This looks highly informative. Hat tip to Wings Over Iraq.
I regret the light posting and lack of attention to the superb comments. I am buried at work and will be until early next week. Will be posting short items until then
Received a courtesy review copy of WAR yesterday from the publisher, due entirely to the kind offices of Kanani.
Read the first 50 pages this afternoon and found it it interesting because as a book, it exists on the opposite end of the spectrum from Mackinlay and Kilcullen. Where the former are giving a panoramic or telescopic view of COIN as strategic-operational-grand tactics, the author of WAR, journalist Sebastian Junger, is using a microscope to show COIN in the Korengal valley, Afghanistan as seen by an Army platoon, squad and individual soldier. Maybe an electron microscope would be a better analogy. Gritty.
Will write a full review when I am finished. If any active duty or veteran readers were in Korengal or Afghanistan or have read WAR and care to sound off in the comment section, you are cordially encouraged to do so.
Junger is also part of the documentary film project, RESTREPO, which he personally financed.
Posts have been slow here lately because my real-life workload has temporarily increased. Irrationally, I’ve attempted to compensate for my lack of blogging by ordering yet more books; perhaps I should order more free time instead!
In any event, esteemed readers, @cjschaefer and @CampaignReboot have requested a full accounting of what is new and here it is:
Blood and Rage: A Cultural History of Terrorism by Michael Burleigh
Koran, Kalashnikov and Laptop by Antonio Giustiozzi
The Collapse of Complex Societies by Joseph Tainter
Street Without Joy by Bernard Fall
The Third Reich at War by Richard J. Evans
The Death and Life of the Great American School System by Diane Ravitch
Play: How it Shapes the Brain, Opens the Imagination and Energizes the Soul by Stuart Brown
Rewired by Larry D. Rosen
The Human Factor: Inside the CIA’s Dysfunctional Intelligence Culture
Coupled with what was leftover from last year, my 2010 summer reading list is set.
Adam Elkus has an excellent piece that looks at the COIN vs. Raiding debate in Defense Concepts and, while analyzing that, IMHO correctly diagnoses the origin of our policy troubles.
Taking the Offensive: The Utility and Limitations of Raiding (PDF)
What can broadly be considered raiding strategy deserves consideration as an alternative to global counterinsurgency. However, its utility is limited and must be bounded within a broader review of American grand strategy. This paper addresses the utility and limitations of raiding and punitive expeditions. Both raiding and global counterinsurgency are valuable approaches in pursuit of strategic goals but should not be elevated to the centerpiece of national security policy–especially in light of underdetermined grand strategy.
….Even if we could develop a metric for the requisite amount of force to be employed, we would still encounter objections to raiding based on an awareness of political affairs and bureaucratic infighting. Defense pundits discussing proposed strategies seem to implicitly assume that the United States is a state with strong executive planning organs and a political culture capable of digesting sophisticated strategies; a kind of 21st century version of Moltke’s Prussia. Instead, we live in a political culture more aptly chronicled by the creators of South Park.
Steven Pressfield, author, historian and this year, blogger has made a major revision of his blog, originally an Afghan War-centric site known as “It’s the Tribes, Stupid!”. Pressfield has relaunched the blog today with a sharp new site redesign, a broader focus and a new expert co-blogger, as:
Steve has enlisted scholar-soldier William S. “Mac” McCallister to apply his experience in military affairs and irregular warfare at Agora, a page which will cover the subjects and news formerly housed at “Tribes, where Mac has already put up his first post:
Often, ideas are discounted because they don’t mesh with someone else’s concept of reality. I was on the receiving
end myself recently, related to my latest recommendations for prosecuting the war in Afghanistan. And, well, I’ve shot down the ideas of others in the past, too.
End of day, we have to consider the different realities-because the one thing I think we can all agree on is that, in Afghanistan in particular, there’s no one-size-fits-all solution, because the realities on the ground vary so greatly.
“Agora” is a place to consider all of the realities.
Steven will be blogging on “Writing Wednesdays” creativity and other themes on his page, The Creative Process and, I expect, popping in from time to time on Agora as well when the mood strikes.
Zenpundit is a blog dedicated to exploring the intersections of foreign policy, history, military theory, national security,strategic thinking, futurism, cognition and a number of other esoteric pursuits.
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