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Shane Deichman had a superb post on Soviet Admiral of the Fleet and C-in-C of the Red Navy, Sergei Georgyevich Gorshkov over at Antilibrary. The admiral was the father of Soviet blue water power projection. Shane is reviewing Gorshkov’s The Sea Power of the State:

Gorshkov’s “The Sea Power of the State”

In this book, Admiral of the Fleet Gorshkov not only offers a vision of the relevance of the “World Ocean” to any nation’s well-being – he also provides a compelling rationale for “joint operations” a full ten years before our own nation’s Goldwater-Nichols Act forced jointness onto a reluctant American defense establishment, and underscores the importance of the littoral in a navy’s ability to influencing events ashore nearly two decades before “… From the Sea”.

The Sea Power of the State is rich in dichotomy: a land-rich nation with few accessible ports preaching the relevance of sea power, an atheist totalitarian regime describing the social and cultural significance of the “World Ocean”, a nation besmirched for its negative impact on the environment bemoaning pollutants and the need for “union with the environment”, and a foundational tome for effective naval force planning from a nation that just this month claimed the lives of nearly two dozen civilians in a submarine accident. Such is Gorshkov’s compelling style – scholarly and impeccably researched, with steadfast devotion to the tenets of Marxism, decrying the “imperialist aggression” of the Capitalist powers who exploit sea power to “hold in check other states.”

….Most impressive about Gorshkov is the breadth of his perspective.  Alongside the typical Communist demagoguery (e.g., “Imperialist power exploit sea power to preserve their monopoly …”) are lucid arguments for balanced force structure planning (inclusive of creating large merchant fleets), diminished pollutants, and even maritime law (with an appeal to demilitarize the World Ocean beyond the 12 mile territorial waters).  Curiously, he never once expresses disdain at the limited blue water access of the Soviet Union – and was convincing enough in his vision that the Kremlin subsidized his development of a fleet that nearly reached parity with the dominant sea powers of the west

Read the whole review here. 

I am not an expert in maritime matters but I am relatively conversant on Soviet affairs. Shane’s right, by Soviet standards, where bureaucratic conservatism and enforced conformity to CPSU doctrine served to weed out independent thinkers before they could ascend the first rungs of the nomenklatura ladder, Gorshakov was making a daring, even a startingly bold argument. The Sea Power of the State could have easily been a career-ender had the ideological winds taken a wrong turn; Gorshakov’s argument has very little to do with Marxism or Soviet military doctrine. Instead, it draws upon the Petrine tradition of modernization and securing the “window to the west” that Peter the Great sought in building St. Petersburg and the warm water ports after which subsequent Tsars lusted.

Fortunately for Gorshakov, his ideas coincided with the noontide of Brezhnev’s faction, which was rooted in military heavy industry, the Dnepropetrovsk mafia and a national security axis of the power ministries – Defense, Foreign Ministry and the KGB which were controlled by Brezhnev’s then allies and proteges, Ustinov, Gromyko and Andropov. Gorshakov’s vision of expanding Soviet reach abroad also had appeal to party hardliners like Mikhail Suslov and Boris Ponomarev who were deeply interested in supporting radical third world regimes and adding the Ethiopias, Angolas and Nicaragua’s to the “Socialist camp”

At the Small Wars Council. A thread of great intellectual vigor sparked by CavGuy reacting to the review by Sam Liles of The John Boyd Roundtable:

Here’s a snippet of my post there:

There’s been a discussion if Boyd merits being called “the greatest” or a “great” strategist or theorist. I think it’s fair to say that Boyd himself would never have put forth such a claim of that kind or wasted time worrying about what people thought of him or whether he made a more significant contribution to the study of war than Colin Gray or Carl von Clausewitz. Boyd was more interested in learning, teaching and discussing conflict (moreso than just “war”) and were he alive, I’m certain Boyd would be delighted with the Small Wars Council and the endless opportunities here for discussion and reflection.

Was he “great”, much less “greatest” ? In his briefs, Boyd was trying to shift the paradigm of American military culture away from linear, analytical-reductionist, mechanistic, deterministic, Newtonian-Taylorist, conceptions that resulted in rote application of attrition-based tactics toward more fluid, alinear, creative -synthesist thinking and holistic consideration of strategy. Give the man his due, in his time these were radical arguments for a Pentagon where the senior brass of the U.S. Army had reacted to the defeat in Vietnam by purging the lessons learned of COIN from the institutional memory of the Defense Department.

I am seconding Younghusband in recommending the post up at The Strategist as well as the subsequent discussion:

“Who and Where are Today’s Military Thinkers”

Quentin recently asked if there are people in western militaries who are “thinking outside the square” about strategy and warfare.

It’s a good question and one that I don’t have a ready answer for. Over the last 200 years there have been a number of great thinkers, like Carl von Clausewitz, Alfred Mahan, T E Lawrence (pictured), Basil Liddell Hart, J F C Fuller, and John Boyd. They developed general theories about war or thought deeply about the nature and shape of future warfare.

There were also military officers who operationalized radical ideas and thinking. They include Erwin Rommel and Heinz Guderian, the German pioneers of armoured warfare, along with Orde Wingate and David Stirling, the Brits who trail-blazed the use of special forces in WW2.

These thinkers thought deeply about their subjects. Their ideas were backed by experience, or they tested and refined their ideas in the field. They tended to be outsiders and were often regarded by the military establishment as odd, unorthodox, even dangerous. Some, like Fuller and Guderian, gravitated towards experimental military areas. To paraphrase Boyd, they tended to ‘do something not be someone’. 

What about today? Who are the thinkers in western militaries? In the US, John Nagl comes to mind for his work on counterinsurgency. As Zenpundit and Armchair Generalist point out, Nagl recently left the army for a job with a think tank. The British have Sir Rupert Smith, who wrote The Utility of Force after he retired from the British forces.

Other than these people, I’m struggling. Any nominations? Or are we more likely to find today’s military thinkers in universities and think tanks (e.g., Martin van Creveld and Willam Lind), in aid agencies and private military companies, in IT companies, or, heaven forbid, in the blogosphere?

Join in the discussion here.

THE STRATEGIST EN FUEGO!

I liked these posts quite a bit; nicely done Strat.

“Guns for Hire“

“How to Survive in Modern Times“

“Great Generals of Rome“

My survival kit has cheaper whiskey, I fear.