Naval Strategy and Operations in Narrow Seas
Milan N. Vego. Portland, OR: Frank Cass, 1999. 345 pp. Maps. Notes. Bib. Index. $59.50. ($56.52).
Reviewed by Captain Sam Tangredi, U.S. Navy
"A blue water navy operating in a narrow sea should not use surface combatants larger than 2,000 tons." That statement is a primary conclusion of this historical study of combat operations in the blue side of the littoral. It also is this book's most profound challenge to the U.S. Navy.
Milan Vego is well known to Proceedings readers as a published authority on the naval doctrine of the Warsaw Pact, expertise he gained in the communistera Yugoslav Navy prior to his defection to the West. While the Soviet Union built a blue-ocean navy, the other Warsaw Pact states focused on operating small navies in the narrow seas of the European flanks. Thus, it is natural for Vego to combine his experience and scholarly study into what can be considered the definitive work on narrow-seas naval strategy.
The volume begins with a discussion of the "factor of space" that makes narrow-seas operations quite different from blue-water combat. Not only do the littorals contain choke points that can be mined, blocked by quiet diesel subs, and menaced by land-based cruise missiles and fast patrol craft, many narrow seas also are small enough to increase greatly the value and lethality of land-based tactical aviation in naval combat. Short distances give the advantage to speed over sustainability, since regional ports and bases often are close at hand. Much of this unique environment remains alien to blue-water navies.
Vego provides a thorough discussion of the physical elements of narrow seas, such as configuration, character of the coast, landform, oceanography, climate and rivers, and their effects on weapons and naval systems. He then turns to strategic and tactical objectives, which are dictated by geographic position and the proximity of cities, bases, and land armies. Throughout, he provides continuous historical examples: World War I in the Mediterranean and Baltic Seas; World War II in the Mediterranean, Black, and Baltic Seas and the South Pacific; and even the various Persian Gulf wars.
As the author makes clear, the methods of securing, exercising, and contesting command of narrow seas are significantly different than sea control or denial in blue water. The one great advantage blue-water forces have is their ability to blockade an entire region by preventing access to the ocean—but that advantage is limited when the objective is to get in rather than break out. To both blockade and penetrate requires a balanced fleet, one that includes coastal diesel-electric submarines, fast missile-firing boats, seagoing attack helicopters, effective mine-detonating systems, and large numbers of light, multipurpose platforms—none of which currently exist in the U.S. inventory.
The U.S. Navy's combat experience with narrow-sea operations is mostly in its past: PT boats in the Solomons in World War II; gunboats on the Mississippi in the Civil War; or PBRs on the Mekong in Vietnam. During the Cold War, however, we generally let our allies specialize in that sort of thing, which is why most of the specialized monographs and articles Vego cites as sources happen to be written in German. Embarrassingly enough, the majority of American works on the topic are published by either the Army War College or Air Force contractors.
Naval Strategy and Operations in the Narrow Seas is unique in littoral warfare literature because it is not written from an amphibious operations/Marine Corps perspective. By both merit and default it now is the very best published study of its type. I hope Vego's contentions succeed in challenging all serving naval professionals to think and write about what we plan to do in littoral waters.
The Secret War Against Hanoi: Kennedy and Johnson's Use of Spies, Saboteurs, and Covert Warriors in North Vietnam
Richard H. Schultz, Jr. New York: Harper Collins, 1999. 368 pp. Photos. Notes. Bib. Index. $27.50 ($24.75).
Reviewed by Mark Gatlin
This is the first political/administrative history of the top-secret special operations forces organized by the CIA and Military Assistance Command during the Vietnam War referred to as SOG—short for Studies and Observation Group. Sadly, this study is akin to what some said of the Vietnam War: "Ain't great but it's the best we've got."
Richard Schultz, professor of international politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, does provide the most complete picture yet of the origins, organization, and administration of SOG—composed of hand-picked, mostly enlisted Army Special Forces, some Navy SEALS and Marines, and thousands of Montagnard and Nung tribesmen. From 1961 to 1972, SOG conducted a broad range of air, sea, and land missions in order to recon, call in air strikes, insert agents, hit and run, and generally harass the North Vietnamese Army at home—and especially in its sanctuaries in Laos and Cambodia along the Ho Chi Minh Trail. The stories of the SOG teams and their missions are legendary, but the price was catastrophic. The mission casualty rate for cross-border recon teams reached 50% by 1967. In ten years, 300 Americans were lost, at least a quarter of whom are believed to be MIAs—none of whom have returned.
