One Hundred Victories: Special Ops and the Future of American Warfare
Linda Robinson. New York: Public Affairs, 2013. 336 pp. $28.99.
Reviewed by Dick Couch
It’s not easy to review a book by Linda Robinson on American special operations forces (SOF), even for a reviewer who has written more than a dozen books on the subject. She is quite literally an expert without peer when it comes to the issues of SOF policy and SOF force application. Few writers own such distinction, and those in government and the military want to know what she has to say. Robinson has influence. Indeed, when none other than Admiral Bill McRaven states that “Folks within the special operations community listen to Linda Robinson, and when they listen to her, I listen to them. . . .” That’s influence.
One Hundred Victories comes on the heels of an excellent April 2013 policy piece by Robinson, The Future of U.S. Special Operations Forces, published by the Council on Foreign Relations. In this short work she details the continuing shift of SOF from direct to indirect action, the transition from warfighting to war-prevention, and the need for a more robust staffing of the theater special operations commands in support of the geographic combatant commands. The Council piece is concise, factual, and a superb guide for a congressional staffer—or anyone else for that matter—who wants to know what’s ahead for SOF post-Afghanistan. When I began One Hundred Victories, I expected it to be an expansion of this work, which while highly informative is a rather bland read. I was wrong.
One Hundred Victories is highly readable and paints a compelling picture of SOF in the 2010–12 timeframe. With excellent access and entre, Robinson spent time with special-operations teams in Kandahar, Paktika, Kunar, Uruzgan, Ghazni, and Wardak provinces, as well as with civilian and military leaders in Kandahar City and Kabul. She tells the story through the actions of the teams on the ground and the personalities of the individual special operators and their leaders. She takes the reader through their success, their failures, and their dedication to the business of SOF. And their many sacrifices. One of the Army ODAs (Special Forces A-Teams) was deployed in harm’s way for 19 months during a 24-month period. I know nothing of Robinson’s embed schedule during this period, but it had to be something on this order.
The result is a series of ground-truth, factual vignettes that provide a glimpse into the personal as well as the policy. The reader is afforded an understanding for just how far our deployed SOF components have come in their migration from direct action (raids) to the indirect (working with the locals to build counterinsurgent capacity). Robinson demonstrates her reach on complex Afghan issues that range from village-centric problems encountered by individual special operators to command-and-control to cross-cultural challenges. She is comfortable in addressing coalition inter- and intra-service rivalries, as well as with the strengths and shortcomings of the local Afghan security forces.
The chapter of SEALs and their immersion into the complex world of foreign internal defense (FID) was particularly enjoyable. FID is the special province of Army Special Forces—the Green Berets. SEALs, by recruitment, temperament, and training tend to favor direct-action raids and special reconnaissance. Not one to pull punches, the author was complimentary of the efforts of the SEALs in the Uruzgan and Zabul provinces and their successes in these contentious areas. She was especially kind to the SEAL senior leadership who dealt fairly and effectively with Afghan leaders, and when necessary, with acrimonious American conventional leadership.
The final chapters of the book deal with end game in Afghanistan—what we learned and what knowledge we can take to the next encounter. Regarding that next encounter, the author acknowledges that while ours is a nation very tired of war, there is work to be done. And much of that work will involve SOF. “Application of special operations forces,” she points out, “is nothing more than an option between doing nothing and engaging in a major military operation.”
On what we could have done better, “Perhaps the most important lesson we learned from Afghanistan is that the United States did not place enough importance on getting Afghan security forces ready to shoulder the responsibility of defending their land against internal and external enemies.” In retrospect, that could have been said about our inattention to Vietnamese security forces.
On what we did right in Afghanistan, “One of the most important innovations in SOF-conventional operations in Afghanistan was the attachment of fifty-four conventional infantry squads to sixty-two special operations teams who were conducting village stability operations and raising local defenders.” Finally, Robinson makes a strong case for patience and scalability in our future ventures or as she quotes, “go long, go small,” and that unilateralism should be reserved only for direct threats to our national security.
