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For
Prices
°flnt
American and Soviet Military rends Since the Cuban Missile Crisis
John M. Collins. Washington, D.C.: eorgetown University, The Center for trategic and International Studies, 1978. % pp. Illus. Maps. Append. Ind.
S10-95 ($9.86), $6.95 ($6.26) paper.*
Imbalance of Power
John M. Collins and Anthony Cordesman. an &afael, CA.: Presidio Press, 1978.
PP- Ulus. Maps. Append. $6.95
($6-26) paper *
Reviewed by William S. Lind
1 ^r Lind graduated from Dartmouth College 1969 and received a master’s degree in in 1971 from Princeton. From October J to January 1977, he served as legislative “Mistant to Senator Robert Taft of Ohio and “Misted in the preparation of the Taft White l a?er on defense. Mr. Lind is now the e&’slative assistant for the Armed Services on>mittee to Senator Gary Hart of Colorado.)
Each book presents a version of •* *ln Collins’ epic and controversial study of trends in the U.S.-Soviet ^■litary balance. Imbalance of Power is e 1977 Collins work, originally preEared for the Senate Armed Services 0rr>mittee and published in the Concessional Record, with added net as- !.essrnent sections by Anthony H.
°rdesman. American and Soviet Mili- j*Trends is an expanded and up- ed edition of the previous study. American and Soviet Military Trends a virtual defense encyclopedia. Col- k s. Proceeds from a comparison of asic U. S. and Soviet security inter- sts. defense establishment structures, rtlanP°wer problems, budgets, and reSearch and development efforts to the LlSllaI categories of strategic nuclear fo n<^S an<^ tren<Js ln general-purpose rces. He affords strategic and tactical Mobility trends a co-equal section, ^lv‘ng overdue recognition to their
details on ordering books and special see the Book Order Service note in Books erest to the Professional.
importance. The study concludes with a look at the NATO-Warsaw Pact balance, and a concluding section on issues and options.
The thesis of his work is presented on the first page:
“America’s armed services possessed unparalleled assets at the time of the Cuban missile crisis in 1962. We were the world’s sole military superpower. Moscow’s machine was still mainly second class.
. . . U.S. forces registered many improvements in the following 15 years, which brings us to the present, but their relative decline has been dramatic, when compared with Soviet counterparts. That trend continues.”
The naval section, found under the title of General Purpose Forces, is a thorough presentation of the U. S.- Soviet naval balance, although it contains little that will be new to specialists. And since the book is not written for specialists, Collin’s emphasis on the currently unanswered Soviet cruise-missile threat to the carriers, weaknesses in U. S. antisubmarine warfare, and Soviet problems with personnel turnover will bring new insights to many readers.
Some of the most significant naval material is in the discussion of strategic mobility. Collins makes a strong argument that the U. S. sealift capability is inadequate, Merchant Marine-Navy coordination is poor, and sealift considerations get short shrift at budget time in comparison with the more glamorous airlift proposals. In contrast, “state-controlled Soviet maritime resources, military and ‘civilian,’ are all part of a carefully coordinated sea power package.”
The naval discussion would be improved by inclusion of more conceptual issues, such as the question of defending against Soviet cruise missiles by dispersing U. S. naval aviation onto a larger number of smaller carriers. (Collins does this in the section on ground forces, where a discussion of weak points in both U. S. and Soviet doctrine is valuable.)
Although shorter, the naval section in Imbalance of Power loses little substance from the American and Soviet Military Trends text. Cordesman’s net-assessment appraisal for the general purpose navies section is a detailed discussion of the difficulties of making a naval net assessment, and the ease with which selected naval statistics can be used to support preconceived views of the naval balance—the “naval numbers racket.” Cordesman briefly addresses some of the conceptual issues in a table of "Opposing Views of Naval Quality,” although the presentations of the opposing arguments have something of a straw-man flavor.
