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Driven Patriot: The Life and Times of James Forrestal
By Townsend Hoopes and Douglas Brinkley. New York: Alfred A. Knopf,
1992. 587 pp. Bib. Ind. Notes. Photos. $29.50 ($26.55).
Reviewed by James R. Schlesinger
James Vincent Forrestal, the nation’s first Secretary of Defense, was a highly complex man—impressive, though not always admirable. It was his destiny (and, in a sense, his tragedy) to preside over the Pentagon during a confluence of events that forever altered this nation’s foreign and military policies. Put to that
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Louis Johnson (left), the ambitious “panjandrum who [was] . . . the principal Democratic fundraiser for Truman’s campaign,” was sworn in as Secretary of Defense on 28 March 1949. Said Forrestal (center) of his successor: “He is incompetent.”
challenge, he performed laudably. Yet, at the same time, Forrestal had serious personal weaknesses, including a dark melancholia that ultimately overwhelmed him. His personal life was distressing, and became an ever-growing burden to him during the last decade of his life. His personal behavior was not marked by a high regard for ‘family values,’ to use a current expression. Forrestal controlled
Harbor and in the war itself, Forrestal’s record was impressive. As inside man, he played a crucial role in organizing the expansion of the Navy, drawing on his substantial business experience. At his own insistence, he came under heavy fire at Iwo Jima, much to the distress of his subordinates. Indeed, he was there when the flag was raised on Mt. Suribachi. In May 1945 he succeeded Frank Knox as Secretary of the Navy, and was increasingly drawn into the external and diplomatic responsibilities of the Navy Department.
It was in his postwar role, however, that Forrestal’s service was most illustrious. Indeed, he is a prototypical figure,
all these weaknesses, however, through the exercise of an iron discipline and by wearing a mask that, until the very end, he was able to turn toward the outside world.
Townsend Hoopes and Douglas Brinkley are to be saluted for producing a marvelous biography: rich in detail, though perhaps too rich for some readers’ taste. They have placed their subject both in the context of his times and his own personal history. As reflected in the ambivalence of the title, Driven Patriot, the authors managed to catch the duality of the Forrestal persona. For this the senior author deserves especial credit, for he has long admired Forrestal from contacts with him during his final years. If, in this biography, the authors do not entirely embrace a “warts and all” approach, they do provide sufficiently clear intimations of the warts so that readers can draw their own conclusions.
For our purposes, the principal interest in Forrestal’s life begins in his 49th year with his arrival in Washington, following a highly successful career on Wall Street. After a brief stint as a White House Assistant to President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Forrestal moved as Under Secretary of the Navy to the Pentagon, where he remained until almost the end of his days.
In both the prelude to Pearl
standing at one of the great turning points in our foreign relations. The authors correctly and intriguingly describe him as the godfather of the policy of containment. Forrestal early recognized that U.S. hopes, embodied at Yalta, were to remain unfulfilled. He soon discerned the problems posed by our relations with the Soviet Union, and sought to prepare the United States psychologically, strategically, and organizationally for the Cold War.
Indeed, it was Forrestal who sponsored the famous article by Mr. X (George Kennan) in Foreign Affairs that so prophetically laid down the U.S. strategy for the Cold War. Since this country is now at another turning point in foreign affairs, it may behoove us to reflect on Forrestal’s prototypical role. For it is at such a time that U.S. utopianism (and capacity for self-deception) may lead us to misconstrue the real possibilities in the outside world—which too many Americans interpret not as it is, but as we wish it to be.
Forrestal was also a key figure at another famous turning point: the “unification” of the services. As a Navy man, Forrestal stoutly resisted integration. Early on, he believed that the National Security Council (modeled on the Committee on Imperial Defense) might serve as a substitute. Ironically, when he became the first Secretary of Defense, he was obliged to preside over the very integration of the services that he had previously resisted. Moreover, in this latter role he concluded that he had been wrong in believing that cooperation between the services alone would be sufficient and so informed President Harry Truman. Thereafter, he pressed for additional authority in the office of the Secretary of Defense, which strained relations with many former supporters, especially in the Navy.
