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Debt of Honor
Tom Clancy. New York: Putnam. 1994.
766 pp. $25.95 ($23.35).
Reviewed by Robert C. McFarlane
Since he arrived on the scene 11 years ago with the perceptive support of the U.S. Naval Institute, Tom Clancy has emerged as a master nonpareil in gripping readers with the military—and, therefore, political—implications of high technology. His early novels—The Hunt for Red October (Naval Institute Press, 1984) and Red Storm Rising (Putnam, 1986)—underscored as none since those of Robert Heinlein or even H.G. Wells the power and potential of applied science in advancing the interests of the state. He should have left well enough alone. Unfortunately, as Debt of Honor makes clear, it is a long leap from explaining how technology can help secure an advantage in warfare to taking on the larger questions of why nation-states decide to wage war in the first place, or the politics of how they go about it.
Mr. Clancy posits that two decades of persistent Japanese refusal to alter significantly unfair trading practices leads the Congress—and, putatively, the American people—to declare economic warfare on Japan. This is portrayed in turn as sufficient provocation in the mind of Japanese business magnates—and political leaders who are characterized as their pawns—to sink two submarines, cripple two aircraft carriers, invade Saipan, and threaten nuclear war. The geopolitics are further enriched by an assumed alliance among Japan, China, and India who conspire to invade Siberia and Sri Lanka (thus tying down half of the Seventh Fleet and rendering Japanese victory in the Pacific plausible). For those who find purely military themes insufficiently absorbing, Mr. Clancy throws in a few trendy subplots—e.g., sexual harassment leading to the resignation of a randy U.S. vice president, sexual abuse with racist overtones by a soon-to-become Japanese prime minister, and a high-tech subversion of the U.S. financial market. There’s more, but 1 mustn’t spoil it for you.
There are several levels on which to criticize this work. First, the mundane:
► Is it fair to assert a U.S. intelligence failure, as fashionable as it has become to do so, in an area in which it has shown remarkable excellence—i.e., counting Russian missiles? Would we really fail to follow what became of 20 SS-19 intercontinental ballistic missiles purchased by Japan to the point of being caught flatfooted as to their whereabouts in a shooting war? Or, assuming such an intelligence failure, would the Japanese people, who hold the strongest antinuclear sentiment in the world, not detect such a nuclear conspiracy in their midst and do something about it? Or, on our side of the nuclear ledger, who can imagine that the United States would dismantle all of its ballistic missiles without a thought as to where that might leave us with respect to the remaining nuclear powers— e.g., China, the United Kingdom, and France—or even a theoretically “space- oriented Japan” with 20 SS-19s?
>■ Is it plausible to expect that China would forget Japan’s longstanding animus toward it in order to forge an alliance against the United States or that India, at odds with China to this day, would join this happy cabal?
► Regarding the potential of our admittedly serious trade disagreements with Japan escalating to a congressionally mandated trade war, is that plausible without a preemptive concession by selfinterested Japanese bureaucrats at the eleventh hour or the threat of a presidential veto?
> More’s the point, would the giants of Japanese industry—the zaibutsu—truly see it in their interest to forfeit through war their access to the U.S. market, which consumes more than half of their production? One may say, “They did it before.” If Mr. Clancy believes they would again, he owes his readers at least a little in the way of explanation as to what planning to assure economic stability would go into such a “risk all” scenario.
But there are more fundamental reasons to be concerned about the themes developed in Debt of Honor. Mr. Clancy is an author of considerable influence. As he has pointed out, he sells a lot of books; people put some store in what he says. Consequently, he has a responsibility not to mislead them. This book was not written tongue in cheek. He portrays the Japanese people as more than nationalistic—and thereby calls into question his own objectivity. Consequently, this book cannot help but contribute to the current chorus of Japan-bashing that with each new film and novel adds a little more artificiality to what is a serious but not a racial argument.