Few prospective readers will wish to purchase both volumes, and choosing between them will inevitably involve some loss. Imbalance of Power stresses statistical material and leaves out some of the more important text, including the discussion of ground force doctrine. On the other hand, the material by Cordesman adds balance, repeatedly pointing out the pitfalls of quantitative comparisons. The strongest argument for Imbalance of Power is the excellent Cordesman preface, which includes a forceful indictment of the U. S. intelligence process in general, and Defense Intelligence Agency in particular.
One major weakness affects both volumes: inadequate attention to the dislocations in both U. S. and Soviet defense postures produced by intrainstitutional, or bureaucratic, influences in the defense decision-making process. Collins notes this (only in American and Soviet Military Trends) in relation to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, commenting that, “a Blue Ribbon Defense Panel in 1970 . . . found it [JCS] 'a forum for inter-service conflict,’ in which overworked Chiefs reach compromise solutions by ‘logrolling,’ when confronted with daily demands to protect parochial interests.” Cordesman notes similar bureaucratic dislocations in the intelligence establishment. But both books are behind the state of the art in de-
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fense analysis in giving intra-institutional factors only peripheral attention. It is increasingly recognized that intra-institutional influences—what Admiral Elmo R. Zumwalt called the “unions” in the Navy—play a controlling role in many key defense decisions, and may be a significant contributor to the relative decline in U. S. strength. No defense study can be complete without comprehensive discussion of this problem.
Just and Unjust Wars: A Moral Argument with Historical Illustrations
Michael Walzer. New York: Basic Books, 1977. 361 pp. Illus. $15.00 ($13.50).*
Reviewed by Thomas H. Etzold
(Professor Etzold received his PhD in American diplomatic history from Yale University, and now teaches in the Department of Strategy at the Naval War College, Newport, Rhode Island. He has written and reviewed widely on topics in defense and diplomacy.)
In this important and difficult book, Michael Walzer, a professor of government at Harvard University, argues that it is both possible and essential to assess war—particular wars—in terms of moral standards, which he believes to be intrinsic in human history and life. As dealt with here, this is no impractical, hazy notion, for Walzer does not imagine that r 1:1250 Ships, over 1500 models to select. Also •
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war will vanish from human affairs, nor does he think that war is useless or unjustifiable in all circumstances. Instead he suggests that the usefulness of organized violence as a social institution depends on its consonance with the intuitively recognized standards set by traditional values.
Walzer proposes that war’s morality should be judged in two categories: war’s purposes and war’s conduct. According to the "war convention,” as Walzer calls traditional morality in aggregate, it is wrong to make war for any purpose except defense of territory or of political independence. In regard to war’s conduct, Walzer asserts that the war convention requires strict observance of both the principle that non-combatants are inviolable, and the corollary that all military operations should be conducted so as to minimize loss of life, since human life is a fundamental value. From basic principles such as these, and using historical examples ranging from the Peloponnesian Wars to Vietnam, Walzer elaborates the kinds of dilemmas that soldiers and policymakers, as well as citizens at large, must confront when they resort to violence to vindicate or attain their interests.
This book is important for two reasons. First, it is the most serious effort to date that provides a respectable, intellectual framework for the convictions of those who, like Walzer, actively opposed the American intervention in Vietnam. For this reason, the book deserves careful reading, especially by those who have not been able to share or to understand the feelings and attitudes of Americans against that war. Second, the book is important because of the difficulties Americans continue to have in adjusting to the use of force in international affairs. As Henry Kissinger has often noted, the American people manifest a great uneasiness about the utility and legitimacy of force as an instrument of national policy. This is in part an obvious legacy of the American past. But it reflects as well the general inadequacy of the philosophy of war as it is discussed, taught, and understood in America. By raising hard questions about the nature of war—the moral responsibilities of governments and citizens for its purposes, and that of soldiers and governments for Its conduct—Walzer has contributed importantly to an American philosophy of war. Clausewitz, clearly, is n0t enough.
