Reviews (Books & DVD) – Page 353 – Public Intelligence Blog

Valuable, Dangerous, Incomplete, Buy It,

November 11, 2000

Thomas Pack

The bottom line on this little book is that it merits buying and throwing in your suitcase if you are the kind of person that needs to do your own research from the road. In a nutshell, it is: 1) valuable because it brings together in one place a very easy to read and use guide to a wide range of Internet-based resources; 2) dangerous because it may tempt business managers to do their own research from a hotel room rather than rely on real information professionals; 3) incomplete in many ways–two obvious ones are its neglect of the meta-search engines such as Compernic and its oversights of the Burwell Worldwide Directory of Information Brokers; and 4) worth buying as a light-weight (double entrendre intended) reference. I like it, it is worth the price and still relevant today.

2000/11/112009/12/04

Review: Confessions of a Venture Capitalist–Inside the High-Stakes World of Start-up Financing

5 Star, Banks, Fed, Money, & Concentrated Wealth, Capitalism (Good & Bad)

Excellent Overview with Plenty of Useful Information,

November 11, 2000

Ruthann Quindlen

I've been down this road, including competive selection to present my company and vision to three venture capital fairs. This book, which was bought as a quick-read airplane book, has become a fundamental reference. It is heavily marked up, has three paper clips (very unusual) as I look at it, and has had a very constructive impact on both my thinking and my attitude. This book has not only helped me refine our business plan, but when I feel like we are straying, I can pull it down and do a quick revisitation of “the fundamentals”. This is a serious helpful book–do not be put off by shallow reviews.

2000/11/112009/12/04

Review: The American Encounter–The United States And The Making Of The Modern World: Essays From 75 Years Of Foreign Affairs

5 Star, Diplomacy

A Gem of Lasting Value, Especially Relevant Today,

November 11, 2000

James F. Jr. Hoge

This compilation of the “best of the best” articles from the journal Foreign Affairs is a real gem that is especially relevant today as America continues to neglect its international responsibilities and certain Senators and Congressman have the ignorant temerity to brag that they don't own nor need an American passport. The conclusion of the July 1932 article by Edwin F. Gay, “The Great Depression”, is instructive: “The world war affirmed the international political responsibilities of the United States; the world depression demonstrates the economic interdependence of the United States with other states. It cannot be a hermit nation.” With four seminal articles from each decade (1920's forward), including just about every great name in the international discussions of the century, this book is a fundamental reference point for those who would dare to craft a vibrant foreign policy for the United States in the 21st Century. The book ends with several thoughtful pieces including, most fittingly, an interview with Lee Kuan Yew of Singapore on culture as destiny, an article whose subtitle might have been “How extended families and the collective good still matter.”

2000/10/132009/12/04

Review: Anticipating Ethnic Conflict

2 Star, Culture, Research, Games, Models, & Simulations, Insurgency & Revolution, Intelligence (Government/Secret)

Lightweight, Ignores History, Without Useful Sources,

October 13, 2000

Ashley J. Tellis

his is a simple-minded book that manages to obscure the basics with convoluted language. It also achieves a remarkable feat, failing to mention history as a relevant factor in understanding and anticipating ethnic conflict in the 21st Century. It does nothing whatsover to suggest to the interested analyst, for whom this “template” was designed, how to operationalize the few relevant factors the book identifies, and does not provide any discussion at all of sources and methods helpful to studying ethnic conflict. There is no bibliography and no index. The footnotes are lightweight.

2000/10/132009/12/04

Review: Sources of Conflict in the 21st Century–Strategic Flashpoints and U.S. Strategy

2 Star, Asymmetric, Cyber, Hacking, Odd War, Threats (Emerging & Perennial)

Mostly Gibberish, Nuggets Too Far Down to Dig Up,

October 13, 2000

Zalmay Khalilzad

There are no doubt a few nuggets of wisdom in this book, but they are buried too deeply in bureaucratic gibberish to be worth digging up. This book has no bibliography, no index, mediocre footnotes, no serious useful conclusions or strategic summary, and a disturbing combination of American-centrism (on page 71: “In the Asian continent….(t)he first driver will be the future U.S. role in Asia.”) with a lack of intelligent presentation. There are exactly three figures and seven tables in this 336 page book, when there should have been at least 30 tables and figures illustrating specific sources of conflict in relation to specific countries. The World Conflict and Human Rights Map (8 pages of graphics and 8 pages of fine print) out of Leiden University does vastly more to inform than does this book. This book should never, ever have been published in its present form–I venture to say that if it were condensed to 150 pages and properly edited, with graphics and good synthesis, it might be worthy of a second look. Time is the most precious commodity in the world–RAND managers and editors need to get serious about how they present possibly useful information to experts who want to know what RAND thinks, but cannot spare the time to get past cumbersome undisiplined–even lazy–preparations. The topic of this book is extremely important–those who would invest their scarce time and money in doing research in this area deserve better from those who put together this book.

