur-text describing the political order of the 21st century.

Here are links to reviews of his latest book, The Changing Face of War: a review by William Lind and my review.

Now comes Culture and War, hopefully explaining the 4GW hellfire infecting so much of the world — while the rest of us enjoy peace and a rate of economic growth not seen since the invention of agriculture.  And what their passion for war might mean for us.

Contrary to what Clausewitz and so many “realists” believe, war is not simply a means to an end. It is that, but it also exercises a powerful fascination in its own right; out of this fascination grew, and continues to grow, an entire culture.  That culture ranges from the shapes and decoration of the armor of ancient Spartan warriors to today’s high tech “tiger suits;” from war games played by the ancient Egyptians to today’s violent video games; and from the Biblical commandments as to how one should treat one’s enemies all the way to the numbered paragraphs of today’s international law.  It also includes countless great works of art, books (both fiction and history), films, and much more.

Renowned author and war historian Martin van Creveld argues that, in spite of cultural, technological, and tactical changes, the culture of war, far from being obsolete, is more alive today as it has ever been.  Conversely, a society which, for one reason or another, loses touch with this culture will be helpless in front of one that has retained it and relishes in it.

Your can pre-order this at Amazon or Random House.  Available 30 September 2008.

For one application of his work, a demonstration of their utility, see How to accurately forecast trends of the Iraq War.

Wikipedia biography of van Creveld.

Here are links to his works that are available on the Internet — all of these are very much worth reading!   Please send links for anything not listed to fabmaximus at hotmail dot com {this is the spam-protected form of the address, to fool bots}.

A must-read about 4GW: “The Changing Face of War: Lessons of Combat, From the Marne to Iraq”

The Changing Face of War: Lessons of Combat, From the Marne to Iraq 
By Martin van Creveld

The gift of hope is perhaps the most valuable thing an author can provide us. The Changing Face of War is a must-read book because in it Martin van Creveld provides us with the second best gift: demolishing false hopes. Only after we clear our minds of misconceptions and baseless optimism can we begin the long process of adapting to a world in which a new form of war has obsoleted our current armed forces and ended the military dominance of the western developed nations.

Van Creveld describes our problem in a mild voice, without hyperbole.