Yet the book is difficult, in paft because of the complexity of the issues, in part because the author indulges his inclinations at the expense of theoretical unity and logical consistency. In general, he condemns intervention and preemption; yet he judges Israel’s repeated incursions into neighboring states, and the Israeli preemption of 1967, to have been just or at least justified. Nuclear deterrence |S wrong, he argues, because it threatens noncombatants and because nuclear operations would entail levels °i casualties he considers to be out of ah proportion to possible objectives. Yet, nuclear deterrence, in Walzer’s view, is justifiable in terms of what it may prevent. Thus Walzer concludes that although deterrence is criminal, |C may be the best we can do for the time being. Counter-guerrilla warfare is wrong, he pronounces, and guerrilla warfare right. The rationale: the guerrilla war for national liberation represents the just goal of independent political identity; if such an urge has grown to the point that a government is engaged in a guerrilla war, and not merely in ordinary policing of disorder and crime, then the guerrillas must have considerable popular support and they are therefore in the right, h should be evident that such reasoning is open to argument.
I
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Despite its difficulties, Walzer s book deserves wide attention from American military officers. Recent experience in Vietnam surely confirms that the American people are both concerned and uncertain about the issues Walzer raises concerning the justice of war’s purposes and methods. Ic confirms as well that such uncertainty limits the usefulness of military approaches to the problems of national security and interest. By arguing that there is such a thing as just war, and by setting out what he thinks characterizes it, Walzer has begun a discussion in which the military, the government, and the populace of this country have large common interests-
History of the
Confederate States Navy
by J. Thomas Scharf
Confederate States Navy
A unique and controversial volume, long out-ofprint, written some twenty years after the close of the Civil War. This history is based on research and interviews with Confederate naval officers and is supplemented by the author's own first-hand, wartime observations. He proposes and defends the theory that, without the aid and assistance of the United States Navy, the Union could not have won a war in which their ground forces were hopelessly outclassed. A remarkable history which reads like an exciting adventure story.
1977/824 pages/illustrated/appendices/index
List price: $5.98 Member's price: $4.75 A Naval Institute Book Selection
Add $1.00 to each order for postage and handling. (Please use book order form in Books of Interest to the Professional section)
J. Thomas Sharf
COMBINED OPERATIONS in the Civil War
lM
COMBINED
OPERATIONS
in the Civil War
By Rowena Reed
This is the first full study of the role of the combined opeartions of the Army and Navy in the Union’s prosecution of the American Civil War. The author has put forth a significant reinterpretation of that conflict, an innovative and occasionally iconoclastic view, which is impressively supported and documented. It is Dr. Reed’s contention that only General George B. McClellan formulated a truly comprehensive strategy for defeating the Confederacy. She further claims that McClellan’s plan, which relied heavily on the use of combined operations, would have ended the war very quickly—perhaps within a year. Although controversial, this book will inspire the admiration of students of this complex war because of the author’s masterful grasp of the subject and her impeccable scholarship.
1978/325 pages/photos and maps
List price: $16.95 Member’s price: $13.55
Add $1.00 to each order for postage and handling.
(Please use book order form in Books of Interest to the Professional section.)
“j
A NAVAL INSTITUTE PRESS BOOK
Compiled by Professor Jack Sweetman, Associate Editor
naval affairs
2d Dutton’s Navigation & Piloting
Dbert S. Maloney. Annapolis, Md.: Naval Institute Press, 1978. 939 pp. Illus. Maps. Append. Ind. $21.95 ($17.55).
Th i
ne 13th edition of this standard inference—first prepared by Commander ®enjamin Dutton in 1926 for the instruc- t'0n of midshipmen at the U. S. Naval Academy—has been extensively revised and updated. One of the few truly indispensable works for the maritime navigator, lt ls designed to meet the needs of either Seagoing or coastal voyaging.
Sd The Ships and Aircraft of the U. S. Fleet
Norman Polmar. Annapolis, Md.: Naval Institute press 1978 350 Wus. Ind $ 18.95 (*15.15).