Mr. Clancy does make some useful points. Clearly, our excesses in shrinking the U.S. military must be stopped. We are spending less on defense than at any moment since before Pearl Harbor, in spite of the persistent threats made clear in each day’s headlines—not the Haitis and Somalias so much as the real threats posed by foreign drug production (which threatens our youth), terrorism, nuclear proliferation, and errant radicals from Saddam Hussein to Gaddafi.
In addition, Mr. Clancy is right to underscore the urgent need for a reorientation of our intelligence resources toward such threats mentioned above and others he describes in his excellent treatment of the vulnerability of our computer-reliant financial markets. In this area, help is on the way, but Director of Central Intelligence James Woolsey is getting precious little support from his own administration. This is no time for gratuitous piling on.
Tom Clancy is a splendid writer of techno-military adventure. He also understands bureaucratic behavior better than most authors—although his characters tend to be rather more one dimensional than most career public servants I’ve served with. He errs, however, when he takes on the mantle of surrogate statesman. Those who do so take on a special trust. Whether through lack of knowledge or hubris, he isn’t up to it. And in a failing effort, he does considerable harm.
Robert C. McFarlane served as Ronald Reagan's National Security Advisor from 1983-1985.
Victory: The Reagan Administration’s Secret Strategy That Hastened the Collapse of the Soviet Union
Peter Schweizer. New York: The Atlantic Monthly Press, 1994. Notes. $22.00 ($19.80).
The Great Transition: American- Soviet Relations and the End of the Cold War
Raymond L. Garthoff. Washington. D.C.: The Brookings Institution, 1994. Bib. Ind. Notes. $19.95 ($18.95).
Reviewed by Dr. Michael A. Palmer
The Cold War was not just a 50-year struggle between the Soviet Union and the United States, it also was a contest among U.S. historians and foreign-policy
analysts who debated questions related to the responsibility for the start of the Cold War and its continuation. Not surprisingly, the end of the era has sparked a debate about why and how the Cold War came to a close. Those who argued that the Soviets shouldered most of the blame now suggest that U.S. policies during the 1980s led directly to the collapse of the Soviet Union. Those who maintained that the United States was the chief culprit— or at least a coconspirator—in the Cold War tale, now argue that U.S. policy had next to nothing to do with the events of the late 1980s.
Peter Schweizer and Raymond L. Garthoff represent these two schools of thought. To Mr. Schweizer, the harsh rhetoric and anti-Soviet policies of the administration of President Ronald Reagan helped to bring down the Soviet Empire. Dr. Garthoff rejects this notion and credits Mikhail Gorbachev for declaring a truce and allowing the mutual antagonism to recede.
Peter Schweizer’s Victory outlines the Reagan administration’s strategy to “roll back” communism. Besides the President himself, the major figure in this story is the late William Casey. During World War II, Mr. Casey had helped develop economic-warfare strategy against Nazi Germany; as Director of Central Intelligence during the 1980s, he masterminded a new strategy to undermine the Soviet Union. These new policies were incorporated in a series of national security directives aimed at placing Moscow on the defensive and halting what many in—and out—of the administration viewed as the erosion of the U.S. strategic position that had begun in the 1970s.
The tactics employed to carry out this strategy include:
► Lowered Saudi Arabian oil prices that undercut the oil exports that earned the Soviets badly needed hard cash
► Close work with the Papacy in Eastern Europe, especially Poland
> Assistance—financial and otherwise— for the Polish labor union Solidarity
> Closer work by the CIA with U.S. businessmen operating in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union
>■ Increased assistance to the anti-Soviet resistance in Afghanistan and Angola >• A disinformation campaign that provided bogus technical information to Soviet agents
>• Efforts to halt—or at least hinder—the transfer of advanced technology to the Eastern Bloc
>■ An extensive military buildup—including increases in conventional and nuclear forces, the deployment of Pershing missiles in Europe, and the development of the Strategic Defense Initiative
Peter Schweizer argues that the collapse of the Soviet Union was not foreordained. The Soviet system was weak, he admits, but could have continued to amble along—had the pace of the Cold War remained sluggish. Thus, the Reagan administration’s acceleration of the tempo exacerbated the internal contradictions of the Soviet economic system and eventually forced Mikhail Gorbachev into the attempt at internal restructuring that ultimately led to the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Interestingly enough, as Mr. Schweizer points out, except for President Reagan, the proponents of this aggressive strategy did not expect it to work as quickly as it did.