Nonetheless, Forrestal never did exercise the full powers of the modern Secretary of Defense with respect to budget and strategy. Nor did he wish to. Yet, in the wake of the Goldwater-Nichols Act and the Gulf War, the residual argument regarding service integration seems finally to be off the boards. Notably, the Navy Department’s somewhat hysterical rhetoric regarding the supposed menace of a German General Staff has an in-
creasingly far-off sound.
In dealing with Forrestal’s postwar role, one should not fail to mention the bitter and debilitating fight over the future of Palestine and the recognition of Israel, which played a considerable role m Forrestal’s subsequent downfall. Some 45 years later, it appears almost a truism to observe that the United States has major national security interests in the Middle East and in access to oil. Yet at the time, Forrestal’s views—even on such elementary points—were challenged.
Within the administration the burden °f that argument was carried by George Marshall and Robert Lovett at the Department of State, with whom Forrestal joined forces. But Forrestal carried his views into the public domain with his customary bluntness, and thereby became a principal target for attack. (It would, after all, seem rather unproductive to attack General George Marshall.) Yet that bitter struggle added to Forrestal’s list of enemies and to his later obsessions.
With the approach of the 1948 election, Forrestal refused all White House entreaties to participate in the campaign and refused to allow his subordinates to do so. He argued that the Secretary of Defense remaining outside of partisan Politics was essential for the maintenance of a bipartisan foreign policy. Although that position infuriated the White House staff, it proved to be a wise one. The precedent thus established has only occasionally and obliquely been violated since then. Nonetheless, it added immensely to Forrestal’s problems with the President. In recent years Harry Truman has come to be widely admired. Yet, it must be recalled that he steadily chopped away at the defense budget just prior to the attack on Korea. What is more significant, he removed Forrestal and installed the finance chairman of his campaign, Louis Johnson, who simply blanched at the very idea of the North Atlantic Treaty—indeed of any departure from George Washington’s injunction against “foreign entanglements.” Still, Forrestal’s subsequent depression and suicide, after his removal from office, may ultimately have proved President Truman right in relieving him.
Some 35 years ago, when I was teaching at the Naval War College, I was urged by a senior Navy captain to read Forrestal’s diary. “It reads,” he argued, after Korea and Sputnik, “like a Greek tragedy.” I felt then that there was considerable truth in his comments, but until I read Driven Patriot, I did not realize how much truth. Forrestal’s combination of public capacity and private torment make him an appropriate hero for a Greek tragedy: in such a tragedy, the hero is ultimately destroyed by his own virtues.
Dr. Schlesinger formerly served during the Nixon and Ford administrations as Secretary of Defense and Secretary of Energy.
Dreadnought: Britain, Germany, and the Coming of the Great War
Robert K. Massie. New York: Random House, 1991. 1,007 pp. Append. Bib. Ind. Notes. Photos. $35.00 ($31.50).
Reviewed by Jon Tetsuro Sumida
HMS Dreadnought, completed by Great Britain in 1906, was significantly faster and much more powerfully armed than any foreign battleship then built or building. These attributes were achieved at a cost that was not substantially greater than that of a conventional capital ship through the replacement of reciprocating engines by turbines and the substitution of an all-big-gun battery for the mixture of large and medium caliber artillery that had previously been standard. Germany, by this date Great Britain’s most likely opponent in the event of a full-scale war, responded with a ‘dreadnought’ building program of its own, and by 1909 seemed to be on the brink of equaling or even overtaking the Royal Navy in new model units. Great Britain was thus prompted to increase its warship construction, and by so doing maintained, though at great cost, a comfortable numerical margin of superiority. The Anglo-German naval competition was the principal cause of poor relations between the two powers between 1906 and 1914, and historians have generally considered it to be a major contributor to the outbreak of the First World War.
Those familiar with E. L. Woodward’s Great Britain and the German Navy (Oxford University Press, 1935) and Peter Padfield’s The Great Naval Race: Anglo- German Naval Rivalry 1900-1914 (David McKay, 1974) will find nothing new of significance in Robert Massie’s latest popular history, which sticks to well-worn interpretational paths. Where Massie differs from his predecessors, however, is in his manner of telling the story, or rather stories, because Dreadnought the book is not an integrated account of matters naval but a picaresque ramble that relates short biographies of British and German royal, political, and naval elites to a potpourri of national and international events from the mid-19th through the early-20th century. Indeed, the allbig-gun battleship named in the title does not make its appearance until chapter 26, some 450-odd pages into the book.