Fhe definitive guide to the ships and air- *‘raft of the U. S. Navy (as well as the Uterine Corps, Naval Reserve Force, Coast
Uard, Military Sealift Command, and the ational Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) appears in a newly revised, bh edition, illustrated by over 1,000 Photographs. Former editor of the U. S. Actions of Jane's Fighting Ships, Mr. Pol- I**ar is an internationally recognized au- i °rity on the U. S. and Soviet fleets.
Th
e Jennifer Project
W. Burleson. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: ^ntice-Hall, 1977. 179 pp- Illus. Map. Ind. $8-95 ($8.06).
Th
e salvage by the Central Intelligence fiency (and the Hughes organization) of a
Soviet “Golf’-class submarine from 17,500 feet beneath the surface of the Pacific—project “Jennifer”—in May 1974 was the intelligence coup of the decade. The story of the operation is outlined in a fast-paced narrative.
HI U.S. Naval Fighters
Lloyd S. Jones. Fallbrook, Ca.: Aero Publishers,
1977. 352 pp. Illus. $14.95 ($11.95).
All Navy and Marine Corps fighters from 1922 to present, including experimental designs, are described in chronological order. The illustrations include 91 three- view drawings and over 300 photographs.
MARITIME AFFAIRS
Hard Aground: The Story of the Argo
Merchant Oil Spill
Ron Winslow. New York: W.W. Norton,
1978. 286 pp. Illus. Map. $10.95 ($9-86).
The Liberian tanker Argo Merchant, laden with 7.6 million gallons of industrial oil, ran aground southeast of Nantucket Island in the early morning of 15 December 1976. Despite heroic efforts to refloat her by the U. S. Coast Guard Atlantic Strike Team, she broke up six days later, producing the largest coastal oil spill in American history. Mr. Winslow is a reporter who covered the maritime disaster for the Providence Journal.
Sailing Ships
Attilio Cucari. Chicago: Rand McNally, 1978. 318 pp. Illus. Map. Bib. Ind. $6.95 paper.
The evolution of the sailing ship, from the cogs of the Middle Ages to the sail training ships today, is described in a pictorial history first published in Italy in 1976. In addition to the treatment of ship types, there are chapters on the principles of sail power, naval artillery, flags, and famous voyages. The illustrations consist of 171 exquisite color renderings by Guido Canes- trari and 200 line drawings.
Tanker Operations: A Handbook for the Ship’s Officer
G.S. Marton. Cambridge, Md.: Cornell Maritime Press, 1978. 207 pp. Illus. Map.
Bib. Ind. $10.00 ($9.00).
The basic problems of tanker operations are covered in a straightforward guide designed for the new ship’s officer. The author, a 1969 graduate of the California Maritime Academy, has had eight years’
experience as a deck officer, mainly aboard tankers.
We’ll Deliver: Early History of the United States Merchant Marine Academy, 1938-1956
C. Bradford Mitchell. Kings Point, N.Y.: U.S. Merchant Marine Academy Alumni Association,
1977. 253 pp. Illus. Ind. $12.00.
An illustrated history traces the U. S. Merchant Marine Academy at Kings Point, New York, from its foundation in March 1938 to the passage of the Permanency Bill, which assured its existence, in February 1956.
MILITARY AFFAIRS Educational Guide to U. S. Service & Maritime Academies
Gene Gurney and Brian Sheehan. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1978. 300 pp. Illus. Append. Ind. $14.95 ($13.46).
A guide prepared for prospective students, parents, and counselors describes the programs and admissions procedures of the five federal service academies (Army, Navy, Air Force, Coast Guard, and Merchant Marine) and the six state maritime academies (California, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, New York, and Texas).
Fighter: The True Story of the Battle of Britain
Len Deighton. New York: Knopf, 1978. 262 pp. Illus. Maps. Bib. Ind. $12.50 ($11.25).
Len Deighton is best known as the author of novels including The Ipcress File and Funeral in Berlin. In this book, he applies his literary skills to recreate one of the great historical dramas of the 20th century: the battle fought in the skies over southern England in August and September 1940, the outcome of which assured that Hitler’s plans for a cross-channel invasion would remain a might-have-been. The result, as well researched as it is written, is a fascinating account of those fateful days.