While Victory focuses on President Reagan’s anti-Soviet policy, The Great Transition is a comprehensive diplomatic history of U.S.-Soviet relations from 1981 to 1991. It is a more thorough account; more than three times as long, heavily footnoted, and (unlike Mr. Schweizer’s) indexed. Dr. Garthoff portrays Ronald Reagan as the dominant figure during the first half of the decade, Mikhail Gorbachev as the star in the second half, and suggests that the course of events themselves have dominated ever since.
Dr. Garthoff argues that the Cold War could conclude only when one side or the other decided to bring it to an end. He suggests that, since U.S. policy was reactive, most likely the war would cease when the Soviets decided to end it. (In a convoluted fashion, Dr. Garthoff seems to be admitting that the Soviets were the villains in the Cold War.) Since it was Mikhail Gorbachev who ultimately decided to conclude the Cold War, he becomes the central figure as Garthoff s drama unfolds. U.S. rhetoric and policies during the early Reagan years, Dr. Garthoff argues, had more to do with domestic politics than actually checking or bringing down the Soviet Union. Indeed, they often were counterproductive and perhaps they even delayed the end of the Cold War. They neither contained communism nor helped to produce victory.
Dr. Garthoff s book is an excellent account—the best yet published—-of the process by which the United States and the Soviet Union made “the great transition” to a post-Cold War era. It is well- researched and heavily documented to the extent that any author can document his work when so much of the relevant material remains classified.
For all that, however, Dr. Garthoff is not particularly clear on why Soviet leaders concluded that they needed to embark on new policy directions—and this despite the tough, anti-Soviet stand of the Reagan administration. There are, of course, two possibilities: first, that Mikhail Gorbachev was a statesman of such unusual sagacity that he put all the rhetoric and bluster aside and moved the world toward a new era of peace; or second, that he recognized that the end-game had begun and there was nothing left to do but surrender and begin the reconstruction of his defeated state. Dr. Garthoff, of course, argues the former.
But he also writes that the Soviet leadership chose Gorbachev as a relatively young economic reformer. Dr. Garthoff notes that Gorbachev’s principal goals when he first came to power were the consolidation of his own political position, and the beginning of extensive economic reform. Foreign policy came third. Gorbachev’s initial economic program sought the “acceleration” and “restructuring” of the Soviet economy in an effort to deal with the advanced technologies that emerged in the mid-1980s. Dr. Garthoff states clearly the precedence of the economic over the diplomatic in Gorbachev’s policies; however, he gives very little attention to such matters. Oil pricing, for example, which plays such a large role in Mr. Schweizer’s book, is barely mentioned in The Great Transition.
The Great Transition is a superb history of how—while Victory is an interesting account of why—the Cold War ended. But neither is entirely persuasive.
The political debates over U.S. foreign policy in the 1980s were so divisive that I do not believe that any history based extensively on public documents and interviews, absent access to still-classified documentation, can offer a convincing case. Reagan administration officials interviewed by Peter Schweizer can be expected to attribute the collapse of the Soviet Union to their policies. And various former Soviet officials have said things, as Mr. Schweizer notes, that support the notion that Reagan’s policies did exacerbate an already appalling economic situation. But Raymond Garthoff has his own Soviets to quote—and they say the exact opposite. Mikhail Gorbachev, who surely knows the truth, is unlikely to say anything that would endanger his place in the pantheons of the world’s Raymond Garthoffs. Furthermore, Dr. Garthoff was one of those experts who predicted that dire consequences would come from Ronald Reagan’s policies, and thus has a professional and personal stake in seeing that history gives as little credit as possible to the Reagan administration for the ending of the Cold War.
