Brilliant on Numbers, Need Same Focus on WHAT We Buy,
August 30, 2000
Daniel Goure
The authors provide compelling evidence of a forthcoming “train wreck” in U.S. defensive capabilities, and make a compelling case for increasing the defense budget by $60-100B a year for a mixture of preserving readiness; acquiring mid-term capabilities needed to replace a 20-30 year old mobility, weapons, and communications base force; and implementing the Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA). This is a well-documented and heavily fact-laden book-the authors as individuals and the case they make in general terms-must be heeded by the next President and the next Congress.
Where the book does not go, and a companion book by the same authors would be of great value, is into the detail of
WHAT threat,
WHAT force structure.
They accept, for example, the Navy's 304-ship Navy that keeps adding gigantic carriers and does nothing for littoral warfare or putting Marines within 24 hours of any country instead of 6 days.
Similarly, they accept Air Force emphasis on fewer and fewer bigger and more sophisticated platforms of dubious utility in a 21st Century environment that requires long loiter, ranges of several hundred nautical miles without refueling, full lift in hot humid weather, and survivability in the face of electromagnetic weapons in the hands of thugs.
This book demonstrates a clear mastery of defense economics, and it is an important contribution to the bottom line: our national defense is desperately underfunded, and this must be in the “top three” issues facing the 43rd President and the 107th Congress.
What we buy, and why, has not yet been answered to my satisfaction.
Expensive, Ineffective, Unrealistic, But Interesting,
August 29, 2000
William A. Owens
This is a well-intentioned book and the best available manifesto for the “system of systems” that can integrate intelligence, precision strike, and communications technologies by exploiting the Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA). On balance it provides several important contributions, but its core assumption that technology can be a substitute for people is flawed, as is its completely insupportable assumption that our allies might be willing to follow us down this very expensive and dubious interoperability trail. Perhaps even more troubling, the school of thought represented by this book suffers from the severe delusion that everything that needs to be seen can be seen by national technical means, and processed in time to be relevant to the commander. Nothing could be further from the truth-fully 90% of what is needed to succeed in today's environment is not in digital form, not in English, and not collectible by technical means. The most important point made in the whole book, and here I give the author high marks, is its compelling description of why military reform cannot be achieved from within: because there is no decision process by which a “joint” leadership can determine force structure and weapons acquisition without fear of service politics. His approach to reform, shifting from a focus on system stovepipes to joint mission areas, is valuable and could be helpful in defense transformation if it were cleansed of its unhealthy obsession with expensive technology and forced to face the fact that three-quarters of our challenges in this new century are Operations Other Than War (OOTW) that call into question virtually every dollar being spent under existing RMA auspices. The book is also helpful in pointing out the redundancy between the four services, the 12:1 support ratio in personnel, and the need to embed information handling capabilities in all future mobility and weapons systems. Perhaps most disappointingly, this book by a distinguished Admiral and apparent out-of-the-box thinker fails to outline a force structure, including a 450-ship Navy, capable of dealing effectively with all four levels of war in every clime and place.
Helpful Off-Set to Conventional Wisdom (Inherent Blindness),
August 27, 2000
Noam Chomsky
This small 65-page paperback is part of The Open Media Pamphlet Series. In three separate articles by internationally-recognized humanists, it makes three important points: first, that U.S. policies toward “rogue states” comprised largely of embargoes that result in infant mortality, local epidemics, starvation, infertility, and so on, are a direct violation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights; second, that the U.S. appears to have been both an active practitioner of bio-chemical warfare resulting in the deaths and deformation of hundreds of thousands of South Vietnamese civilians (Agent Orange) as well as a passive practitioner in biological warfare qua disease promulgation through embargo and non-intervention; and third, that the U.S. has consistently refused to abide by international arbitration and other means for settling disputes, but instead generally utilized force as its preferred vehicle for getting its own way, regardless of international agreements to which it has been a signatory. Too few write credibly in this vein, and this pamphlet is therefore a helpful off-set to the more conventional wisdom that comes from the military-industrial complex and the politicians this complex supports.
