On Seas of Glory: Heroic Men, Great Ships, and Epic Battles of the American Navy
John F. Lehman. New York: Free Press, 2001. 432 pp. Maps. Photos. Index. $35.00 ($31.50).
Reviewed by Commander Ward Carroll, U.S. Navy
Where have you gone, John Lehman? A Navy turns its lonely eyes to you ....
On Seas of Glory is an ambitious project, but those who either have served under or know John Lehman recognize that he is a man who never has shied away from ambitious projects, even those that, at a glance, he might be wholly unqualified to undertake. Historians generally like their history served up within their caste, and this book is certain to cause a stir in their staid environs.
Or maybe not. On Seas of Glory is presented so unashamedly and with such moxie—the same dynamic the author brought to his job as Secretary of the Navy—that even the most erudite among naval historians might be forced to yield to his will. One fact is inarguable: John Lehman brings a passion to his efforts. And in a time of soulless rubber-stamping by public officials and of the elite seeking office only after performing the utilitarian calculus that has become de rigueur for the what's-in-it-for-me generation, it is refreshing to see that the man actually cared (and continues to care) about the business for which he was responsible. The dedication, a quote from Alfred Thayer Mahan, accurately sets the tone of the book: "The Navy ... acts on an element strange to most writers, as its members have been a strange race apart, without prophets of their own, neither themselves nor their calling understood." With that, On Seas of Glory sets out to explain why the Navy has a heritage of iconoclasm. John Lehman always has loved rebels—which is what drew him to naval aviation—and his affinity for risk takers is evident throughout this book.
The book does suffer a bit from its frame of reference. Where the Secretary sits is where he stands—but again, the author does not pretend otherwise. He is bullish about his family's place in history, so bullish that it really does not seem prohibitively nepotistic. Can he be faulted for loving his father? And vignettes such as his explanation for why he made it a point to use the Decatur House to entertain when he was Secretary of the Navy come off as the insights of a friend rather than the smug jabs of a self-important polemic.
Yes, there are holes and inconsistencies: the Battle of the Coral Sea never is mentioned but the mid-1980s episodic skirmishes with Libya get nearly 13 pages; Desert Storm gets only two pages. Some facts are offered up without context. For instance, the Battle of Santiago is mentioned during the discussion of Admiral George Dewey at Manila without explanation. But On Seas of Glory is like a comfortable pair of jeans—pants you would wear even if they had a hole or two just because they feel so good. Quite frankly, after reading On Seas of Glory, I found myself wondering what we have been apologizing for over the past decade.
In the wake of the USS Cole (DDG67) tragedy I wrote in the December 2000 Proceedings an article that petitioned naval professionals not to become historians but to understand where history fits. In that spirit, On Seas of Glory is a must read. And as the author suggests at the end of the book, another bit of evidence explaining his goal, reading this book might lead previously disinterested parties to Samuel Eliot Morison and E. B. Potter.
An F-14 flight officer serving at the U.S. Naval Academy, Commander Carroll wrote Punk's War, a novel published by the Naval Institute Press in 2001.
An Ocean in Common: American Naval Officers, Scientists, and the Ocean Environment
Gary E. Weir. College Station, TX: Texas A&M University Press, 2001. 404 pp. Photos. Notes. Bib. Index. $44.95 ($42.70).
Reviewed by Arthur G. Gaines Jr.
The history of oceanography is a story of strong intellects and personalities, dramatic developments in technology, and aperiodic peaks of government and private support. Intertwined in this story are the quests for knowledge, geographical discovery, fisheries exploitation and management, the needs of maritime commerce and navigation, and national naval defense. National prestige and geopolitics show their faces as well.
In 1980, Mary Sears and Daniel Merriman produced the proceedings of the Third International Congress on the History of Oceanography, held in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. Their book (Oceanography: The Past [New York: Springer-Verlag]) in 69 papers gives a comprehensive sampling of topics in ocean science history. The volume stands as a major reference on the history of oceanography, many chapters having been authored by practitioners of this infant science. Current players in the field of oceanography would do well to glance through the pages of this volume.
In An Ocean in Common, naval historian Gary Weir provides a history of naval support of oceanography, roughly from 1920 to 1965. He focuses on research areas and events nearly absent from the Sears-Merriman volume, but ones that everyone involved in ocean sciences would acknowledge have significantly shaped the emphasis of oceanography over the past half century. Primarily these are the fields surrounding the science and technology of ocean acoustics.
The author conducts a microscopic examination of extensive primary references, including archived personal documents of major players. The presentation is lightened and animated by numerous firsthand discussions with surviving scientists, such as Allyn Vine, and two galleries of black-and-white photos. In this manner the author reconstructs the lacework of communications and events comprising major events in naval ocean science and technology. His interest is in how the different cultures of the Navy and academia came to interact based on personalities, interrelationships, and institutions in a historical context forced by larger events. He is keenly aware of the role of technology in steering the direction of the interactions and the resulting science.