Until we have access to the information upon which men such as Yuri Andropov, Mikhail Gorbachev, and Ronald Reagan based their decisions, the debate will continue and readers will be forced to accept one view or the other almost as a matter of faith, or of political predilection. Nonetheless, I would note that since the collapse of the Soviet Union and the release of heretofore classified documentation, the trend has been to support the arguments of those who took or suggested a harder line toward the Soviets. My guess is that something close to the Schweizer thesis will find the most support in the future. It seems odd that Dr. Garthoff focuses on a Soviet system that so valued economic forces, but pays relatively little attention to them.
This leads to another question: was the Soviet Union’s economy in such bad shape that collapse was inevitable? Mr. Schweizer says no, but my answer is affirmative. Communism was, after all, a system devised in the mid-19th century to address the problems of the early Industrial Revolution. Socialist economic systems have failed miserably to meet the demands of the technological revolution of the late 20th century. Mikhail Gorbachev deserves credit for recognizing that fact; he might well have tried to play the Soviet Union’s military card rather than accept the inevitable. But so does Ronald Reagan for pushing the U.S. advantage, thereby accelerating the trend. Note, too, that Mr. Schweizer’s subtitle— The Reagan Administration’s Secret Strategy That Hastened the Collapse of the Soviet Union—implies that it would have happened anyway.
I also think that Peter Schweizer makes a telling point when he notes that so many are ready to give credit to the “vanquished,” Mikhail Gorbachev, but not to the “victor” in the Cold War, Ronald Reagan. Indeed, what Raymond Garthoff and others of his ilk are doing is comparable to ignoring the efforts of Ulysses Grant, William Sherman, and Abraham Lincoln in ending the American Civil War, and praising instead only Robert E. Lee. It was, after all, General Lee who recognized that further resistance was pointless. Had he not surrendered at Appomattox, the war would have continued. But Peter Schweizer deserves some criticism for attributing victory in the Cold War to the commander who happened to be in charge at the time of final victory. Other presidents—both Democrat and Republican—secured earlier, no less critical successes along the long road to victory in the Cold War.
A professor in the Program in Maritime History and Nautical Archaeology at East Carolina University, Dr. Palmer is the author of several works on Cold War history.
American Samurai: Myth, Imagination, and the Conduct of Battle in the First Marine Division, 1941-1951
Craig M. Cameron. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994. 297 pp. Append.
Bib. Ind. Notes. $24.95 ($22.45).
Reviewed by J. Robert Moskin
The U.S. Marine Corps is constructed of smoke and mirrors; its ideals parallel those of Nazi Germany; it causes the “brutalization” of warfare. These are the theses of Craig M. Cameron, a former Marine officer and an assistant professor of history at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia. Warfighting, Dr. Cameron observes, depends on indoctrinating the warrior with a myth of invincibility and the image of the enemy as a beast to be exterminated. He opens with Admiral William F. Halsey’s message to the Marines after the World War II battle for Peleliu: “The sincere admiration of the entire Third Fleet is yours for the hill-blasting, cave-smashing extermination of 11,000 slant-eyed gophers.” Dr. Cameron asserts that such “personal bombast” made possible the Marines’ victories in the Pacific, but also led to the “bar- barization of the war.”
If this book were not laden with dense academic language—e.g., “explicating a theory of broad applicability” and “he dismembered his trinity and created a bipolar framework”—it might stir up a storm.
Anyone who portrays Major Littleton W. T. Waller as “a scapegoat” of Marine- Army rivalry for his tragic 1901 march on Samar might be suspected of turning history on its head. To what purpose? Apparently to try to show consistently that Marine history depends on bells and whistles. The fact is Waller ordered 11 Filipinos who had accompanied his patrol to be shot. A court martial acquitted him, but the press and public insisted he was “The Butcher of Samar.” No scapegoat.
Dr. Cameron hop-skips from the publicity that the Marines won through their victory at Belleau Wood—despite taking nearly 50% casualties—to Smedley D. Butler’s post-World War I circuses and Civil War reenactments. He defines the interwar Marine Corps as “agents of American gunboat diplomacy” and asserts that “Americans usually favored oppression and intolerance.” In Latin America “against enemies perceived as beneath ‘warrior’ status, Marines proved savagely utilitarian and even treacherous.”