Great Approach, Missed Some Big Ones, Still a Real Value,
August 19, 2000
John Keegan
Zones of Conflict has not yet been surpassed by other published works, mostly because others focus on specific regions. This is still a valuable work, largely because of the process and the framework it provides for thinking about geographically and culturally based sources of conflict. Published in 1986 it missed some big ones: Somalia, Rwandi-Burundi, the Congo, the break-up of Yugoslavia with the Kosovo aftermath. We'll give them credit for the Gulf flashpoint. What's the point? No one can predict with any certainty where major humanitarian conflicts will emerge, but if one combines Keegan and Wheatcroft's approach with environmental and economic and social overlays (such as are offered by several other “States of the World” endeavors), then a useful starting point is available for asking two important questions: what kinds of conflicts will we be dealing with, under what kinds of terrain and cultural conditions; and second, given those realities, what kinds of forces and capabilties should we be developing? Against this model, the U.S. Joint 2020 vision falls woefully short, and the NATO alliance appears equally unprepared for a future that will be characterized by “dirty little wars” well out of NATO's area but highly relevant to the well-being of the NATO population. One might also make the somewhat puckish point that it does not take a $30 billion dollar a year spy community to create a common-sense strategic document such as this–it can be had for under $20.
Solid History of Two Successes, Hidden Story of Failure,
June 28, 2000
Stuart Herrington
This book, highly recommended by the Association of Former Intelligence Officers (AFIO), grabbed me from the beginning. Stuart, whom I know as one of the most thoughtful and self-effacing Colonels in military intelligence, wisely chooses to focus on the two most important cases in recent U.S. military history. For a catalog of all the others, see “Merchants of Treason” by Tom Allen and Norman Polmar. A few things about this valuable book bear emphasis here: 1) early on, the FBI tried to shut the CIA out of the first case, and Col Herrington very wisely insisted on including them–leading to critical CIA contributions without which the case would not have been solved; 2) counterintelligence is incredible tedious, boring, *hard* work, and it takes a special kind of commander to maintain morale under such circumstances; 3) both Defense and Justice lawyers screwed up big-time by not being aware that military intelligence activities in Austria were illegal in Austria and therefore warranted early involvement of the Austrian government–this ignorance cost us heavily; 4) allowing soldiers to “homestead” in sensitive intelligence positions anywhere is very dangerous; and finally–bringing to bear some personal knowledge here–5) success is temporary, failure is forever…I'll wager the Army's Foreign Counterintelligence Activity has gone downhill since this book was written, and that the old “go along easy” habits of those that have been homesteading too long at FCA are again rearing their ugly heads. Counterintelligence is still a backwater, and any commander, however exceptional, is going to need strong Service-level support if they are to keep their senior civil servant (bureaucratic) elements in line. This book is an excellent touchstone for Congressional members and staff, Service and DoD chiefs who care little for counterintelligence but need to do more, and for citizens who need to know that counterintelligence is on the “front lines” every day, in every clime and place.
Twelve Step Guide To Good Business in New Economy,
May 29, 2000
Larry Downes
Twelve principles of killer app design: 1) Outsource to the customer, 2) Cannibalize your markets; 3) Treat each customer as a market segment of one; 4) Create communities of value; 5) Replace rude interfaces with learning interfaces; 6) Ensure continuity for the customer, not yourself; 7) Give away as much information as you can; 8) Structure every transaction as a joint venture; 9) Treat your assets as liabilities; 10) Destroy your value chain; 11) Manage innovation as a portfolio of options; 12) Hire the children.
No doubt largely written by staff assistants, this book can be considered a watered-down version of Microsoft's game plan for taking over the world, i.e. being the operating system for everything. Each chapter has a useful figure that sums up business lessons and methods for diagnosing one of the aspect's of one's digital nervous system. This is a great airplane book. Like him or not, when the 900 lb digital gorrilla writes a book, we all have to read it.