This is a fine book, and Robinson is to be commended for her work in linking the future of SOF to its recent history in Afghanistan in such a personal and readable manner. I wish she had managed in her recent embeds to spend time with the Marine Special Operations Teams, as they are making significant contributions to our current SOF mix. And I would be interested to know how she sees the post-Afghan employment of our 75th Rangers—the SOF light infantrymen. Admiral James Stavridis has said that our military future will be dominated by cyber warfare, drones, and special operations. I believe that, and we can count on Linda Robinson to keep us abreast of the current disposition and future of SOF.
Deep Currents and Rising Tides: The Indian Ocean and International Security
John Garofano and Andrea J. Dew, Eds. Washington DC: Georgetown University Press, 2013. 305 pp. Illus. Maps. $28.89
Reviewed by Captain Carl O. Schuster, U.S. Navy (Ret.)
With contributions by over a dozen security experts and edited by two Naval War College faculty members, Deep Currents and Rising Tides marks a major scholarly effort both to depict and explain the Indian Ocean Region’s (IOR) present and future importance to international security. The contributors represent a wide range of perspectives and specialties on the area’s operating environment and security concerns. On the surface, the depth and mass of their material offers a fire hose of information and facts that seemingly threaten to overwhelm the casual or first-time reader of the topic. The book’s structure overcomes that daunting challenge by providing succinct chapters focused on a single aspect of the region’s challenges and potential solutions. The result is a comprehensive and coherent treatment of the Indian Ocean that offers unique insights on the contending issues to anyone with an interest in this increasingly important region.
The book opens by highlighting the Indian Ocean’s rising importance as the thoroughfare of global commerce. From the “Islamic arc” of instability reaching from the Persian Gulf down Africa’s east coast to the generally stable but recurring natural disaster zone of the Bay of Bengal, the IOR presents a complex security environment. Entry and exit is dominated at both ends by narrow straits: the Bab-el-Mendeb and Strait of Hormuz in the west and the Malacca Strait in the east. It has become the geographic center of the world’s oil market and the critical highway for Asia-to-Europe commerce. Over 35 percent of the world’s fossil fuels and related products transit the Indian Ocean, as do a similar percentage of other commercial goods.
Piracy and armed maritime groups plague shipping in or near the ocean’s choke points and in recent years, at increasing distances from East Africa. Suppression of East Africa piracy has drawn extensive international cooperation and enjoys significant success. Not only has the incidence of such piracy declined by over 80 percent since 2007, several nations successfully employed their special forces to rescue ships and crews from pirates. Still, armed groups operating at sea remain a concern, as evidenced by Hezbollah’s 2006 attack on an Israeli corvette and al-Qaeda aligned groups’ successful 5 out of 18 attempted sea-terrorism attacks since 1998.
The book’s most revealing sections are those related to the various IOR nations’ approaches to maritime security. In separate sections, the book highlights how India and Pakistan have placed higher priorities on maritime security in recent years. Both have recently published maritime-policy documents or strategies. In addition to expanding their fleets, the focus has manifested itself in the commercial sphere as well. For Pakistan, Gwadar Port represents an effort to reduce its vulnerability to blockade by diversifying its maritime outlets and, Islamabad hopes, deterring Indian military action via the presence of Chinese and merchant shipping. China funds 80 percent of the work building road and rail links to the port from its restive Xinjiang province. Pakistan hopes Gwadar can become an outlet for Central Asian trade, while India works with Iran to expand Chabahar for the same purpose. India’s navy has taken a more dynamic role in Indian diplomacy, organizing a series of IOR seminars involving regional players (except Pakistan and Iran). Later chapters discuss China’s involvement in the IOR, India’s and Pakistan’s relationships with the United States and China, and potential “red lines” that might trigger a Sino-Indian conflict.
Deep Currents and Rising Tides is a timely and informative book presenting the points of cooperation and competition that will shape developments in the increasingly important IOR. It concisely covers the waterfront of threats, concerns, and opportunities in a format that facilitates reading and retention. The many illustrations and statistical tables reinforce each chapter’s key points and enhance understanding. The only challenge in using the book is its single map, forcing the reader to page back and forth while reading some of the contributors’ sections. Still, this is a must-read book for anyone interested in or affected by events in Asia or the Indian Ocean.
