The Finishing School: Earning the Navy Seal Trident
Dick Couch. New York: Crown, 2004. 288 pp. Photos. $25.00.
Reviewed by Jed Bobbin
It always is amusing to listen to politicians in a campaign year. Those who spend most of their time denigrating or just plain ignoring the military talk about how often they salute the "band of brothers," the profession and brotherhood of arms. In truth, most politicians know little about the military and what it has to do to be ready to defend the United States. Before 11 September 2001, there were many who said we did not need so many different special forces. More than once, in my short and undistinguished Pentagon career, I had congressional staffers argue with me, insisting that, oh, certainly we need the Green Berets or the SEALs, but surely not both. I only wish I had had copies of Dick Couch's new book to give to each of the Capitol Hill know-it-alls. It paints a vivid picture of what the SEALs train to do, and why they are unique.
Among the profession of arms there are many who have fought together, trained together, and died for their nation and for each other. Within that profession there are other elites, and as this new book explains, the world of the Navy SEALs is not only a brotherhood of arms in the best sense, it is also like a family. Couch has been there and done that. A former SEAL, he writes as only a member of that very elite community can. In The Finishing School, he takes us into the world of SQT-SEAL qualification training—the final training and tests for those who already have gone through BUD/S, the 30week basic indoctrination to naval special warfare that weeds out most of those who lack the heart or stamina for the mission. In SQT (which the SEALs call "Pain 101") the legacy of warrior skills and mental strength left by Draper Kauffman-father of the Navy frogmen in World War II-continues.
Having succeeded in passing the enormous challenges of BUD/S, prospective SEALs are ready to learn the skills they need to join a SEAL platoon, the basic element in which SEALs deploy to fight. SQT is a greater and different challenge. Its principal purpose is to use the lessons of the battlefield to teach the newcomers so the price their predecessors paid in blood and sweat will not have to be paid again. The SQT students learn everything from combat swimming to close-quarters defense, including the "spring stance" and "power point position." They learn and literally bond with their principal weapons, learn demolition, and spend hour after hour running, jumping, swimming, and parachuting into and out of objectives.
SQT strives to create special forces warriors who not only are enormously capable fighters, but also have the judgment to know when to use force properly. Couch shows how the instructors are constantly testing and developing the trainees' skills and judgment. To graduate from SQT means a man has learned the skills of the warrior at a level achieved by very few in the world. And it means he can be trusted to function within the rules of engagement and the laws of war.
Couch's last chapter is devoted to the new SEAL squadron concept (a combination of about six SEAL platoons with SEAL delivery vehicle units and nonSEAL assets such as explosive ordnance disposal units), which was created out of the needs of the war against terrorism. The SEALs, like the other special forces units, are rising to meet the expanding demands on them from commanders who only a few years previously looked at them as hot dogs who would get in trouble and have to be rescued. Now the shoe is on the other foot, and it is the SEALsas well as Army Special Forces, Marine Recon, and Air Force Special Tactics units—who are called on more and more to use their inherent flexibility to do things other forces cannot.
The Finishing School is something all commanders and congressmen should read. The better they understand what these amazing men and their counterparts in the other services can do, the sooner we can win the war on terrorism.
Mr. Babbin served as a Deputy Under secretary of Defense in the first Bush administration. He is a contributing editor to The American Spectator. He also is the author of Legacy of Valor (Bishop Aukland, UK: Pentland, 2000), a novel about the SEALs, and the forthcoming Inside the Asylum: Why the UN and Old Europe Are Worse Than You Think.
The Pentagon's New Map: War and Peace in the Twenty-First Century
Thomas P. M. Barnett. New York: G. P. Putnam & Sons, 2004. 392 pp. Maps. Index. Notes. Bib. $26.95.
Reviewed by Captain Robert B. Brannon, U.S. Navy
Thomas Barnett is a masterful storyteller and insightful futurist. In this book, he transports his readers from the relative comfort zones of traditional security into a world of new dimensions. Using devices such as scenario planning and systems integration, Barnett describes conditions that dominate the post-2001 security environment. The Pentagon's "new map" looks similar to the old one in that it reflects the same images of nations, states, and geographic borders—but that is where the similarities end. The new world, as Barnett sees it, is one best described by what he calls the "Functioning Core" and the "Non-Integrating Gap."
The core is the part of the world that is connected and "wired" through collective security, integrated economics, and the positive aspects of globalization. The gap is everything else, nonintegrated and disfranchised from the rest. The two regions are related through four flows: the movement of people from the gap to the core, the movement of energy from the gap to the core, the movement of money from the old core to the new core, and the exporting of security that only the United States can provide to the gap. These four flows (people, energy, investments, and security) become crucial not merely to preserving the core, but also to bridging the two in such a way that the core is made larger while the gap is reduced in size. Barnett's central thesis is aimed at shrinking the gap.
In the connected world, there is less reason to make war or threaten the economic well-being of any other core nation in a substantive way because of the associated negative consequences. In the gap, there is constant cause for alarm because these nations are left out, forced to compete on a playing field that is decidedly not level, and made to fight for every advantage. Barnett's prescription for security centers on making the gap more integrated with the core. Because rules govern international relations and influence relationships, "rule-sets" help to explain the various factors that have an impact on rebalancing the world as we know it. He suggests that new ordering principles are needed to reestablish priorities in favor of a better sense of balance. In a world defined by chaotic influences, especially between the core and the gap, sometimes flows can become so imbalanced that new threats are created.
