The U.S. national security community contains a slew of superlative political, military, economic, sociological, technological, and other specialists, but comparably qualified generalists prepared to cherry pick their products, then produce integrated policies, plans,\u00a0 programs, and conduct operations that best suit this great Nation\u2019s needs, are exceedingly scarce. The Warlord Loop\u2019s 2012 reading list, which features interdisciplinary topics that cover the conflict spectrum from normal peacetime competition to what Herman Kahn\u2019s classic\u00a0On Thermonuclear War<\/em>\u00a0called a \u201cwargasm,\u201d is explicitly designed to help correct that imbalance.<\/strong><\/p>\nContributors include active and retired officials in executive and legislative branches of the U.S. Government, news media representatives, college professors, and \u00a0\u00a0military personnel from every service who range in rank from\u00a0noncommissioned officers\u00a0to four-star generals and admirals. Males, females, liberals, conservatives, Republicans, Democrats, nonpartisans, assorted age groups, and a few foreigners span the complete range of public opinion. The Warlord recently challenged them to identify two books apiece that would help practitioners and concerned citizens better understand increasingly complex problems and optional solutions despite mutating situational changes that now circle this globe at bewildering speed. A cross-section of responses appears below. Publishers, dates, and synopses are available on the Internet.<\/strong><\/p>\nBrigadier General Chris Arney, USA (Retired), a professor of mathematics at West Point, focuses on information networks, modeling, intelligence processing, and artificial intelligence.<\/strong><\/p>\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Mario Diani and Doug McAdam,\u00a0Social Movements and Networks: Relational\u00a0<\/em>Approaches to Collective<\/em>\u00a0Action<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/em>Howard Steven Friedman Howard,\u00a0The Measure of a Nation:\u00a0<\/em>How to Regain\u00a0<\/em>America’s Competitive Edge and<\/em>\u00a0Boost Our Global Standing\u00a0<\/em>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\nLieutenant General David Barno, USA, (Retired), who saw combat in Grenada and Panama, commanded all U.S. and coalition forces in Afghanistan from 2003-2005. He now is a Senior Advisor and Senior Fellow at the Center for a New American Security. \u00a0\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Eliot Cohen,\u00a0Supreme Command<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Colin Gray,\u00a0Another Bloody Century<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\nCaptain Sean Barrett, USMC, is a Fellow for the Marine Corps Director of Intelligence, Office of Intelligence and Analysis, Department of Treasury. He served in Iraq and Afghanistan as an Intelligence Officer.<\/strong><\/p>\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0 Milton Friedman,\u00a0Capitalism and Freedom<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 George Orwell,\u00a0Animal Farm<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\nLieutenant Colonel\u00a0Robert Bateman, USA, formerly Office of Net Assessment, currently in International \u00a0Security Assistance Force Joint Command in Afghanistan.<\/strong><\/p>\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Azar Gat,\u00a0A History of Military Thought<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 John Lynn, ed.,\u00a0Feeding Mars, Logistics in Western Warfare, from the Middle\u00a0<\/em>Age to the Present \u00a0 <\/em>[….]<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\nRead the rest here<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Small Wars Journal has published the national security reading list\u00a0 composed by members of \u00a0The Warlord Loop, a private listserv run by\u00a0Colonel John Collins (ret.). You will find a wide-ranging list of titles in history, IR, strategic studies, military history, political philosophy and other fields recommended by experts and operators, soldiers and scholars and even […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[698,133,270,445,162,161],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16939","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-698","category-book","category-national-security","category-reading","category-small-wars-journal","category-swj-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16939","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16939"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16939\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16942,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16939\/revisions\/16942"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16939"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16939"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16939"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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