Some of the topics treated include: the unsuccessful Haynes Initiative (19231926) to attract government support to ocean science; the solicitation of private monies to found the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in 1930; the development of acoustic science and technology at Woods Hole before World War II; and the key role this area of knowledge played in fostering cooperative programs between academe and the Navy after Pearl Harbor. For the difficult transition years following World War II, topics include: Operation Crossroads (studies at Bikini surrounding the testing of two atomic weapons); the formation, growth, and modus operandi of the Office of Naval Research; and independent postwar cruises revealing startling results on ocean acoustics. As the Cold War began to define itself, there was a remerging of the Navy with academic ocean institutions, a dynamic revealed in chapters on the Nobska Project, the creation of the Navy deep-submergence program with the submersible Trieste, the tragic loss of the submarine Thresher (SSN-593), and the development of research submersibles.
The preface describes an ever-closer relationship between the Navy and academic scientists. It is implied that a lasting working relationship now has been achieved. Although that would be a convenient way of summarizing the book, An Ocean in Common does not address developments following the Cold War and cannot really predict the future. The value of this book is the new insights it provides into people and events we thought we knew well, rather than as a harbinger of good funding news to oceanographers.
Dr. Gaines is oceanographer emeritus with the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.
Virtuous War: Mapping the Military-Industrial-MediaEntertainment Network
James Der Derian. Boulder, CO: Westview, 2001. 224 pp. Illus. Notes. Index. $26.00 ($23.40).
Reviewed by Commander Jeff Huber, U.S. Navy (Retired)
Virtuous War opens with a quote from President Dwight D. Eisenhower's farewell address: "We must guard against the acquisition of unwanted influence . . . by the military-industrial complex [or] public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite."
In his guided tour through military exercises, demonstrations, and operations, author James Der Derian asserts that the military-industrial complex has mutated into a behemoth techno-tail that wags the dogs of war. He reveals a Pax Americana security environment in which the news media drive policy and strategy, military acquisition programs race to achieve the sci-fi possibilities portrayed in popular films, and war itself is reality-based family room entertainment. Information travels at the speed of light, driving decision speed to warp velocities.
The U.S. military prepares for war on information-age systems developed from amusement park and movie technologies. Everything in the simulations is real—except for the bloodshed, which occurs only by accident (the accidents are not programmed: they happen on their own). In simulated war, accidental bloodshed is not real because it did not "really" happen. Ultimately, the nature of "virtual" war turns "real" war into a loosely scripted event that looks as bloodless on television as it does in the simulation.
Der Derian asks, "Can the strategic effects of digitized means predetermine policy intentions?"
He quotes Secretary of State Colin Powell from his Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff days. "I'm running out of demons," General Powell complained. "I'm down to Kim II-Sung and Castro." In light of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's emphasis on "new" security threats, Der Derian begs the question: are we inventing new demons to justify continued support of the military-industrialmedia-entertainment network?
Virtuous War is derivative of much of Der Derian's earlier writing on security affairs in the cyber age. His body of published work and academic credentials are impressive (view them online at www. brown.edu/Departments/Watson_Institute/Bios/jdd.html).
Military members who have suffered through the media wars of the past ten years or so will dig Der Derian's hip disdain of the military's public affairs hyperbole. In one of my favorite passages, he witnesses a demonstration of the Joint Simulation System, which he describes as "the endgame of all war games, the macro-mega-meta-simulation of the twenty-first century. Or so they said." Of a reception associated with the demonstration he comments, "The closest thing to investigative reporting appear[ed] to be a vying for stock tips."
On the other hand, much of the author's prose steps well over the line between "dumbing down" to reach a popular audience and simple failure to communicate, as in this paragraph:
Take a look at the principal necroses. Realism has built a life out of the transformation of fictions, like the immutability of human nature and the apodictic threat of anarchy, into facticity . . . realism comes to resemble nothing so much as the un-dead, a perverse mimesis of the living other, haunting international politics through the objectification of power, the fetishization of weaponry, the idealization of the state, and the virtualization of violence and the globalization of the new media.
Reading this put me into an apodictic necrosis that sent me reaching for my 40pound dictionary and a large bottle of aspirin. And I would like to think that I never once fetishized my weapon on an un-dead living other, but who knows?
Do not let any of this put you off from Virtuous War, though. It is an important book, and a relevant one, especially given the current controversy over the administration's struggle to transform and finance a military suited to the 21st century. Besides, even Reagan Republicans are wise, on occasion, to think like Ike.
A former naval aviator, Commander Huber is a frequent contributor to Proceedings and recently retired from the Navy. He now is a freelance writer.