Before World War II, Dr. Cameron says, Marines were taught to perform to a standard “so high that it was intended to compensate for the Marines’ sense of inferiority.” They learned this “hypermasculine” behavior by a “process of institutionalized procreation—of consciously ‘making’ Marines” that was closely akin to the process “of ‘reconstructing bodies’ as practiced among German fascists.” The Marine Corps also demanded dedication to “ideals whose imagery seems disquietingly suggestive of contemporary fascist spectacles” and used well "the storm battalion mentality familiar to the German fascist heritage.”
By smearing the core of the Marine Corps as barbaric and fascistic, the effect—if anyone is listening—would be to undermine the Marines’ greatest strength: their esprit de corps. If that is not Dr. Cameron’s purpose, then he is simply making the not very original point that Marines are trained to have a confident self-image, a dependence on their fellows, and a willingness to kill the enemy.
During World War II, Dr. Cameron writes, “The men of the First Marine Division, after the fashion of all military units, looked upon their experiences in battle as a rite of passage.” It was “an escape from female-dominated society.” He insists that the Marines peaked on Guadalcanal early in the war. “The spirit of the Marine Corps could not survive four years of bitter fighting unchanged, and with this change the institution itself lost part of its former identity.”
As the war rolled on, the Americans assembled greater technological resources—from amtracks to flamethrowers, and, ultimately, the atomic bomb. Dr. Cameron perceives this as “the growing barbarization of the Pacific war” and asserts that “American willingness to exploit to their fullest potential technologies of mass destruction was given by a dehumanizing, racist ideology.” He observes that, as the war progressed, it “seemed increasingly to require the utter annihilation of an unreasoning, fanatical enemy.” Overall, what seems to distress him is that both sides ended up fighting less like samurai and relying more on firepower.
When discussing the Marine Corps’ unsuccessful attempt to convince Lieutenant General Simon B. Buckner, Jr., commander of the Tenth Army on Okinawa, to make an amphibious landing behind Japanese lines, Dr. Cameron says “the Army felt victimized by a public relations campaign.” How the proposal of a plausible tactical option was an attempt to score a public relations coup at the Army’s expense, he does not explain.
The men of Dr. Cameron’s Marine Corps are racist, fascist, brutalized, woman-hating killers. He cites enough specific examples to indicate that his wild, illogical generalizations are not wholly insane. But what, in the end, is he trying to tell the reader? That war is hell.
J. Robert Moskin is the author of The U.S. Marine Corps Story (Little, Brown, 1992).
Books of Interest
Navy (Retired)
By Lieutenant Commander Thomas J. Cutler, U.S.
Anytime,
AnyPlace
Antonio Jacobsen’s Painted Ships on Painted Oceans
Harold S. Sniffen. Newport News, VA: The Mariner’s Museum, 1994. 192 pp. Bib. Illus. Ind. Photos. $75.00 ($71.25).
One of the most prolific American marine artists, Antonio Jacobsen painted thousands of sailing and steam vessels as they came and went from New York between 1873 and 1919. More than a hundred of his best paintings and many of his working sketches are presented and accompanied a biography of this accomplished historian and painter.
'I' Any Time, Any Place: A History of USAF Air Commando and Special Operations Forces
Philip D. Chinnery. Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1994. 303 pp. Append. Bib. Gloss. Photos. $29.95 ($23.96).
In 1944, Air Force special operations began when the 1st Air Commando Group was formed to support the British Army’s Chindits in Burma. This book follows the story of the men who have flown special-operations aircraft from that first operation into the jungles of Burma to daring rescues in the deserts of Iraq. The author brings the reader up to date with information on the current configuration and equipment of Air Force Special Operations. Well-illustrated, this is a fitting tribute to the men who vow to fly “any time, any place.”
Battlefield Chaplains: Catholic Priests in World War II
Fr. Donald F. Crosby, S.J. Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas. 1994. 328 pp. Ind. Photos. Notes. $27.50 ($24.75).
