OCEANS VENTURED: WINNING THE COLD WAR AT SEA
John Lehman. New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 2018. 330 pp. Illus. Appendices. Biblio. Index. $27.95
Reviewed by Admiral James “Jamie” Foggo, U.S. Navy
Former Navy Secretary John Lehman has a new book about winning the Cold War at sea. For me, and I suspect for many other Proceedings readers, the book is a walk down memory lane. It is an excellent historical reference to the Third Battle of the Atlantic—the Cold War—in which nary a shot was fired. Thoroughly researched, the book is a comprehensive review of the many battles we fought on or under the sea and in the air during the Cold War, the outcome of which—the collapse of the Soviet Union—changed the strategic calculus of the entire Western world and led to the rise of current-day multilateralism.
During his tenure as Secretary of the Navy, Lehman understood the “quality of quantity,” and he advocated for a 600-ship Navy. It was not lost on this Secretary of the Navy that the founding fathers called for “raising” an Army but “maintaining” a Navy in the text of the United States Constitution. America is an island nation. Lehman consistently makes the point in his book that since the publication of The Influence of Sea Power on History by Alfred Thayer Mahan in 1890, the success of our great nation has been inextricably linked to its ability to project power from the sea.
After a brief but necessary treatment of U.S. Navy history from the 19th and 20th centuries, the book quickly gets into the perils of yet another peace dividend in the post–World War II Navy, which led to the heated national debate over funding for the carrier United States or the B-36 bomber. Eventually, with the rise of the Soviet Union and the great power competition in Korea, naval funding gained momentum once again. The Cuban Missile Crisis was a wake-up call, and the United States found itself in a full-blown Cold War with Russia.
Lehman served in the Naval Reserve from the late 1960s onward and participated in many of the exercises and strategy discussions that he so carefully articulates in the 1970s and 1980s. His historical perspective is quite detailed and gives a cleared-eyed view of what the Soviets were thinking and doing in the maritime domain and what the Navy was doing to counter their every move. All this is the run up to the publication of the unclassified version of the Maritime Strategy as a supplement to Proceedings in 1986—an aggressive (and welcome) strategy in U.S. Navy circles that took the fight directly to the enemy, instead of waiting for the Soviets to come to the Americas.
Over time, it became obvious to the Soviets that they would not be able to match the industrial base of the United States, and they redirected their attentions to defensive rather than offensive doctrine. In December 1986, Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev announced, and his Chief of the General Staff Marshal Akhromeyev confirmed, that the Soviet Union’s former strategy of “prompt counteroffensive” would be preempted by a new strategy that would “repel aggression only by defensive operations and simultaneously seek with the assistance of political measures to liquidate the conflict.” This was exactly the rationale for building a 600-ship Navy and advocating for an offensively focused maritime strategy. Frankly, the Soviets could not keep up, and they readjusted their own strategy to homeland defense, save one aspect—the undersea domain—where they continue to invest heavily today.
Secretary Lehman, having published an enduring Maritime Strategy and having come very close to achieving a 600-ship Navy, departed office in mid-1987. The Berlin Wall fell and the Soviet Union collapsed just two years later, leading some to proclaim “the end of history.” Once again, as a nation, the United States embraced a forthcoming peace dividend that never materialized. The 600-ship Navy was considerably downsized during the last decade of the 20th century and the first decade of the 21st century. The current battle force is now under 300 ships.
In his epilogue, Lehman alludes to new threats on the horizon: a resurgent Russian Federation Navy; a rapidly expanding Peoples’ Liberation Army Navy; and the potential for future conflict with Iran in the Arabian Gulf. He harkens back to the drawdowns of yesteryear in calling for immediate steps to re-establish the primacy of strategy. This, coupled with a massive program of global forward naval exercises to demonstrate U.S. resolve, will have similar effects on adversaries or challengers as it did in the 1980s. Lehman was also one of the strong voices urging the current administration to up-size the Navy to something in the realm of 350, and our current plan of a 355-ship Navy is a reflection of that thinking.
Lehman’s strategy helped the United States win the Third Battle of the Atlantic during the Cold War. Now it is up
to those in the Navy today to do the same in the Fourth Battle, which every naval professional serving is engaged
in every day.
Enjoy the book—I did.
Admiral Foggo is currently serving in Naples, Italy as Commander, Allied Joint Force Command, and Commander, U. S. Naval Forces, Europe and Africa.
Directorate S: The C.I.A. and America’s Secret Wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan
Steve Coll. New York: Penguin-Random House, 2018. 757 pp. Maps. Photos. Notes. Index. $35.