Massie’s discursive approach nevertheless has its virtues. By concentrating on personalities, the high politics of the period, which to most nonhistorians might otherwise have seemed dry and distant, are humanized and thus made more easily comprehensible. Massie’s anecdotal approach, moreover, is entertaining and his prose generally clear and engaging. History delivered in this form can almost compete with television as an article of popular consumption, no mean accomplishment.
The reading requirements of naval professionals, however, are more demanding than those of a general audience. History capable of serving even the casual educational needs of the service ought to be as accurate as existing knowledge permits, not necessarily in every detail but at least so with regard to major propositions, as well as being accessible if not diverting. To put it another way, the excellent performance of the delivery vehicle may not matter much if the payload is defective, which unfortunately is the case with Massie’s Dreadnought.
The problem, at bottom, is one of inadequate research. As a popular writer, the author understandably did not examine original documents, an activity properly reserved for trained scholars. He can, on the other hand, be faulted for either not consulting or coming to terms with secondary works (books and articles) that represent current state of the art academic understanding of early-20th century British and German naval history. Massie’s particular failure to do so in his account of the introduction of the all-big- gun capital ship, ostensibly the central subject of his book, is critical, because the historically expert view of that event has been altered radically over the past decade by new evidence.
Massie’s explanation of the Dreadnought follows that of the late Arthur J. Marder, for many years the undisputed authority in the field, whose work was informed by research carried out between the late 1930s and late 1950s. According to Marder, the Dreadnought embodied the ideals of Admiral Sir John Fisher, the service head of the Royal Navy (First Sea Lord) from 1904 to 1910. and again briefly in 1914 and 1915. Fisher was lauded for his willingness to achieve improvements in warships at an affordable price by exploiting new technology, which by anticipating what were seen as inevitable advances in naval engineering thus better prepared the Royal Navy for the coming war with Germany.
Fisher’s strategy was explained in what
Christened by King Edward VII— who bore a mallet made from timber from Lord Nelson’s Victory—
HMS Dreadnought set the pattern for her 177 successors. The Royal Navy’s three-year lead over its rivals in the early 1900s is attributed to the First Sea Lord, Admiral Sir John Fisher (inset), variously described as “volatile, egocentric, overbearing, belligerent, bellicose ... passionately patriotic, and brilliantly intelligent....”
were on the whole conventional terms: the maintenance of Britain’s numerical and qualitative superiorities in capital ships to enable its navy to win the kind of large-scale fleet action that eventually materialized at Jutland in 1916. In Marder’s eyes, the key technical issues were the move to the uniform heavy-caliber armament, increases in the size of heavy artillery, and Percy Scott’s improvements in gunnery. Liberal government reductions in spending on the navy were attributed simply to the left-wing’s traditional dislike of armaments and preference for social reform.
Recent scholarship has made it virtually impossible to accept this picture of
early-20th century British naval history. It is now clear that Fisher was opposed to the further construction of battleships as early as 1902, if not before, in the belief that Great Britain’s defense against invasion would be better executed by submarines and fast surface torpedo craft, while the protection of her extended overseas lines of maritime communication was to be secured by super-armored cruisers. These views were shaped primarily by the conditions of the threat posed by the French and Russian navies and afterwards transferred perhaps less appropriately to the rather different circumstances of the German challenge. In any case, Fisher thus opposed the introduction of the Dreadnought in 1905, instead favoring the building of what were later to become known as battle cruisers.
Compelled by his Admiralty colleagues to accept a compromise that provided for the building of both types, he subsequently worked covertly to obtain his ends while publicly defending the allbig-gun battleship against critics of his administration.
