Reviews for Rethinking the Principles of War

The average rating for Rethinking the Principles of War based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2017-06-21 00:00:00 John Flood Bottom Line: Rethinking the Principles of War is not a collection of essays targeted at the introductory level military thinker. For any citizen who is making a serious effort to understand wars against ideology, non-state actors, in the so-called three block battle this book has to be part of your reading. More than just recommending this book I bought two additional copies and gave them as gifts. One to a reserve army intelligence officer and the other to a local police Captain. Because these papers were written in 2005 and because they include specific critical analysis of high-level American military thinking, one hopes that much of this book is out of date. The essays included here represent the proceedings of a seminar sponsored by the Office of Force Transformation and the U.S. Navy. The authors of the enclosed essays represent advanced thinkers from within the military but including individuals respected for their advanced military thinking from private, government and university institutions in the US and several Allied nations. This book, however out of date is important. Anyone expecting a single conclusive battle between America and her declared enemies is not paying attention. Anyone who things that the new US Military need only be armed and trained for so called low intensity combat is too narrow minded. What these papers make startlingly clear is that the day of a Manahan type conclusive sea battle or a mechanized version of Waterloo has gone the way of the all-star Hollywood World War II movie. The immediate threat ranges from: The lone wolf type actor, who may be inspired by a remote enemy but feel empowered to act, violently without any direct orders. Alien, hostile, ideologically drive non-state actors. This enemy prefers to co-locate inside of civilian populations and to defy America and her allies to act in ways not in accordance with our principles. Dealing with these enemies requires a number of specific approaches, the training and discipline consistently execute them. It is not enough for senior officers to nod toward things like multi-cultural awareness, it must be part of in the field decisions. At the company level it is possible for units to have to make concurrent decisions to destroy a house, redirect civilian traffic and lend the medic to a assist in some civilian emergency. This is the definition of the 3 block battle. It makes requirements for new thinking deep into the ranks of the front line soldiers. Reverting back to national level planning; many essayists also recognize that the structure of the American Military cannot forget the possibility of a traditional nation-states engaging in traditional "high intensity" war. In the last 110 years the military has had to adopt to the machines and techniques that address warfare from bellow the sea; to include high performance aircraft and long range ballistic and ground reading cruise missiles. Future wars will include cyber-attacks, sophisticated economic battles and various space based activities. None of this gets much public attention. Mostly because we tend to focus on the immediate and pretend surprise when a hostile action reminds us that there are other threats. I had been away from much of this level of thinking for a long time. I see very little of this kind of advanced analysis present in public debate. This book brought me closer to what thinking was and where it needed to go. What worries me most about Rethinking is that a number of essayists pointed to both specific failures and habitual failure in the 'American Way of War' -the chapter heading for the first series of essays. Most troubling were those discussed in the last section, Intelligence. Repeatedly the same or similar type of failures deform the connection of nation policy to tactical decisions. From career training plans to the retention of the best performing career soldiers, Rethinking points to long standing failures to adopt to enemies who have already learned to adopt to us. As much as I learned from this book it contains a major structural weakness. Besides being ten years old, publishing 29 essays means that there are 29 introductions. Many of them duplicate each other. This is typical in this type of collection. A better idea would have been to have a single introduction to each section, and limit the individual essayists to introducing only the minimum necessary points before moving into their particulars. The essays run from too much of what my thesis adviser called 'academic fluff' to at least one essayist whose credibility hangs on the assumption that you agree with their politics. Going in the other direction , there is a lack of evidence. The writers seem to be avoiding any kind of quantitative content. The lack of numbers or tables tends to weaken some presentations. General readers may balk at this kind of content, but the audience for this book is not the general public. This country needs an update to this text and maybe this will be addressed in that update. For example it has been recognized , in the field, that ISIS is attempting to be a country. That means it cannot simply conduct an attack and then become one with the local population. They have geography to protect. That is a change that has both tactical and strategic implications. My personal copy of Rethinking the Principles of War was bought by me during a recent visit to the US Naval Academy. It was one of very few books available for public purchase with obviously more than tourist value. If you're listening USNA please put some more books on your book store shelves

Review # 2 was written on 2016-09-24 00:00:00 Keith Thomas This was not a book per se but a compendium of papers on various subjects regarding warfare, evolutions in warfare, intelligence and many other various topics related to military strategy and operations. I did not enjoy this one as much as others due to the various authors that sometimes had diverging opinions and the relative hap hazardous way of some of the papers. Yet, many of the topics were refreshing even though they were dated. The main aspects of the papers were regarding the need to move forward with reorganization and realignment. Warnings on reliance of too much technology were apparent in all topics. Our admirals and generals love their gadgets. Rice bowls were another topic which hits close to my heart. This is my rice bowl and mine alone. I will not share...no I won't! That attitude has cost more lives than were lost at Stalingrad. Transparency and sharing knowledge amongst organizations and the lack thereof was a consistent topic. We do play for the same team correct? Many do not know that the CIA was well aware the 9/11 hijacker terrorists were in the US. They did not share that information with the FBI. We all know what happened there. Many more frustrations about the derelictions of the intelligence community regarding their 9/11 failure and their ineptitude regarding Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction claims were very interesting. I use the word dereliction on purpose. They simply were. Two of the greatest intelligence derelictions caused the United States the greatest harm since Pearl Harbor. Those derelictions were essentially criminal in nature. What would have happened to those responsible if this dereliction had happened in the Soviet Union, China, or North Korea? What if the lack of WMDs was known and Iraq was invaded anyway? Very interesting questions. Overall, I recommend this one to all professionals based on the failures of our organizations. We must learn from our failures or we are doomed to repeat them. Or are we already?