The German Army, 1933-1945: Its Political and Military Failure
Matthew Cooper, New York: Stein & Day,
1978. 598 pp. Illus. Maps. Append. Bib. Ind. $17.95 ($16.16).
The reasons for the defeat of the German Army in World War II are analyzed in a major revisionist study which focuses on the relationship between Hitler and his generals, and the strategic development of the army itself. The author contends that the generals, though innocent of political responsibility for the rise of Hitler, abdicated their military responsibility by allowing him to pervert German strategy; and that the claim that the German Army pursued a revolutionary new form of warfare, the Blitzkrieg, is a myth.
Messerschmitt Bf 109 at War
Armand van Ishoven. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1977. 160 pp. IIlus. $12.50.
The career of the Messerschmitt 109, the most famous German fighter aircraft of World War II, is traced in an exceptionally well-executed pictorial. Many of the illustrations have never been published before.
The War Lords
A.J.P. Taylor. New York: Atheneum, 1978. 189 pp. IIlus. Ind. $10.00 ($9.00).
One of the most distinguished living historians limns incisive pen portraits of the five leading personalities of World War II: Mussolini, Hitler, Churchill, Stalin, and Roosevelt. Not everyone will agree with the judgments he passes, but everyone will find them provocative.
Who Was Who in World War II
John Keegan, Editor. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1978. 224 pp. IIlus. $14.95 ($13.46).
More than 500 leading Allied and Axis personalities of World War II are listed in this well-illustrated, biographical dictionary. John Keegan, author of the bestselling Face of Battle, is Senior Lecturer in Military History at the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst.
GENERAL
The Illustrated Pepys: Extracts from the Diary
Selected and edited by Robert Latham.
Berkeley, Ca.: University of California, 1978. 240 pp. IIlus. Map. Ind. $15.95.
As clerk of the British Admiralty during the Restoration, Samuel Pepys helped lay the foundation of modern naval administration. As a diarist, he produced one of the classics of English literature. This richly illustrated abridgment contains approximately one-twelfth of the original diary. The entries selected for inclusion deal primarily with Pepys’ personal life.
REPRINTS
Two more titles are now available in the Bantam War Books series described in the August 1978 Proceedings:
Brazen Chariots: An Account of Tank Warfare in the Western Desert, November-December 1941 Major Robert Crisp, DSO, MC. New York: Bantam Books, 1978. 233 PP- Ulus. Maps. $1.95 paper.
Acclaimed at the time of its original publication in I960 as one of the finest personal narratives of World War II, this brilliant memoir relates the experiences of a British squadron commander in the classic tank battles between the Eighth Army and the German Africa Korps.
Reach for the Sky: The Story of Douglas Bader, Legless Ace of the Battle of Britain
Paul Brickhill. New York: Bantam Books, 1978. 338 pp. IIlus. Map. $1.95 paper.
Douglas Bader lost both legs in a flyin£ accident in the 1930s. Refusing to be disabled, Bader fought his way back to fly>n8 status and became one of the leading aces of the Battle of Britain, scoring 22 confirmed victories before he was shot down and captured over occupied France. As a POW he remained indomitable as ever, planning several escapes (one of which was briefly successful) and causing his captors maximum grief. His biography is a tribute to the human spirit.
BOOK ORDER SERVICE
All prices enclosed by parentheses are mem ber prices. Members may order most books 0 other publishers through rhe Naval Institute ar a 10% discount off list price. (Prices quoted >n this column are subject ro change and will he reflected in our billing.) The postage and han dling fee for each such special order book of a United States publisher will be $1.00; the lee for a book from a foreign publisher will he $1.50. When air mail or other special handling is requested, actual postage and handling cos^ will be billed to the member. Books marke iTj are Naval Institute Press Books. Book* marked Qare Naval Institute Book Selections- Please use the order blank in this section.