Fisher was also convinced that the secret development of Arthur Hungerford Pollen’s system of fire control, which in essence aimed guns with computer-generated data, would enable British battle cruisers to destroy enemy capital ships before they could be hit in return, making heavy armor unnecessary and thus further weakening the case for the battleship, including dreadnoughts. Pollen’s ideas were sound, but their realization and adoption were subverted by a hostile faction within the Admiralty. The resulting equipment of the Royal Navy with a much inferior means of fire control not only ruined Fisher’s vision of the supreme battle cruiser, but also was a major contributor to the disastrous losses of the British battle cruiser squadrons at Jutland.
Turning to tactics, there is strong evidence to suggest that Fisher believed that a British fleet consisting of battle cruisers would not deploy in a single line under centralized direction, but rather fight in independent groups of one or two units that maneuvered rapidly in order to avoid torpedoes and to keep the range long where their supposed fire control advantage could be exploited to maximum effect.
Finally, Fisher justified his battle cruiser program on the grounds of economy. At first, he had hoped that some savings would be gained by building warships that could carry out the functions of both the battleship and the armored cruiser. Later, the upsetting of German building for nearly two years by the introduction of the Dreadnought led Fisher
to conclude that even greater amounts could be conserved by the adoption of faster and more heavily gunned battle cruisers that would “out-dreadnought the dreadnought.”
Fisher’s concern for money, which also animated his search for administrative reforms, was a response to the serious financial circumstances of the British government that had come about by 1904 after more than a decade of sharply ris- mg ordinary naval and military expenditure and the Boer War emergency. In 1905 the navy estimates were slashed by a Conservative administration, which was followed by Liberal cuts that were Practically unavoidable in the face of the existing hard financial facts of life. The recovery of the navy from 1909 under the Liberals was attributable mainly to the fiscal productivity of Lloyd George’s so- called ‘radical’ budget, much of whose largess went to the expansion of all-big- gun battleship and battle cruiser construction.
The chief tenets of the new scholarship that run counter to the old are: (1) Fisher was a strategic, tactical, and technical radical and for this reason wanted from start to finish to build battle cruisers rather than dreadnoughts; (2) Fisher’s administration was badly split internally—naval political conflict during the Fisher era was therefore not simply between pro- and anti-dreadnought forces inside and outside the Admiralty, respectively, but at least a three-way fight between what might be called technological radicals, progressives, and conservatives; (3) for the Royal Navy, the major gunnery question between 1906 and 1912 had to do with the replacement of manual methods of fire control by a mechanized system based upon analog computers; (4) general financial conditions, much more than ideology, limited the naval expenditure of the Liberal government; and (5) the intensification of the Anglo-German naval rivalry between 1905 and 1909 was as much attributable to the straightened financial circumstances of the British state—which placed near absolute restraints on Royal Navy capital shipbuilding—as to German naval ambition.
The revisionist analysis just summarized is less edifying perhaps than earlier studies of the Anglo-German naval competition, in which Fisher was cast in the role of the farsighted hero slaying the dragons of nautical reaction at home and Teutonic expansion abroad, but offers an arguably more instructive presentation of the past, whose main ‘lessons’ may be stated as follows: radical technical innovation in weapon systems risks not only
program failure but unintended and highly dangerous operational consequences; naval policy is strongly influenced, if not determined, by the bureaucratic politics of naval procurement and the legislative politics of naval finance; and naval strategy is related to politics, administration, tactics, and technology in such manifold and complicated ways that it cannot be reduced to statements of general principle without rendering it abstract to the point of being practically meaningless.
Massie’s Dreadnought is recommended for entertainment during those long hours between watches. It is not a bad popular introduction to the general history of Europe in the late-19th and early-20th centuries. Those interested in coming to terms with the major complexities of modern navies, however, should look elsewhere.
Dr. Sumida, an associate professor of history at the University of Maryland, College Park, is the author of In Defence of Naval Supremacy: Finance, Technology, and British Naval Policy, 1889-1914 (Boston: Unwin Hyman [now Routledge], 1989), a study of the Dreadnought revolution based on extensive archival research. He has, in addition, written articles on British naval administration, industrial mobilization, logistics, gunnery, and tactics, and edited major collections of British naval documents.
It Doesn’t Take a Hero: An Autobiography
General H. Norman Schwarzkopf, with Peter Petre. New York: Linda Grey/Bantam Books, 1992. 530 pp. Bib. Ind. Maps. Photos. $25.00 ($22.50).