Reviewed by John Prados
Already known for Ghost Wars, his fine account of the rise of Islamist terrorism, Steve Coll in Directorate S picks up where he left off. This deeply reported and well written account opens with the 9/11 attacks and carries the story roughly through 2014. Coll explores the covert side of the conventional war. He shows the inner workings of the CIA’s operations with Ahmad Shah Massoud’s partisans, the initial U.S. campaign in Afghanistan, activities of the de facto U.S.-Pakistani alliance, and, within Pakistan, relations between the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), from whose directorate—responsible for relations with the Taliban—the book takes its name.
Afghanistan has not received nearly enough attention, and Directorate S goes a good distance toward correcting that. Coll is particularly strong on the CIA’s evolving relationship with the initial leader of post–Taliban Afghanistan, Hamid Karzai, and, on the Pakistani side, General Ashfaq Kayani. Some of the latter’s maneuvers to decouple Afghanistan from its U.S. orbit and bring that nation into the Pakistani fold are quite interesting. In Washington, the byplay between the CIA and President Barack Obama’s point man for “AfPak” (Afghanistan and Pakistan), Richard Holbrooke, is instructive. CIA officials worried that Holbrooke wanted to hear what the agency knew about Afghanistan so he could counter their arguments, including for the use of drone attacks. In the field, Holbrooke thought the Pakistanis viewed all things through the prism of India, and the way to get them to do more was to raise the specter of India moving into Afghanistan as the United States left it.
There are plentiful details—of Pakistani and Afghan personalities, CIA officers, real and aborted operations, and Washington’s deliberations. The CIA’s black sites and its highly problematical interrogations get some attention. Coll writes, “At C.I.A. headquarters, desperation, fear, groupthink, pseudoscience, and misplaced faith in the aggression and humiliation of enemy prisoners shaped the agency’s program as it grew.” The chapter on the Osama bin Laden raid has new material on the Pakistani response to that operation, codenamed Neptune Spear. Directorate S refers to a “flurry of telephone calls” and to General Kayani considering ordering F-16 fighters into the air.
A few things seem absent. Against good coverage of Leon Panetta’s service at the CIA, the big failure on his watch, the double-agent bomb attack at the CIA’s Forward Operating Base Chapman, does not appear. Coll has a proclivity for jumping from one storyline to another. Richard Holbrooke, for example, died from a heart attack that began during a meeting with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Directorate S recounts the emergency and Holbrooke’s operation, but goes on to a page of Afghan strategic options and Obama deliberations before returning to Holbrooke’s death.
Of greater significance, since the Afghan war involved major efforts of Special Operations Forces and the drone strikes specifically were an issue between the CIA and the military, is the relatively sparse coverage of Joint Special Operations Command, Special Operations Command, and related aspects. Coverage of the ISI, while extensive, is not quite sufficient to sustain the book’s title. Nevertheless this Directorate S is well worth the read—a fascinating look at the secret side of the Afghan war.
Mr. Prados is an author and analyst of national security based in Washington, D.C. His current book is The Ghosts of Langley: Into the CIA’s Heart of Darkness (The New Press, 2017).
Energy: A Human History
Richard Rhodes. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2018. 343 pp. Illus. Bibliography. Notes. $30.
Reviewed by Commander Daniel “Heed” Orchard-Hays, U.S. Navy
Nearly 400 years of innovation and industrialization resulted in the modern U.S. Navy, comprising nuclear-powered aircraft carriers and submarines and petroleum-fueled ships and aircraft. Many individual dreamers, visionaries, and reformers form the backbone of the remarkable technological journey. Richard Rhodes, the Pulitzer Prize–winning author, takes a striking and comprehensive foray into human energy consumption from its origins, through its evolution, and into our modern era.
Beginning in Elizabethan England when wood was a primary fuel, Rhodes discusses every significant source of energy employed over the past four centuries to feed humans’ insatiable energy demand. Rhodes’ work highlights the character and the characters responsible for driving and creating change, ranging from nobles, to philosophers, scientists, physicians, engineers, and businessmen. In Energy: A Human History, the personalities make for energetic reading, and include a significant portion devoted to the father of Navy nuclear power, Admiral Hyman Rickover.