Engineers of Victory: The Problem Solvers Who Turned the Tide in the Second World War
Paul Kennedy. New York: Random House, 2013. 436 pp. Illus. $30.00.
Reviewed by Lieutenant Colonel William J. Astore, U.S. Air Force (Ret.)
How are wars won? To answer this question, Paul Kennedy attacks the vast canvas of World War II by focusing not on great leaders or battles but on great engineering feats. Specifically, the tools and techniques developed to escort convoys across the Atlantic; to launch amphibious attacks against enemy-held shores; to overcome the “tyranny of distance” in the Pacific theater to confront and defeat the Japanese; to wrest command of the air in Europe from the Luftwaffe; and finally to blunt the force of Germany’s Blitzkrieg on land. Meeting and mastering these five highly complex challenges from 1942 to 1944 was crucial to winning the war, concludes Kennedy.
Kennedy reveals his theme best in his conclusion, writing that “perhaps the most important variable of all” in the Allied victory in World War II was “the creation of war-making systems that contained impressive feedback loops, flexibility, a capacity to learn from mistakes, and a ‘culture of encouragement’ . . . that permitted the middlemen in this grinding conflict the freedom to experiment, to offer ideas and opinions, and to cross traditional institutional boundaries.” A few pages later, he restates that “successful systems” were those that “possessed smarter feedback loops between top, middle, and bottom; because they stimulated initiative, innovation, and ingenuity; and because they encouraged problem solvers to tackle large, apparently intractable problems.”
This is a fine collection of buzzwords, but Kennedy’s analysis is often at odds with his concept of cultures of encouragement and innovation. In examining the development of the P-51 Mustang as the premier escort fighter to the American daylight bombing effort, he concludes that “chance and serendipity” were what rescued the Mustang “from the scrap heap.” His analysis devolves into a series of “What if?” questions, as in “What if Ronnie Harker had not been invited to fly the P-51 by the Duxford Testing Station in April 1942” and “What if the Rolls-Royce manager had not had such a close relationship with Sir Wilfrid Freeman.” Exactly how chance and serendipity square with deliberative cultures of encouragement and innovation is a question Kennedy fails to address.
Similarly, when he analyzes Bernard Montgomery’s ability to defeat Erwin Rommel in the North African desert, Kennedy sees it as a systems victory, but his analysis degenerates to a laundry list of disparate elements: “superior radar, superior decryption, a much better orchestration of tactical airpower, much better coordination between the army and the RAF; unorthodox Special Forces units (the Germans and Italians had none), aircraft that were more powerful and adaptable [than the enemies’], the mine-flaying tanks and the acoustic mine detectors, and, sitting above all this, a far better integrated command-and-control system.” By this point, one is apt to forget that Rommel (as well as the Wehrmacht in general) was suffering severely from overstretch. For the Germans, North Africa was a sideshow, and Hitler abandoned Rommel and the Afrika Korps to their fate.
There is much sound thinking and strategic good sense in Kennedy’s account. He vividly describes the U-boat/convoy battles in the Atlantic, rightly concluding that “This conflict was, more than any other battle for the seas, a scientists’ war.” But as soon as he makes that claim, he returns to the kind of conventional military narrative that he says he is seeking to upend.
In a study that aims to focus on engineering and problem-solving as decisive to the war, Kennedy pays remarkably little attention to the history and theory of technology. He discusses new tools in passing, such as centimetric radar, Leigh Lights, or HF-DF “Huff-Duff” radio detection, but he says little about how they meshed with or changed existing naval doctrine. Kennedy also notes that the Germans and Japanese were skilled problem-solvers too, yet he doesn’t tackle why their efforts failed while the Allied efforts succeeded.
Did new ideas and technologies prosper best in political systems that were, in a word, free? If so, how does one explain the success of the Soviets in engineering their way to victory? Kennedy’s overarching conclusion about flexibility and feedback loops and a culture of encouragement is suggestive but not conclusive.
Kennedy’s narrative, accessible as it is, largely tells a story that has already been told. How and why the Allies came up with the right technical solutions at the right time are questions that remain unanswered here.
