DEFCON-2: Standing on the Brink of Nuclear War During the Cuban Missile Crisis
Norman Polmar and John D. Gresham. Foreword by Tom Clancy. New York: John Wiley, 2006. 303 pp. Illus. Appens. Notes. Bib. $27.95.
Reviewed by Philip Brenner
DEFCON-2, or Defense Condition Two, is the highest state of military alert short of nuclear war to which U.S. strategic forces can be readied. The United States has gone to DEFCON-2 only once-during the Cuban Missile Crisis. As the authors explain in this readable and engaging study of the crisis, when nuclear weapons are hair-trigger ready-as they are under DEFCON-2-the greatest danger is not that opposing leaders will choose to engage their countries in a war. The catastrophic threat to humanity occurs, they rightly argue, when officials who want to avoid war make seemingly rational decisions, which unintentionally propel the antagonists into conflict.
The most important lesson of the missile crisis, then, is one that former Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara has articulated repeatedly for nearly 20 years: that we cannot manage crises, so we must avoid them. His argument is supported by the evidence Polmar and Gresham provide, which points to the conclusion that we avoided a calamity in 1962 by luck. The crisis was not resolved either by the rational calibration of threats directed at the Soviet Union or the unflinching steel will of President John F. Kennedy.
In contrast, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld in 2002 drew the opposite-and dangerous-lesson from the 1962 confrontation. He argued that pre-emptive use of force was the only way to ensure that a terrorist state would not threaten the United States again in a "a nuclear standoff." His observation indicates the continuing relevance of the missile crisis, and the importance of a book such as DEFCON-2, which helps us to derive appropriate lessons from the crisis.
Most studies of the Cuban Missile Crisis have focused on its political features, such as decision-making processes, the nature of leadership, or even the impact of elections. The military aspects have tended to lurk in the background merely providing the context for the political decisions. The authors reverse the emphasis. Their book is a detailed military analysis of the missile crisis in the context of the Cold War antagonism between the United States and the Soviet Union, and the United States and Cuba.
Nearly all of the book's data have been reported before. But the authors provide a service in scouring a vast number of documents and sources-several of which are obscure-to assemble this information in one accessible volume. General readers are likely to learn for the first time: that the Soviets had deployed at least 162 nuclear warheads and bombs to Cuba by 22 October 1962; that U.S. analysts had underestimated the range of the Soviet ballistic missiles in Cuba by 22 percent, so that even the shorter-range missiles could have reached cities such as New York and Chicago; that U.S. strategic air forces remained at DEFCON-2 for one month after the missile crisis supposedly ended; that the use of standard antisubmarine operating procedures nearly led a delirious Soviet captain to launch a nuclear-tipped torpedo at a U.S. destroyer.
Despite the authors' focus on the military side of the crisis, they also offer sophisticated political analyses, which tend to avoid simplistic characterizations. Take, for example, their appreciation for the antecedents of the crisis, and for related U.S. intelligence failures. Coven U.S. terrorist attacks in 1962 under the rubric of Operation Mongoose, they observe, "only hardened the resolve of the Cuban people." It did not undermine their "genuine support" for Cuban leader Fidel Castro, which U.S. analysts had failed to recognize. Further, the covert war convinced Soviet leaders that the Kennedy administration was intent on invading Cuba. Deterring such an invasion, the authors explain, provided one of the four motives underlying the Soviet decision to deploy ballistic missiles to Cuba.
Unfortunately, the book contains several small errors which taken together mar its reliability. The boat on which Castro returned to Cuba in 1956 was named the Granma, not the Grandma; National Security Adviser McGeorge Bundy received word of the Soviet deployment at 2215 on 15 October, not at 1015 the next day; President Dwight D. Eisenhower severed diplomatic relations with Cuba on 3 January 1961, not 19 January; and the target date of October 1962 for a U.S. invasion of Cuba was included initially in Operation Mongoose plans, not in OPLAN 314/316.