Reviewed by Major General Perry Smith, U.S. Air Force (Retired)
When long biographies of prominent Americans are published, one of three things usually happens. One, a large number of people buy the book and read it. Two, many people buy the book, but only a small percentage actually read it. Or three, the book doesn’t sell well, and within a few months it has disappeared from bookstores. General H. Norman Schwarzkopfs autobiography will almost certainly fit into the first category, for within a week of publication, it was at the top of the best-seller lists and is likely to stay there for many months. People will pick up the book, get immediately into the fascinating story of Schwarzkopf’s youth, and will soon be captured by this well-written, candid look at the general.
Not since 1951—when General Douglas MacArthur was fired by President Harry Truman—has there been a leader in any of the uniformed services who has massively captured and held the attention of the American public. In early August 1990 Schwarzkopf burst on the scene, and for almost a year, he was in every newspaper and on every television screen around the world. It was not just that he was bright, articulate, and self-confident. It was also his charm, his candor, and, most importantly, his obvious love and compassion for his “troops” that captured the attention of the masses.
This is a great book for both civilians and people closely associated with the U.S. Army. It is somewhat less valuable to professionals in the sea services since so much of the Navy and Marine story is left out. Schwarzkopf candidly discusses his youth, his years at the U.S. Military Academy, and his two tours in Vietnam, when he engaged in close combat on many occasions. In these compelling sections, the reader learns why Schwarzkopf feels so strongly about high integrity and honest reporting, about avoiding micromanagement of the theater commander by the Pentagon, and about compassion and the absolute requirement to keep casualties of his command to an absolute minimum.
When he traces each assignment from second lieutenant to four-star general, however, his story becomes a bit boring. Starting on page 250, It Doesn’t Take a Hero again becomes fascinating reading because Schwarzkopf describes the Iraqi invasion, and our attention shifts dramatically to the Persian Gulf. Because the general wrote his book in the months immediately following his retirement in August 1991, his memories of Desert Storm and Desert Shield are exceedingly fresh, his inner thoughts and emotions revealing.
Some characters in the Gulf War drama come out extremely well. George Bush, Colin Powell, Walt Boomer, and, to a lesser degree, Dick Cheney shine brightly. Others, such as General Fred Franks, Commander of the 7th Corps, receive much harsh criticism.
In addition to leaving out much of the story of the Marines, Navy, and Air Force, Schwarzkopf pays little attention to the role of the media in the first of the wars to appear live (or nearly live) on television. Also, he has done little research to validate the judgments he made in the heat of crisis and war. Although a field commander has lots of information, there is no way he can grasp all of the complicated reality outside his command post without interviewing many other participants.
Despite these shortcomings, Schwarzkopf’s autobiography provides many insights to anyone interested in
“The first person to greet me was General H. Norman Schwarzkopf.... ‘I’m sorry, sir,’ I said with a big smile. ‘I normally salute four-star generals.’ [He] laughed and reached out to touch my arm. He looked truly happy to see us [POWs], ‘That’s ok,’ he said.”
—F rom She Went to War
leadership, crisis management, strategic and tactical planning, and joint and coalition warfare. If you are looking for a riveting new book by an extraordinary military leader, It Doesn ’t Take a Hero is that book. You just can’t go wrong with the life story of the man I described on CNN as “the Eisenhower of our time.”
She Went to War: The Rhonda Cornum Story
Peter Copeland. Novato, CA: Presidio Press, 1992. 224 pp. Photos. $19.95.
Reviewed by Vice Admiral William P. Lawrence, U.S. Navy (Retired)
Peter Copeland, Pentagon correspondent for Scripps Howard News Service, has collaborated with Major Rhonda Cornum, U.S. Army flight surgeon, to produce a graphic, first-person account of Major Comum’s experiences in the Persian Gulf War, with specific emphasis on her eight days as a POW after being shot down on a helicopter rescue mission for a downed F-16 pilot in Iraq. The appeal of the book is enhanced by the flashbacks to Major Cornum’s prewar life, interspersed with her wartime accounts, as well as coverage of her post-release activities. While the book is detailed and descriptive, it flows smoothly and is highly readable.
