What I’ve Been Reading (9.28.09)

Every once and a while I like to fill everyone in on the various books and articles I’ve been reading and finding of value.  You’ll notice immediately that much of my focus over the past several months has been on modern warfare, theory, Afghanistan and Iraq, counterinsurgency, etc.  I figured if I was going to call myself a military officer I should probably know more than the average joe on all things military.  It seems obvious, but you’d be surprised.  So, here we go:

Books:

Non-Fiction

“The Transformation of War: The Most Radical Reinterpretation of Armed Conflict Since Clausewitz” by Martin Van Creveld

Controversial, highly though-provoking read.  He covers an amazing amount of material concerning war, but his writing on nuclear weapons was a game-changer for me:

Over the last forty-five years it would be difficult to point out even a single case when a state possessing nuclear arms was able to change the status quo by threatening their use, let alone by using them.  In other words, their political effect, if any, has been merely to enforce caution and freeze existing borders.  The most important reason behind this state of affairs is, of course, that nobody has yet figured out how to wage a nuclear war without risk of global suicide.  Truth to say, nuclear weapons are instruments of mass murder.  Given that there is no defense, the only thing they are suitable for is an act of butchery that would be beyond history, and quite possibly would put an end to it.  They cannot, however, be employed for waging war in any meaningful sense of that term.

“The Sling and the Stone: On War in the 21st Century” by Colonel Thomas X. Hammes, USMC

Put simply, this is a guidebook for those seeking to understand Fourth Generation Warfare (4GW) a.k.a. the type of warfare we’re seeing today from enemies like Al-Qaeda that render most of our high-tech weaponry completely useless.  An excerpt,

Fourth-generation warfare (4GW) uses all available networks — political, economic, social, and military — to convince the enemy’s political decision makers that their strategic goals are either unachievable or too costly for the perceived benefit. It is an evolved form of insurgency. Still rooted in the fundamental precept that superior political will, when properly employed, can defeat greater economic and military power, 4GW makes use of society’s networks to carry on its fight. Unlike previous generations of warfare, it does not attempt to win by defeating the enemy’s military forces. Instead, via the networks, it directly attacks the minds of enemy decision makers to destroy the enemy’s political will. Fourth-generation wars are lengthy — measured in decades rather than months or years.

“The Accidental Guerrilla: Fighting Small Wars in the Midst of a Big One” by David Kilcullen

As one of the world’s most influential experts on guerrilla warfare, chief adviser to Gen. Petraeus during the 2007 Iraq war surge and veteran of East Timor as a member of the Australian Army, David Kilcullen has seen a new hybrid of warfare up close and he is concerned with how the West has been trying to counter it.

Kilcullen believes the “War on Terrorism” moniker has cast too wide a net over an increasingly segmented, complex and unique map of global conflict.  Our chief failure has been in understanding the differences in, “local social networks and worldwide movements; traditional and postmodern culture; local insurgencies seeking autonomy and a broader terrorist campaign.”  His model of “The Accidental Guerrilla” is the result of America and the West blurring these lines on a consistent basis.  He warns,

“…any smart enemy goes unconventional; and most enemies are likely to continue doing so, until we demonstrate the ability to prevail in irregular conflicts such as those we are currently engaged in.”

And just in case you think he might be a hard-hearted war monger, he consistently bounces around the following theme throughout the book,

“American power must be matched by American virtue, or it will ultimately harm both the United States and the global system.”

“The Jesus I Never Knew” by Philip Yancey

People who know me will attest to my leeriness when it comes to most Christian books.  More specifically, the Christian self-help variety that I once eagerly consumed, but quickly became burnt out on.  This is not a self-help book.  What Yancey does is unmask the historical Jesus in a way that makes his time and place come alive and the Gospels click.  One thing that struck me about Yancey was how well-read he is based on some of the subjects he tackles.  For example, one chapter dives into a comparison of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky’s views on Christ and salvation.  My heart swelled and I almost began blubbering all over the coffee table.

The opening quote of the book sets the tone quite nicely,

Suppose we heard an unknown man spoken of by many men. Suppose we were puzzled to hear that some men said he was too tall and some too short; some objected to his fatness, some lamented his leanness; some thought him too dark, and some too fair. One explanation… would be that he might be an odd shape. But there is another explanation. He might be the right shape…. Perhaps (in short) this extraordinary thing is really the ordinary thing; at least the normal thing, the centre. ~G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy

Fiction

“The Road” by Cormac McCarthy

My first Cormac McCarthy book, awesome.  I can understand why he has received so much attention as of late, his writing is spot-on.  “The Road,” is true grit.  A tale of a father and son surviving in a post-apocalyptic world, it examines the relationship between loved ones when they are utterly reliant on each other.  As I quoted earlier on my blog, the last paragraph of the book is an example of what makes McCarthy’s writing so rich,

“Once there were brook trout in the streams in the mountains. You could see them standing in the amber current where the white edges of their fins wimpled softly in the flow. They smelled of moss in your hand. Polished and muscular and torsional. On their backs were vermiculate patterns that were maps of the world in its becoming. Maps and mazes. Of a thing which could not be put back. Not be made right again. In the deep glens where they lived all things were older than man and they hummed of mystery.”