One hopes these mistakes will be corrected in a subsequent edition, because DEFCON-2 should become a standard reference work on the missile crisis.
Dr. Brenner is professor of International Relations and History at American University, and the co-author of Sad and Luminous Days: Cuba's Struggle with the Superpowers after the Missile Crisis (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2002).
Guests of the Ayatollah: The First Battle in America's War with Militant Islam
Mark Bowden. New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2006. 680 pp. Appen. Notes. Index. $26.
Reviewed by Dov S. Zakheim
As Iran returns to the headlines after a hiatus of two decades, Mark Bowden's Guests of the Ayatollah offers a treasure trove of insights in what is not only a cautionary tale about dealing with that proud country, but also a particularly keen analysis of the cultural canyon that continues to bedevil U.S. operations in Iraq.
Bowden has written a fast-paced thriller, which is no less suspenseful for the fact that its outcome has been known for more than a quarter century. His portraits of the hostages reflect the diversity that is the American Foreign Service. Bowden sketches the hostage takers-simultaneously objective yet unsympathetic-demonstrating a keen understanding of the often conflicting and self-contradictory motivations and emotions that govern the attitudes of both Iranians and the Arab world to the West in general and the United States in particular. He provides three-dimensional portraits of many of the hostage takers including those who since have gone on to some prominence.
The author convincingly demonstrates that those who planned the hostage taking never expected their effort to last more than a few days. Instead, they, like the Americans who became their prisoners, were pawns in an internal struggle for power among the various factions hoping to succeed the despised Pahlavi regime. As time passed, the embassy crisis became the vehicle with which the mullahs and their allies were able to seize and then consolidate their power.
At the same time, even those Americans who were considered to be experts on Iran, who spoke Farsi, who mingled with the locals, did not fully appreciate the degree to which the United States was loathed by a vast number of Iranians. While American memories were then, as they are now, notoriously short. Iranians remembered the late Shah as a U.S. puppet. No doubt many will therefore take with more than a grain of salt Washington's current pronouncements about fostering democracy in the Middle East. They also recall U.S. support for Saddam Hussein during the decade-long "first" Gulf War. To Iranians, the massive, protected embassy in the center of their capital city was a symbol of hated U.S. power and perceived abuses. One wonders if the fortified Green Zone in Baghdad conveys similar images to that city's residents.
That the Iranians horribly mistreated the hostages has long been known; Bowden describes their at-times brutal and always churlish behavior in graphic fashion. As the United States seeks Iranian acceptance of international norms, Bowden reminds us of the extent to which the most basic of those norms-the treatment of diplomats-was flouted by the so-called students and covered-up with lies and deceit by government officials at all levels.
More generally, how much have things changed regarding Iran over the past 25 years? As Bowden demonstrates, Washington totally misread opinion throughout the country in the waning days of the Shah's rule and during the often violent and bloody months that followed. The naïveté that marked American behavior in the 1970s is shocking. Matters deteriorated after the Shah fell; the embassy had few Farsi speakers, and indeed, few people who had served in Iran. One wonders how well prepared Washington is to deal with President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his mullah superiors. If America's cultural missteps in Iraq are any indicator, the prognosis for dealing with Iran is grim indeed.
Bowden's list of interviews is long, and includes not only the hostages and Iranians, but also participants in the ill-fated Desert One attempt to liberate the captives. Bowden clearly has little love for the swashbuckling Colonel Charlie Beckwith, who led the operation. Colonel Beckwith worked well with his own Army team, but his tolerance of fellow officers from the other services was next to zero. Jointness was not in Beckwith's lexicon.
President Jimmy Carter fares better than might have been expected. He was not at all reluctant to use force, even in the face of insistent protests from Cyrus Vance, his secretary of state. He literally exhausted all options before ordering Desert One, but he never hesitated once the order was given, and left it to Beckwith's judgment as to whether the operation should be aborted. He was not prepared to capitulate to all Iranian demands even though he recognized that his chances for re-election were minimal if he could not reach a deal to free the hostages. He and his team may have committed many missteps, but he was no patsy.