Through the Perilous Fight: Six Weeks That Saved the Nation
Steve Vogel. New York: Random House, 2013. 534 pp. Illus. Maps. Notes. Index. $21.50.
Reviewed by Lieutenant Andrew Cox, U.S. Navy
In late summer 1814, the War of 1812 witnessed some of its most intense and desperate action in the Chesapeake Bay. In his book, Steve Vogel provides a fast-paced narrative of these six critical weeks through backstories and eyewitness testimonies of many combatants and observers. Quickly shuttling between Washington D.C., the British headquarters, the front lines, negotiations in Belgium, President James Madison’s cabinet, Dolley Madison’s household, and elsewhere, the reader watches British Admiral George Cockburn’s force of crack veteran troops and powerful ships threaten to plunder and burn throughout the bay.
British strategy centered on inflicting such damage that the Americans would stop attacking British Canada and possibly even sue for peace. To face this threat, the Americans depended on an overwhelmed President, his dysfunctional cabinet, and an unprepared military with ineffective leadership. Vogel’s recount of the Americans’ inability to establish significant defenses or maintain the confidence of their troops and civilians seems almost comedic, were the consequences not so terrible. The Battle of Bladensburg revealed a dispirited, fractious, terrified, and exhausted U.S. Army, and that the only thing slowing the British was the Chesapeake summer. Vogel points out that although Cockburn marched into Washington to burn and tear down all the public buildings he could find, he took pains not to damage the citizens’ private property. Nonetheless, Americans across the country were devastated to see their capital in flames, while the remains of the Army regrouped on the nearby heights of Georgetown in disarray and shame. It was the lowest point in the war.
Cockburn next set his sights on Baltimore, a haven of pro-war sentiment and privateers, but there the Americans demonstrated inspiring resiliency and pluck. As the British plundered hapless Alexandria, thousands of enraged troops and militia flocked to Baltimore’s defense under militia commander Samuel Smith. When the British landed two weeks later, the defenders were ready for them: The formidable harbor and land defenses cost the British significant casualties and time, preventing Cockburn from destroying the city.
Vogel recounts a lively infantry battle in which the British commanding general died and, later that night, the naval bombardment of Fort McHenry, witnessed by Francis Scott Key while he was among the British fleet. When Fort McHenry remained defiant the next morning, the British retreated rather than risk further casualties with forces earmarked for assaulting New Orleans. There Key assumes the spotlight as he composed his feelings from the previous evening into a poem and coupled it with a well-known tune. The result quickly gained popularity and eventually became the National Anthem, as well as cemented the flag’s iconic status and Key’s place in American history.
Vogel argues the sack of Washington was both a stunning tactical success and a strategic failure. American troops were not diverted from Canada, and the defense of Baltimore rallied the Americans’ spirits to keep fighting rather than surrender. When combined with American victories at Plattsburg and Lake Champlain, the British returned to the negotiating table in Ghent, where the delegates agreed to revert to their pre-war postures. While by some standards it could be said the outcome was a draw, many others translated American survival as victory. The circumstances of the war’s end, particularly the endnote at New Orleans, left the impression that the United States had successfully defended itself and finally severed all ties with its colonial past.
Although Vogel neglects deeper questions about the significance of the War of 1812, one can still pull meaningful lessons about selective historical memory from his book. While relishing the moments when our ragged military stood toe-to-toe with the vaunted British, we may have forgotten how close we truly came to defeat and that the resulting peace never addressed any of the war’s causes. We don’t remember that Americans destroyed civilian property in 1813 when they burned a British-Canadian town and left the survivors homeless in the snow, but we distinctly recall our bewilderment and rage after Cockburn selectively torched Washington. Alongside the hatred directed at Cockburn, Vogel places more reflective voices like Key’s, who worried that America might have incurred divine retribution for instigating the war. One wonders what else has been blanked out of the common American historical narrative.
That said, Vogel’s extensive collection of first-person perspectives remarkably illustrates the thoughts and feelings of Americans under attack at home. It remains a solid read for early-U.S. or military history buffs, as well as those looking for a fast-paced, live-through-their-eyes account of what has been called our Second War for Independence.