The most significant impression from the book is that of the competence and dedication of today’s all-volunteer military and their ability to prosecute a devastating, high-tech war. Although the forces were deployed on short notice into an alien, inhospitable environment, they rapidly acclimated to their situation, and quickly prepared themselves to fight with high morale and determination. It was obvious from beginning to end that they were eager to fight and win, the principal reason for their overwhelming vic-
tory against a reluctant, unmotivated enemy.
Although Major Cornum is a rare individual of immense courage, toughness, competence, and patriotism—having previously been selected as Army Flight Surgeon of the Year —her performance both before and during the war and captivity fully validates that women can be warriors in every sense of the word, and they are a vital part of today’s armed forces. Though seriously injured, she endured the trials of detention as well as her male comrades did. The following excerpt from the Officer Evaluation Report on her tour of duty in the war zone, written by her male battalion commander, strongly endorses the performance of women in the military.
Outstanding performance in combat. Rhonda Cornum is the finest aviation medical officer in the Army. She is a tough, no-nonsense officer who has demonstrated magnificent technical skill combined with outstanding leadership. Rhonda had the most profound impact on the combat effectiveness of my battalion. Rhonda Cornum makes things happen. People follow her anywhere. She goes where the soldiers need her. A true ultimate warrior.
It is particularly germane to note that when the 2-229th Army Attack Helicopter Battalion was alerted for deployment to Saudi Arabia after Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in August 1990, and the commanding officer was aware that his unit would need a flight surgeon, without hesitation he requested that Major Cornum be assigned to his battalion because he felt that she was the best qualified person for the job. The fact that the law prohibits military women from flying in aircraft performing combat missions was apparently not even considered, or it was quickly dismissed as secondary to the competence of the individual. Throughout Major Cornum’s time in the combat zone, regularly flying missions into Iraq, the issue that the law was being violated was never raised.
Major Comum’s experience lea ds her to express in unemotional, objective terms that the law restricting women from combat should be repealed, and that everyone should be allowed to compete for available military jobs without consideration of gender. She further concludes that male and female soldiers can bond effectively in fighting units, that a male soldier’s effectiveness is not degraded by any instinctive urge to protect female soldiers, and
NAVAL INSTITUTE (Jjg abjjjty Qf jjjgj]
and women to live together in close, austere conditions, sharing bathrooms and other facilities, is simply a case of common sense, resourcefulness, and determination to make it work.
Major Comum’s experience as a POW was similar in many respects to my own in North Vietnam. Although it was evident that the Iraqi government’s policy was that American POWs be kept alive and healthy—as attested by the competent medical treatment she received— individual guards could not resist engaging in cruel, abusive treatment, including sexual molestation. Major Comum reports that she and her fellow soldiers detained near her were not pressured for military information and propaganda exploitation, whereas other POWs, particularly aviators, were forced to do those things.
In conclusion, not only is this book balanced, interesting, and informative, it has been published at a very propitious time—while the Presidential Commission on the Assignment of Women in the Military is in session. Major Cornum’s experiences will be quite useful to that body. But the true value of the book lies in the reassurance that it will provide to our citizens: namely that our country produces sterling individuals such as Rhonda Cornum who aspire to serve in the Armed Forces.
A former Superintendent of the U.S. Naval Academy and Chief of Naval Personnel, Admiral Lawrence spent nearly six years in a prisoner-of-war camp in North Vietnam. His article “Don’t Let the Good Die Young” appeared in the October 1992 issue of Proceedings.
t
Books of Interest
By Lieutenant Commander Thomas J. Cutler, U.S. Navy (Retired)
Angle of Attack
Robin A. White. New York: Crown Publishers, ,nc-. 1992. 288 pp. $20.00 ($18.00).
When Iraqi tanks rolled triumphant into Kuwait City in August of 1990, they were fighting a war that had already been lost in Washington ... in the heart of Moscow, and a( Dahr Nema. It is there that this story be- Slr>s.” As with his previous novel, The Flight from Winter’s Shadow (Crown, 1991), White frequently sets this action in the air, described in remarkably realistic detail. Stephen Coonts, author of Flight of the Intruder (Naval Institute Press, 1986), says Angle of Attack is “the first good high-tech thriller to come out of the Gulf War, and it’s a dilly!”