Because Bowden writes well and a previous book, Blackhawk Down, was both a best seller and successful movie, it is likely that Guests of the Ayatollah will receive wide exposure. So it should. It will provide Americans with both a sense of what dealing with the Middle East is about and a better understanding of the illusions that often govern American policy-making toward that region. As the United States enters a new and as yet uncharted relationship with Iran, Bowden's aptly sub-titled volume is required reading for all.
Dr. Zakheim is vice president at Booz Allen Hamilton Inc. He was under secretary of defense (comptroller) and chief financial officer for the Department of Defense from 2001-04.
Beyond Shock and Awe: Warfare in the 21st Century
Edited by Eric L. Haney with Brian M. Thomsen. New York: Berkley Caliber, 2006. 272 pp. $24.95.
Reviewed by David J. Danelo
As a collection of essays about the future of combat, Beyond Shock and Awe starts out strong. Eric Haney, author of Inside Delta Force and one of the team's founding members, kicks things off with a brief, crisp narrative of how we got to where we are, how we messed things up, and where we need to go. Haney's chapter, "War by Deception and Wishful Thinking," has us thinking, and has whetted our appetite. We're ready for more.
Unfortunately, with a couple of exceptions, it's all downhill from there. Some of the essays suffer from a lack of originality. Others are intelligent, but difficult reading. Two caused this reviewer to question whether their authors knew anything about the military. They didn't appear to, but they had written several history and science fiction books.
After Haney's piece, William Terdoslavich's "From Shock and Awe to Awe Shucks" recounts the downward spiral from the thrill of victory (9 April 2003) to the agony of. . . . something other than victory. There's nothing in here that readers won't find in Cobra II, Fiasco, No True Glory, or a dozen other Iraq books of superior quality.
Paul Thomsen's "The Ascent of Knowledge-Based Warfare" is gimmicky, and fails to illustrate why "knowledge-based warfare" is any different than the wars of the past. What results is something like a wannabe Fourth-Generation Warfare, without a practical framework.
West Point graduate, Vietnam veteran, and retired federal judge Eugene Sullivan offers "Some Thoughts on Justice in America's Future Wars." As the CEO of Gavel Consulting Group, a firm that includes three former FBI heads, Sullivan brings gravitas to bear on issues surrounding detainees, trial, and other matters of military jurisprudence. Although one of the stronger essays, it bogs down in parts with legalese and technical jargon. Required reading for JAGs perhaps, but maybe not the rest of us.
John Heifers makes winning "Hearts and Minds in 2025" sound much easier than it actually is. We learn that language and cultural training are important (really?). We are patronized for having forgotten that lesson. What we are not given is an action plan for how to bring that strategic imperative into the real world of conflicting priorities for training. Heifers theorizes much while offering little.
The booby prize goes to professor William Forstchen, whose "The Eye of GodThe Finger of God" ranks with the Maginot Line as a work of military theory. A Civil War buff and sci-fi writer, Forstchen advises the military to construct an elaborate sensor system (the eye), use it to find bad guys, and assassinate them with tungsten bullets falling from the sky (the finger).
Forstchen, with his simplistic, arrogant tone, does not appear to recognize that his solution is in use, albeit with UAVs and Predator-launched missiles. Thus far, hiding in caves continues to work to defeat this tactic.
Fortunately, Desert Storm veteran Kevin Dockery bookends the collection with "Weapons of the Next War." This well-written look into the grunt's toy box discusses the capabilities and limitations of pistols, shotguns, rifles, grenade launchers, and other tools in the kit. Good for either an introduction or refresher.
Beyond Shock and Awe has moments of brilliance. But much of the content can be found in other, better books. The rest is beyond comprehension or value.