But this is not operational history. SOG's incredible bravery under fire can be found in John Plaster's riveting SOG: The Secret Wars of America's Commandos in Vietnam (Simon & Schuster, 1997). Schultz appears to have struggled with what kind of book to write; the uneven scholarship and lapses into an astonishing flippancy and clear agenda suggest he (understandably) fell in love with his subjects. To his credit, Schultz conducted dozens of interviews with SOG commanders and was able to get some of the few remaining secret documents declassified (but not the treasure trove he promises). More important, he asks the question most accounts of special operations do not: What role did special operations play in the success or failure of the war? Was SOG a "kind of a sideshow," as General William C. Westmoreland says, or a strategic asset that was stymied by politically timid, egotistical administration officials and conventional military advisors with strong biases against special operations?
It is a fascinating and heartbreaking story. The problem is that it is a fairly short and not entirely new story. Despite making some rather bold claims of having liberated SOG from "the shroud of secrecy," many of these secrets have been told before. Partly owing to a dizzyingly time-tripping, thematic organization and to reporting every word of interviewees who have similar tales of woe, the result is a mantra cum lecture and—ironically—an unintended litany of excuses for SOG's relative ineffectiveness.
As for lessons learned, Schultz offers no specific prescriptions for using covert action forces. What is clear from the book is that effective covert action campaigns require a clear commitment by an administration and military leadership that can stomach the political risks and human toll of these operations.
The Sword and the Shield: The Mitrokhin Archive and the Secret History of the KGB
Christopher Andrew and Vasili Mitrokhin. New York: Basic Books, 1999. 700 pp. Photos. Appendices. Notes. Bib. Index. $32.50 ($29.25).
Reviewed by R. James Woolsey
In 1956, in the aftermath of Nikita Khrushchev's famous attack on Josef Stalin at the Twentieth Party Congress, a young KGB officer became too outspoken for his own good, and was transferred from operations to the archives.
The KGB never made a more disastrous personnel assignment. In 1972, when the First Chief (Foreign Intelligence) Directorate was moved to posh new quarters outside Moscow, the archivist, Vasili Mitrokhin, was able to begin a remarkable 13-year intelligence operation of his own. As he supervised the transfer of the archives, Mitrokhin reviewed them, took notes, smuggled the notes out in his clothing, and hid them in containers beneath the floor of his dacha. British Intelligence ex-filtrated him and six cases of notes in 1992. The FBI calls it "the most complete and extensive intelligence ever received from any source."
This remarkable book, on which Mitrokhin cooperated with Cambridge professor Christopher Andrew (probably the world's leading authority on intelligence history), is the closest we ever will come to a full and objective history of the KGB from 1918 to 1985. Andrew is a professional, and he lets the archives tell the story without gloss and with only occasional measured speculation about what might have occurred but was not reflected in the archives from which Mitrokhin drew his information.
One theme is the KGB's maniacal focus on killing and imprisoning domestic dissidents and, especially in the early days, killing opponents of the regime outside the USSR. Indeed, the institution's single-minded paranoia about anyone even remotely associated with a rival world view—Troskyite, Christian, whatever—had a good deal to do with its discounting the reports of some of its best agents and missing Adolf Hitler's planned attack in 1941. A particularly dark chapter details the KGB's infiltration and domination of the Russian Orthodox Church during these 60-plus years. Through the Russian Orthodox (i.e., KGB) representatives, it also essentially controlled the World Council of Churches.
In its war against the "main" adversary, the United States, the KGB was phenomenally successful in the 1930s and 1940s. But as we began to appreciate the USSR's totalitarian character and the American party came to be infiltrated by the FBI, the KGB began to have serious problems penetrating the U.S. government. Scientific and technical intelligence was another matter. Here the KGB's successes were legion—the problem was that the sclerotic Soviet economy could not produce anything quickly and efficiently even with stolen first-rate technology.
It's all here—the planted lies about the CIA being involved in the Kennedy assassination, and the invented allegations that the United States plotted the AIDS epidemic. And no Westerner who spied for the KGB before 1985 can rest easy.
Read it and weep, Mr. Putin. And think again about erecting those statues to Dzerzhinsky and Andropov. Thanks to Mitrokhin, the rest of us have available line after line of illuminating graffiti.