At War in the Gulf: A Chronology
Arthur H. Blair. College Station, TX: Texas A&M University Press, 1992. 130 pp. Append. Maps. Photos. $ 9.95 ($8.95) paper.
The events leading up to and including operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm are recounted here in chronological order for quick reference, but this well-recorded account may also be read as a narrative of the war. Appendixes discuss the components of U.S. forces and list the nations who participated in the coalition.
Closing Pandora’s Box: Arms Races, Arms Control, and the History of the Cold War
Patrick Glynn. New York: Basic Books, 1992.
460 pp. Ind. Notes. $30.00 ($27.00).
The author admonishes us to learn from the past and to carry those lessons “into the uncertain future.” Uncertain it is. The end of the Cold War has by no means marked the end of conflict. Witness the Persian Gulf War, the civil war in Yugoslavia, and the bloody ethnic conflicts in the former Soviet Union. Glynn argues for the continued participation in international peacekeeping efforts and an ongoing search for the means to control the spread of weapons of mass destruction. Jeane Kirkpatrick, former U.S. Representative to the United Nations, writes that this book “tells us much about how the Cold War was won.”
Flying Blind: The Politics of the U.S. Strategic Bomber Program
Michael E. Brown. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1992. 375 pp. Append. Gloss. Ind. Notes. Photos. Tables. $47.50 ($42.75).
In a revealing analysis of all 15 postwar U.S. strategic bomber programs—from the B-35 to the B-2—Dr. Brown evaluates the role of strategic and bureaucratic forces in weapons development. He concludes that these forces cause performance requirements to be set far beyond the state of the art, warns that these programs are rushed to the detriment of their proper development, and offers policy recommendations designed to correct these problems.
General Smedley Darlington Butler: The Letters of a Leatherneck 1898-1931
Anne C. Venzon, editor. Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers, 1992. 376 pp. Bib. Ind. Notes. Photos. $55.00 ($49.50).
The letters of a controversial Marine are collected, arranged, and annotated to reveal some of the inner workings of this man who rose from high school dropout to major general. Butler, whose career included service in both the Far East and the Caribbean during America’s Imperialist era, is both colorful and enigmatic. A Quaker, he was known as one of the toughest Marines. An aristocrat, he championed the causes of the common man. He was a man who could evoke great respect and unbridled disgust in others. His letters allow some insight into this complex man’s personality and provide a firsthand look at a number of Marine operations that have received very little historical attention.
Magellan
Tim Joyner. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1992. 377 pp. Append. Bib. Illus. Ind. Maps. Notes. $24.95 ($22.45).
“September 6, 1522, San Lucar de Barrameda, Spain. A weather-beaten, barnacle-encrusted sailing ship with an emaciated crew of eighteen Europeans and four Malays, its hold crammed with spices, hove-to off the bar . . . to pick up a pilot.” The story of the first circumnavigation of the earth is harrowing, uplifting, and complex. Joyner brings the details of this incredible adventure to life, including the politics of the period that caused Magellan to sail under the flag of Spain instead of his native Portugal, the 9,000-mile Pacific crossing—when men were eating rats and leather to survive—and Magellan’s untimely death.
ES The Naval Institute Guide to the Ships and Aircraft of the U.S. Fleet,
15th Edition
Norman Polmar. Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1992. 672 pp. Illus. Ind. Photos. $56.95 ($42.71).
As a result of the collapse of the Soviet threat, the U.S. Navy is undergoing significant changes. This latest edition of an indispensable reference work reflects those changes, while providing comprehensive coverage of every type of ship, submarine, aircraft, and naval weapon system in the U.S. Navy and Coast Guard. New features include a chapter on the Navy’s growing fleet of military sealift ships and coverage of the ongoing effort to develop a mine countermeasures force in response to problems encountered in the Persian Gulf. Many of the 900 photographs and 20 line drawings have never before been published, and the format of the book is notably user friendly. Perhaps most significant is the cogent analysis provided by the renowned Norman Polmar, author of more than 20 other books and a highly respected defense consultant.