“The Naked and the Dead” by Norman Mailer

The classic WWII novel written by Mailer at the age of 25.  That such a book could come from the mind of someone my own age blows me away.  The following comes from a 1948 New York Times review by David Dempsey,

The generation that grew to manhood on the eve of the last war was not ideally suited to saving the world for democracy. It had been blighted by depression. Its minorities–two of the characters are Jewish, one a Mexican- America–had not yet been assimilated fully into the national dream. Even the dominant groups represented competing sectional and economic interests. In peace, the differences are adjustable. In war, Mr. Mailer believes, they become intensified, for the system gives men unprecedented degrees of power. How the GI–in his less virtuous moments–got the way he did, is the subject of this novel.

“The Pillars of the Earth” by Ken Follett

Good book, a bit overrated.  Historical fiction seems like it would be tough to write, especially regarding 12th Century England, but Follett does an laudible job of teaching you about the time while making it all quite interesting.  His cast of characters are excellent from Tom the Builder to Prior Philip the monk to Lady Aliena that beautiful, sharply intelligent princess and William Hamleigh, the ultimate villain.  All are developed around the building of a massive cathedral.  Questions of Heaven and Hell, love and hate, loyalty and betrayel — all receive due attention in what is a quick-paced book for its length.  Out of all my latest readings, this is the one I’d recommend the least.

Articles:

“The Changing Face of War: Into the Fourth Generation” by William S. Lind, Colonel Keith Nightengale (USA), Captain John F. Schmitt (USMC), Colonel Joseph W. Sutton (USA), and Lieutenant Colonel Gary I. Wilson (USMCR) — **written in October 1989**

This is the original Marine Corps Gazette article that sparked much of the Fourth Generation Warfare (4GW) discussion.  A must-read for any military member.

“For about the last 500 years, the West has defined warfare. For a military to be effective it generally had to follow Western models. Because the West’s strength is technology, it may tend to conceive of a fourth generation in technological terms.

However, the West no longer dominates the world. A fourth generation may emerge from non-Western cultural traditions, such as Islamic or Asiatic traditions. The fact that some non-Western areas, such as the Islamic world, are not strong in technology may lead them to develop a fourth generation through ideas rather than technology.

The genesis of an idea-based fourth generation may be visible in terrorism. This is not to say that terrorism is fourth generation warfare, but rather that elements of it may be signs pointing toward a fourth generation.”

I include this article because as mentioned above it was written in 1989 and we know how things have turned out since then — these guys predicted the current state of modern warfare 20 years ago, there words are worth reading in detail.

“The Good Enough Revolution: When Cheap and Simple is Just Fine” by Robert Capps

An interesting thing is happening in the world of tech – the best solution is often being thrown out for “good enough” and its not a laziness issue, it’s what the consumer is demanding.  Not only is this having major implications for the consumer markets, but we see it in modern warfare as well.  John Robb of Global Guerrillas points out that for the past century guerrillas have been largely dependent on the state for weapons, but now have the capabilities to produce DIY (do-it-yourself) weapons that are low-cost, but “good enough” to inflict significant harm.

Cheap, fast, simple tools are suddenly everywhere. We get our breaking news from blogs, we make spotty long-distance calls on Skype, we watch video on small computer screens rather than TVs, and more and more of us are carrying around dinky, low-power netbook computers that are just good enough to meet our surfing and emailing needs. The low end has never been riding higher.

So what happened? Well, in short, technology happened. The world has sped up, become more connected and a whole lot busier. As a result, what consumers want from the products and services they buy is fundamentally changing. We now favor flexibility over high fidelity, convenience over features, quick and dirty over slow and polished. Having it here and now is more important than having it perfect. These changes run so deep and wide, they’re actually altering what we mean when we describe a product as “high-quality.”

“Nassim Taleb on the economy: ‘We still have the same disease’” by Margaret Wente

Today we still have the same amount of debt, but it belongs to governments. Normally debt would get destroyed and turn to air. Debt is a mistake between lender and borrower, and both should suffer. But the government is socializing all these losses by transforming them into liabilities for your children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren. What is the effect? The doctor has shown up and relieved the patient’s symptoms – and transformed the tumour into a metastatic tumour. We still have the same disease. We still have too much debt, too many big banks, too much state sponsorship of risk-taking. And now we have six million more Americans who are unemployed – a lot more than that if you count hidden unemployment.

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1. What I’m Reading (12.17.09)
2. The Ultimate AfPak Reading List
3. Friday Video: The Limits of Power – Andrew Bacevich
4. Globalization, Black Swans and the Need for Resilience

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