Mr. Danelo, a 1998 U.S. Naval Academy graduate and former Marine Corps captain and infantry officer, served with the I MEF Headquarters Group at Camp Fallujah from February to September 2004. He is the author of
Blood Stripes: The Grunt's View of the War in Iraq (Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 2006), and the editor of U.S. Cavalry ON Point (www.uscavonpoint.com).
Space Warfare: Strategy, Principles and Policy
John J. Klein. London: Routledge, 2006. Space Power and Politics Series. 196 pp. Notes. Bib. Index. $110.
Reviewed by Lieutenant Colonel David C. Arnold, U.S. Air Force
There is a well-known aphorism that history is a conversation. So much can also be said about space strategy. U.S. Navy Commander John Klein adds to that conversation by trying to become the Mahan for space-or more accurately, the Sir Julian Corbett-with his book on space strategy. Expanding on his 2004 Naval War College Review article, "Corbett in Orbit: A Maritime Model for Strategic Space Theory," the author presents a theory for space strategy that draws from Corbett's theory of maritime strategy. The book approaches the idea of space strategy from a broader perspective than simply doing as other authors have tried to do by substituting "space" for "air" in air power warfare theories. The author concludes that the best framework for space strategy is maritime strategy, because air and naval (as distinct from maritime) strategies are too militarily focused. Therefore, maritime strategy, with its focus on "the interaction of the land and the sea," is this author's model for a space strategy. Corbett is one of the very best maritime theorists to grab onto, and Klein is the first to do it for space in a comprehensive, book-length treatment.
Initially, the book tries to convince the reader that space is a separate domain of warfare. Yet the first chapter fails to make the case that it is worthy of its own unique strategy. Two paragraphs on "What is space?" or the obvious point that space is used for military purposes, do not convince the reader that it is fundamentally different from air, land, or sea. By rushing to the Corbett-centric mirroring, the argument misses some critically convincing steps along the way. For example, the book needs a more comprehensive look at why air power theory is not the right mirror for space strategy. Two pages with one paragraph each on Giulio Douhet, General Billy Mitchell, and Michael Warden, dismiss air power strategy.
Further, the statement that "The dearth of historical examples regarding military actions in space makes it difficult to discuss a fundamentally sound and thoughtful space strategy" is a little misleading. Although there have been no shots fired in space between TIE fighters and XWings, there have been military actions in and out of space for several decades. Hardened and deeply buried targets in other nations are not just an outgrowth of space-guided GPS weapons and nuclear missiles, but also of U.S. surveillance and reconnaissance superiority in space. America's enemies will develop counter strategies to our space systems. President Ronald Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), some have argued, drove the Soviet Union to the ash heap of history, and was a sound economic, political, and military decision that had little to do with "phasers set to kill." SDI used space-or the threat of weapons in space-as part of an overall national strategy that used all the instruments of national power, not just the military, because space is basic to each of the instruments.
Ultimately, space strategy development is not about mirror-imaging another domain's already-proved strategy. Its development must be about building one that does not mirror air, land, or sea strategy. Everett Dolman pointed this out in his book Astropolitik: Classical Geopolitics in the Space Age Strategy (New York: Frank Cass, 2001), when he said, "grand strategy in particular, is not simply the efficient military application of force [but] ultimately political in nature."
Finally, this frustratingly named book-that will fool a lot of people into reading something they should, anyway-provides us with a strategy that mirror-images 19th-century maritime strategy but does not quite create a comprehensive space strategy. Nevertheless, this book is highly recommended for big space thinkers, because even if you do not agree with the approach or the conclusions, at least the conversation on space strategy continues.
Lieutenant Colonel Arnold, is commander of the 22d Space Operations Squadron and the author of Spying from Space: Constructing America's Satellite Command and Control Systems (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2005). He previously served as executive officer to the Director of Strategic Planning, HQ U.S. Air Force.