In a book that one reviewer describes as “literally pathbreaking,” Father Crosby relates the story of the Catholic priests who served alongside U.S. Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, and Marines during W.orld War II. Although he celebrates their courage, compassion, and humor, this is not a sentimental account of these priests’ service. As the author points out, they could be as bored, scared, and doubtful as the men to whom they ministered. Despite that fact—or perhaps because of it—their efforts to save lives, provide comfort and hope, and help make sense of the war and its sacrifices inspired many during the war—and serve as a source of inspiration today.
Confederate Raider: Raphael Semmes of the Alabama
John M. Taylor. McLean, VA: Brassey’s, 1994. 336 pp. Append. Illus. Ind. Notes. $24.00 ($21.60).
Some revere Raphael Semmes as the Confederacy’s greatest naval hero, others regard him as a mere pirate. There is no doubt, however, that he was one of the most colorful figures of the Civil War and, as captain of the CSS Alabama, one of the most effective commerce raiders in history. His accomplishments during that ship’s two-year cruise—e.g., taking more than 100 Union merchant ships—are all the more impressive when it is realized that most of his crew had no allegiance to the Confederacy and that he was unable to bring his ship into a friendly Southern port. It has been nearly six decades since anyone has written a biography of Raphael Semmes and Taylor’s book is well worth the wait.
Cutwater: Speedboats and Launches From the Golden Age of Boating
Robert Bruce Duncan. Novato, CA: Top Ten Publishing Corporation, 1994. 144 pp. Photos. $29.95 ($28.45).
In the first half of the 20th century, the skill and technical innovation of men like Gar Wood and Chris Craft were manifested in some of the most beautiful—and fastest—boats ever built. This handsome, profusely illustrated volume celebrates this era of boating by profiling more than 35 classic speedboats and motor launches.
The Guinness Book of Espionage
Mark Lloyd. New York: Da Capo Press, 1994.
256 pp. Append. Bib. Gloss. Illus. Ind. Photos. $16.95 ($15.25). Paper.
With chapters like “Facts and Fables in the Early History of Espionage” and “The Silent War: Espionage at Sea” this collection of spy- related information will appeal to a wide audience of espionage fans. With both historical (including sections on World War II and the Cold War) and timely (with sections on commercial espionage and post-Perestroika spying), this unusual book examines the people (e.g., Francis Gary Powers and Benjamin Franklin), the technology (e.g., the infrared line scan and the Markov umbrella gun), and the events (the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Zimmerman Telegram) that make espionage activities fascinating.
The Laws of War: A Comprehensive Collection of Primary Documents on International Laws Governing Armed Conflict
W. Michael Reisman and Chris T. Antoniou (Eds.). New York: Vintage Books, 1994. 480 pp. Append. Ind. Notes. $13.00 ($11.70). Paper.
News of foreign policy decisions often contains references to such things as “the Geneva Conventions,” the “Hague Conventions,” or the “Charter of the United Nations.” But few readers know what these documents actually say. This collection of international law documents alleviates this problem by bringing many of these important documents together. When is a nation justified in going to war? What weapons can be developed and stockpiled? How does the world view “ethnic cleansing”? These questions and many more are answered in this informative collection that Eugene V. Rostow calls “invaluable . . . [for] all military officers and other officials concerned with the enforcement of the laws of war.”
1942: “Issue in Doubt”: Symposium on the War in the Pacific by the Admiral Nimitz Museum
Wayman C. Mullins (Ed.). Austin, TX: Eakin Press, 1994. 330 pp. Bib. Ind. Maps. Notes.
Photos. $29.95 ($28.45).
The first year of World War II in the Pacific was filled with dramatic pivotal events: the Battle of the Java Sea, the Doolittle Raid on Tokyo, the Battles of the Coral Sea and Midway, and the campaigns on Guadalcanal and New Guinea campaign. Based on the contributions of participants in the titled conference, Mullins has constructed a revealing account of those watershed battles and campaigns.