The book is divided into three sections that follow the general stimuli motivating each new energy source. The first section, “Power,” begins with the transition from wood to coal roughly at the start of the 17th century. In the second section, “Light,” Rhodes ventures through the varying means used to illuminate the dark of night. Starting with whale oil and tallow lamps then progressing to the discovery of oil by Edwin Drake in Titusville, Pennsylvania, the section concludes with the harnessing of electricity and the beginnings of hydroelectric power. The third section, “New Fires,” opens with the development of the automobile by Henry Ford, which transformed oil from a simple light source into gasoline for the internal combustion engine.
Rhodes also highlights the challenges associated with the adoption of energy sources. Pipelines, for instance, had to be developed to make use of the massive quantity of natural gas that accompanies oil production to efficiently transport it to market for useful consumption. Finally, he arrives at the harnessing of the atom for nuclear energy.
Throughout the work, Rhodes gives equal weight to both the benefits and consequences of each new energy source. Similar to today’s intense and divisive debates regarding climate change, he shows how each new energy technology eventually was overwhelmed by its deleterious effects and improved or supplanted by a new technology or innovation. From massive deforestation to manure mired streets to excessive whaling to smog to radiation poisoning to long-term storage of spent nuclear material, the book does not avoid discussing the undesirable properties of each energy system. Most notably, he illuminates the driving force behind the colossal increase in energy demand—exponential human population growth.
Rhodes’ closing discussion of the two primary renewable sources, solar and wind, suggests they will continue to augment our modern sources of oil, nuclear, coal, and natural gas. As if to warn readers about an impending escalation of rhetoric, he notes that the tumultuous process of replacing energy sources takes longer than the people of the period expect.
Rhodes’ research is extensive. The book is meticulously end noted and includes a comprehensive bibliography for those seeking additional information on a specific energy source or particular historical figure. Yet, despite all the detail the book remains readable. For anyone with even a passing interest in the energy that fuels our modern world, the book generates its own unique energy that makes it a pleasure to read.
Commander Orchard-Hays is assigned as a military faculty member at the Joint Forces Staff College in Norfolk, Virginia. A naval flight officer, he flew in F-14D Tomcats and F/A-18F Super Hornets for much of his career. He most recently was assigned as the Operational Energy Section Head at U.S. Fleet Forces Command, where he was the lead planner for the Secretary of the Navy’s 2016 Great Green Fleet.
DIGITAL WORLD WAR
Haroon K. Ullah. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2017. 288 pp. Notes. Index. References. Illus. $14.50.
Reviewed by Lieutenant Commander Sean Carnew, Royal Navy
The current mediascape is filled with questions and accusations regarding the use of social media during the 2016 presidential election. Pundits on both side of the political divide argue about the scope of social media’s influence on political outcomes. In the West, this phenomenon is new to the political landscape. In the Muslim world, however, this is not the case. Haroon Ullah’s Digital World War, a critical addition to any reading list, takes you deep within the Muslim political landscape and exposes the degree to which social media has dominated political discourse and become an essential weapon in the battle to control not just the discussion and associated messaging, but also the hearts and minds of the people.
The real strength of Digital World War is Ullah’s ability to demonstrate how the relationships among rulers, peoples, and nonstate actors have changed due to an exploitation of the social media landscape and the use of digital tools available to anyone with a cell phone and an internet connection. He explores the use of social media by extremist organizations such as ISIS and al Qaeda, but also exposes the reader to less familiar social and political antiestablishment movements across the Muslim world.
Through a well-established network of direct participants across the entire spectrum of actors, a deep understanding of Islamist politics, and knowledge of digital innovations, Ullah explores the growth of social media exploitation. He follows its early use to document acts of terror to its role in driving and supporting social/political movements such as the Arab Spring to the current sophisticated and multifaceted developments that have made it an indispensable weapon in any actor’s arsenal.
For those readers with only a limited understanding of the Muslim political landscape, the book provides a good understanding of the ideological spectrum across which various organizations and groups operate and the complexity of their relationships. Exploring not only the relationships between those organizations but also how they relate to the Western world, and he expose the fissures and internal struggles for power and influence within the Muslim world.
While the author does explore some of the more complex digital tools currently in use, he spares the reader from excessive technical detail and only goes so deep to ensure the reader understands the implications of the technologies and advantages or disadvantages associated with them.
What makes the book an essential read for a wide audience is that it provides more than just a powerful insight into social media use within the Muslim world and lessons regarding the importance of such understanding to international politics and diplomacy. It also provides potential foreshadowing of the social media space to come within our own society, both in terms of the good that can be leveraged from its use and the threat that it poses to our social fabric and national security.
Lieutenant Commander Carnew is a Royal Navy helicopter observer on exchange with VX-1 at NAS Patuxent River as tactics department head. He has operational experience throughout the Middle East.