Barnett concludes by suggesting a new strategy for the United States as the de facto Leviathan in this new world. There are three basic goals: nurture security relations across the core by maintaining and expanding alliances; work bilaterally with states located at the seams between the core and the gap and multilaterally with the core as a whole, while discretely protecting the core from the gap's most destabilizing flows (terrorism, drugs, and pandemic diseases); and make a commitment to reduce the gap by continuing to export security to its greatest trouble spots, while integrating countries that are economic success stories as quickly as possible. The author suggests a ten-step program for accomplishing this strategy. Replete with inspired ideas about how to make the world safer, this list alone is reason enough to read the book.
The Pentagon's New Map is highly readable. Barnett does not waste time debunking old myths and theoretical constructs that no longer serve to explain international relations and current events. He simply spins a narrative that draws the reader ever closer into a kind of literary vortex devoid of familiar handholds and safety nets. Almost immediately, the reader feels slightly off balance. It may be that the author wants his readers in precisely that position of disequilibria, the better to appreciate his perspective.
The real value of this work lies not so much in the author's out-of-the-box style, or because it suggests a very new and different way of looking at the world. Its value lies in what the author's thesis says about the future of warfare. Whether or not you agree with Thomas Barnett's ideas, his book likely will change the way you think about security in the modern world-especially if you are a warrior.
Captain Brannon is the Chief of Naval Operations Chair and instructor of national security strategy at the National War College.
Arab-Israeli Crisis and War, 1967: Volume XIX in Foreign Relations of the United States, 1964-1968
Harriet Dashiell Schwar and Edward C. Keefer, eds. Washington, DC: Department of State, 2004. 1,087 pp. Index. $69.00.
Reviewed by Norman Polmar
Since 1861, the Department of State has published almost 400 volumes of documents related to U.S. foreign relations. The latest—covering 1967—is one of the most comprehensive and controversial. It addresses the Arab-Israeli War of 1967 (the so-called Six Day War) and, to a considerable extent, the Israeli attack on the spy ship USS Liberty (AGTR-5). In his preface, Dr. Marc Susser, the historian of the State Department, writes, "The Office of the Historian is confident, on the basis of the research conducted in preparing this volume and as a result of the declassification review process . . . that the documentation and editorial notes presented here provide an accurate account of U.S. policy toward the Middle East immediately before, during, and after the 1967 Arab-Israeli War."
As evidenced by shouts and demands from spectators at the State Department conference releasing the volume in January 2004, however, the debate over whether the Israeli attack against the Liberty was intentional continues. For most people, this volume should answer any remaining questions.
The editors begin the volume with a telegram from the U.S. embassy in Israel, dated 15 May 1967, telling of reports of Egyptian troop concentrations in the Suez Canal area that blocked normal traffic and were being interpreted in Israel as Egyptian solidarity with Syria. The telegram also states the Israelis said none of their troops were on the Egyptian or Syrian borders, which agreed with U.S. attache reports. The book ends with U.N. Security Council Resolution 242 (on 22 November 1967), which called for Israeli withdrawal from occupied territories and termination of conflict.
For many Americans, the most significant documents are those that address the Liberty incident. These papers originated with the White House, Pentagon, CIA headquarters at Langley, the U.S. defense attache office in Israel, and a U.S. Navy EC-121 aircraft that intercepted Israeli radio communications to and from helicopters dispatched to determine the identity of the ship after the attack.
The volume provides what must be considered the definitive U.S. government accounts and opinions of the attack on the Liberty based on: statements by various government officials and agencies maintaining the attack was one of mistaken identity (there are no opinions that the attack was intentional); information on the aircraft launched from the carriers USS Saratoga (CVA-60) and USS America (CVA-66) to defend the Liberty; a detailed chronology of the attack, providing a minute-by-minute account; and the lengthy transcript of the EC-121 intercept of the communications between the Israeli helicopters and their controllers. One of the key transmissions to the helicopters after they had been told there were survivors in the water and to rescue them reads: "Pay attention: if any of them [survivors] are speaking, and if they are speaking Arabic, you take them to el Arish. If they are speaking English, not Egyptian, you take them to Lod [an airport near Tel Aviv]. Is this clear?" Again and again, ground controllers told the helicopters to ascertain the identity of the ship.
The U.S. documents are highly critical of the Israelis for not making certain of the ship's identity before attacking, for estimating the Liberty to be moving at 30 knots, and for a policy of automatically attacking any high-speed ship not determined to be Israeli. Although the documents, especially a lengthy telegram from the U.S. defense attache to the White House, explain how these situations came about, the bottom line is that Israeli "overeagerness" in a combat environment was a major contributor to the tragedy.
I know of only one pertinent document that does not appear in the volume. On 8 June 1967 (the day of the attack), the U.S. embassy sent a message to the secretary of State quoting the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) intelligence chief: "The principal task of the IDF now was to exploit its success. There still remained the Syrian problem and perhaps it would be necessary to give Syria a blow to get more 'elbow room.'" Many Liberty conspiracy theorists have pointed to the Israelis attempting to keep preparations to attack Syria a secret as the reason for the attack. That information, however, was made available on the day of the attack to both the U.S. government and the public.
Arab-Israeli Crisis and War is an important and well-produced book. It is highly recommended.
Mr. Polmar is a columnist for Proceedings and Naval History. He is the author of numerous books on naval, military, and intelligence issues.