No Bugles, No Drums: An Oral History of the Korean War
Rudy Tomedi. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1994. 266 pp. Ind. Photos. $14.95 ($13.45).
Paper.
For those who believe that reruns of M*A*S*H are the last word on the Korean War, this collection of first-hand accounts is must reading. Infantrymen, sailors, fliers, black soldiers in an army just beginning to tear down the barriers of segregation, a graves registration sergeant, and a prisoner-of-war all tell what it was like to serve in a war that for years was euphemistically called a “police action.” Particularly insightful are the revelations of some of these veterans about what happened after they came home.
The Passage
David Poyer. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1995. 528 pp. $22.95 ($20.65).
David Poyer’s latest novel involves his now- familiar character, Dan Lenson, in a confrontation over the Cuban refugee problem. All of the elements that readers have come to expect of a Poyer novel are here— modem naval technology, a realistic portrayal of shipboard life, and stimulating intrigue— but this one has a new twist: the issue of homosexuals in the armed forces. This book will no doubt raise a few eyebrows as it confronts a sensitive issue.
& Sea Soldiers in the Cold War: Amphibious Warfare, 1945-1991
Col Joseph H. Alexander, USMC (Ret.), and LtCol Merrill D. Bartlett, USMC (Ret.).
Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1994. 320 pp. Bib. Ind. Maps. Photos. $32.95 ($26.36).
This book is an operational history of amphibious warfare in the Cold War, principally as refined by the superpowers and their allies. The authors examine the amphibious doctrine, organization, specialized ships and landing craft, and force deployments as part of the naval prosecution of Cold War political objectives. A strong case is made that amphibious forces are of enduring utility, citing the Korean War to counter the post World War II theory that large-scale amphibious operations were a thing of the past. Other examples— including the Persian Gulf War and the Falk- lands Conflict—show that amphibious projection of power has been used successfully throughout the Cold War era. Such an incisive examination of amphibious warfare in the modern era will be a crucial reference for military officers and historians, defense analysts, academics, and journalists.
Straits of Messina
VAdm. William P. Mack, USN (Ret.). Baltimore, MD: Nautical & Aviation Publishing, 1994.
355 pp. $22.95 ($21.80).
In Admiral Mack’s fifth novel, the crew of the fictional destroyer USS Lawrence battles the enemy and the elements in the European theater during World War II. Captain Horace
Phelps, his officers, and his men dodge mines, torpedoes, and dive-bombers as they confront the Axis in the confined waters of the Mediterranean Sea.
Sumner-Gearing-C\ass Destroyers: Their Design, Weapons, and Equipment
Robert F. Sumrall. Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1995. pp. Append. Bib. Illus. Ind. Notes. Photos. $59.95 ($47.96).
Designed and built in the midst of World War II and later modernized in response to the exigencies of the Cold War, the destroyers of Allen M. Sumner (DD-692) class and the long-hulled Gearing (DD-710) class were the workhorses of the fleet during several critical decades. This design history depicts and analyzes these important ships in detail, showing how they emerged as a product of world events and bureaucratic processes to meet the challenges of a rapidly changing global naval situation.
U.S. Navy Aircraft 1921-1941 and U.S. Marine Corps Aircraft 1914-1959: Two Classics in One Volume
William T. Larkins. Atglen, PA: Schiffer Mili- tary/Aviation History, 1995. 596 pp. Append. Ind. Photos. Tables. $39.95 ($35.95).
Long out of print, these two valuable books— resurrected together in one volume—provide information not available in other sources. Hundreds of photographs and an abundance of data reveal many of the details of the golden age of naval aviation.
War Against Japan
Sidney C. Moody, Jr. and the Photographers of the Associated Press. Novato, CA: Presidio, 1994. 192 pp. Illus. Ind. Maps. Photos. $19.95 ($17.95).
More than 100 photos from the files of the Associated Press and numerous quotes and anecdotes accompany a narrative account of the Pacific War. The combination of stark images of war and an incisive writing style make this book a hard-hitting and thought- provoking treatment of a familiar yet never commonplace subject.
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