NEW & NOTEWORTHY BOOKS
By Captain William Bray, U.S. Navy (Retired)
A Tale of Three Gunboats: Lake Champlain’s Revolutionary War Heritage
Philip K. Lundeberg, Arthur B. Cohn, Jennifer L. Jones, eds. Washington, DC: Smithsonian National Museum of American History, 2017. 205 pp. Illus. App. Biblio. Index. $25.
The gunboat Philadelphia is the only accessible surviving Continental naval vessel from American Revolutionary War naval action on Lake Champlain. Launched in the summer of 1776, she was sunk 11 October during the Battle of Valcour Island. Recovered in 1935, the Philadelphia was in excellent condition owing to the deep, cold water where she lay for more than 150 years. The Lake Champlain Maritime Museum (LCMM) launched a replica, the Philadelphia II, in 1991, and an earlier version of this book was published shortly thereafter. A Tale of Three Gunboats is the most recent and third edition, issued to coincide with the 20th anniversary of the discovery of the Philadelphia’s sister ship, the Spitfire, in 1997. A collaboration between LCMM and the Smithsonian, this beautifully illustrated book tells the story of the Battle for Lake Champlain while also giving the reader a heightened appreciation for the extent of care and resources required to recover and preserve an 18th-century warship.
Blue versus Purple: The U.S. Naval War College, the Soviet Union, and the New Enemy in the Pacific, 1946
Hal M. Friedman. Newport, RI: Naval War College Press, 2017. 409 pp. Illus. Index. Biblio. $75.
The history of wargaming at the Naval War College begins at least in the 1930s in Pringle Hall, where Navy leaders before and during World War II gamed scenarios against the Imperial Japanese Navy. Blue versus Purple is Hal Friedman’s third in a series examining how in the years 1945–47 the Naval War College viewed future naval warfare. All three volumes are extraordinary works of historical research, detailed to a fault in accounting for the college’s rapid shift in emphasis from Japan to the Soviet Union. Blue versus Purple (Japan was “Orange” and the Soviet Union was “Purple” in Navy wargaming terminology of the 1940s) chronicles the summer and fall months of 1946, just a year after Japan’s surrender, when the college began wargaming against the Soviet Navy in the Pacific. This is a book one reads to reference for research, and the diligence Friedman gave to the narrative and illustrations makes that a most enjoyable endeavor for future students.
Combat at Close Quarters: An Illustrated History of the U.S. Navy in the Vietnam War
Edward J. Marolda, ed. Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2018. 328 pp. Illus. Index. Biblio. $39.95.
The Navy contribution to the U.S. war effort in Vietnam was extensive and well beyond what naval air warfare provided. Combat at Close Quarters does justice to the totality of the Navy effort. Edward Marolda joins with four other historians to deliver a marvelously written, edited and illustrated book, indeed a collector’s item for anyone’s navy history bookshelf. The photos and maps are first rate, and the choice of vignettes complement and enrich the history. The book is broken into four main chapters: “Naval Air Warfare during Operation Rolling Thunder,” “Riverine Warfare,” “President Nixon’s Employment of Naval Power,” and “Naval Intelligence in Southeast Asia.” The latter chapter likely has the least known, if not most interesting, stories. The Navy tragically lost 2,555 killed in action in Vietnam. Combat at Close Quarters goes beyond the historical record to bring this sacrifice into full relief, commanding the appropriate measure of reverence.
Dead Man Launch: A Todd Ingraham Novel of the Cold War
John J. Gobbel. StarboardSide Productions, 2018. 382 pp. $14.95.
The sixth novel in Gobbel’s Todd Ingraham series, Dead Man Launch centers on the exploits of Vice Admiral Todd Ingraham’s son Jerry, a young P-3 pilot who finds himself caught up in all manner of international intrigue and treachery. Gobbel uses many actual historical events from the late 1960s to construct the story, such as North Korea’s capture of the USS Pueblo (AGER-2) and the sinking of Soviet submarine K-129 in the Pacific. The title refers to a Soviet computer program that would automatically launch the communist power’s nuclear weapons at U.S. homeland targets in the event the United States killed or incapacitated its entire leadership in a surprise first strike. These novels are not quite in Tom Clancy-technical-suspense-thriller territory, but they do benefit from the real experiences of an author who did active service as a surface warfare officer.
Captain Bray served as a naval intelligence officer for 28 years before retiring in 2016. He will join the staff of the Naval Institute later this month.