Surface-Based Air Defense System Analysis
Robert H. M. Macfadzean. Boston, MA: Artech House, 1992. 395 pp. Figs. Ind. Tables. $95.00 ($85.50).
Fulfilling the need for a multidisciplinary approach to air defense system analysis, this book melds together the appropriate aspects of the various relevant technologies such as radar, command and control, aerodynamics, infrared, fuzes, warheads, decision theory, and control systems. Though not appropriate for the casual reader, the information provided is an excellent introduction for the professional new to the field of air defense for surface forces. Also available from the publisher is a companion set of computer programs that cover a number of the topics found in the treatise.
The Sword and the Cross: Reflections on Command and Conscience
James H. Toner. Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers, 1992. 200 pp. Bib. Ind. Notes. $45.00 ($40.50).
Contending that politics and ethics are different sides of the same coin. Professor Toner explains that “moral convictions conceived and implemented without political wisdom can be bankrupt and that geopolitical strategy
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formulated and effected without ethical character can be disastrous.” He therefore asserts that military as well as political leaders must develop “both strategic sense and ethical intuition,” and he explores how this may be accomplished.
Understanding Soviet Naval Developments: 6th Edition
Chief of Naval Operations. Washington, D.C.:
U.S. Government Printing Office, 1991. 190 pp. Append. Figs. Gloss. Photos. Tables. $ 6.50 ($5.85) paper.
In what will more than likely be the final edition of this publication, the Soviet Navy, as it existed in April 1991, is depicted and analyzed in some detail. Despite the dissolution of the Soviet Union, it is important to recognize that the ships, aircraft, and weapons listed in this publication still exist. And any responsible naval planner must take into account their existence, no matter what flag may be flying from their gaffs.
NATO Realignment and the Maritime Component
Washington, D.C.: The Center for Strategic and International Studies, 1992. 70 pp. Append. Maps. Notes. Tables. Free, paper. Order from: CSIS Books, 1800 K Street, NW, Suite 400,
Washington, DC 20006.
This study examines the maritime element of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in order to identify the appropriate employment of these forces in the near future. The drawdown of U.S. air and ground forces in Europe indicates a potentially increased role for naval forces in the waters surrounding Europe, and NATO may have a significant role in this area. Consideration is also given to potential NATO roles in the global arena.
Women in the Military: An Unfinished Revolution
Maj. Gen. Jeanne Holm, USAF (Ret.). Novato,
CA: Presidio Press, 1992. 488 pp. Bib. Notes. $24.95 ($22.45).
This is a revision of an earlier work that the Marine Corps Gazette described as “a commendable and monumental work.” General Holm (whose military career began as a truck driver and culminated in her serving as the first American woman to attain two-star rank) has updated the original version to reflect the progress made, and new problems encountered since the book’s original publication in 1982. Particularly significant is her discussion of the role of military women in Grenada, Panama, and the Persian Gulf War.
Other Titles of Interest
Lines in the Sand: Desert Storm and the Remaking of the Arab World
Deborah Amos. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992. 223 pp. Ind. $21.00 ($18.90).
The Northwest Coast: British Navigation, Trade, and Discoveries to 1812
Barry M. Gough. Vancouver, Canada: University of British Columbia Press, 1992. 265 pp. Bib. Illus. Ind. Notes. Photos. $39.95 ($35.95).
Ramparts: Fortification from the Renaissance to West Point
Marguerita Z. Herman. Garden City Park, NY: Avery Publishing Group, 1992. 201 pp. Bib. Gloss. Illus. Ind. Maps. Notes. $50.00 ($45.00).
Reconstituting America’s Defense: The New U.S. National Security Strategy
James J. Tritten and Paul N. Stockton, editors. New York: Praeger Publishers, 1992. 178 pp. Bib. Ind. Notes. $42.95 ($38.65). .
Six Days in June: How Israel Won the 1967 Arab-Israeli War
Eric Hammel. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1992. 452 pp. Append. Bib. Gloss. Ind. Maps. $30.00 ($27.00).
Thirty Florida Shipwrecks
Kevin M. McCarthy. Sarasota, FL: Pineapple Press, Inc., 1992. 128 pp. Bib. Illus. Ind. Maps. $17.95 ($16.15) paper.
832B
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