2000/10/132009/12/04

Review: Policing the New World Disorder–Peace Operations and Public Security

4 Star, Atrocities & Genocide, Complexity & Resilience, Culture, Research, Force Structure (Military), Humanitarian Assistance, Insurgency & Revolution, Justice (Failure, Reform), Peace, Poverty, & Middle Class, Security (Including Immigration), Stabilization & Reconstruction, Threats (Emerging & Perennial), Truth & Reconciliation, Voices Lost (Indigenous, Gender, Poor, Marginalized)

From Missile Gap to Cop Gap–Heart of Stability Operations,

October 13, 2000

Robert B. Oakley

EDITED 18 September 2007 to add links to other books. Still Ref A.

In excruciating detail, with substantial commonality between a number of case studies, this book examines the traditional public security (police, internal order) function in relation to failed states and external interventions.

This is not a book about the larger issue of when and how to intervene in the internal affairs of states beset by internal conflict and it is not a book about the actual conditions around the world that require some form of imposed or reinforced public order. Rather, it is the most detailed book one could hope for on the need for an international law enforcement reserve that is capable of rapidly filling the gap in local public police services that occurs when the indigenous capability collapses and traditional military forces arrive unprepared to meet this need.

All of the case studies are world-class, with primary source detail unlike any normally seen in the literature. All agree that this is a “force structure” issue that no government and certainly not the United Nations, has mastered, but most give due credit to UN civilian police operations for being the best available model upon which to build a future capability.

The summary of conclusions by Ambassador Oakley and Colonel Professor Dziedzic are alone worth the price of the book. If the Cold War era might be said to have revolved around early perceptions of a “missile gap”, the 21st Century with its Operations Other Than War (OOTW) could reasonably be said to have two issues-natural conditions such as depleted water resources, which is not the book's focus, and the “globo-cop gap”, which is-the book documents in a very compelling manner the fact that there is a major capabilities (and intelligence) chasm between preventive diplomacy on the one side, and armed military forces on the other, and that closure of this gap is essential if we are to improve our prospects for rescuing and maintaining public order around the world.

The capabilities of U.S. military police and civil affairs specialists are touched on by several pieces, but I for one would have liked to see more emphasis on what changes in their force structure is required-my understanding is that we have not increased their numbers in the aftermath of the Cold War despite the fact that these units are being used up all over the world, without relief.

The conclusion highlights the need for constabulary forces, and helpfully identifies the following specific national capabilities as being relevant (in this reader's interpretation) to a future standing international gendarmerie: U.S. Military Police and Special Forces, French gendarmerie, Spanish Guardia Civil, Chilean carabineros, Argentine gendarmes, Italian carabinieri, Dutch Royal Mariechaussee). I would add the Belgian Gendarme, the first national force to establish an open source intelligence network across all police precincts in the entire country.

It is clear from both the conclusion and the case studies that this constabulary-police capabilities requirement needs agreed-upon international concepts, doctrine, training, earmarked resources including surge capabilities and transport, and so on. We do not appear to have learned any lasting lessons from the various interventions, in that civil affairs and military police continue to be “last in line” for embarkation into areas where military forces are being introduced, and there is no U.S. program within Program 150 where we can demonstrate a real commitment to “law and order” as part of our contribution to peace in the 21st Century.

The book lacks an index, a typical shortcoming of think tank and defense educational institutions, and this is a major flaw that should be corrected in the next printing. This book is “Ref A” for every foreign service, military, and law enforcement officer interested in doing a better job of integrating diplomatic, gendarmerie, and military capabilities in every clime and place.

2000/10/132009/12/04

Review: Creating the Secret State–The Origins of the Central Intelligence Agency, 1943-1947

5 Star, Empire, Sorrows, Hubris, Blowback, Executive (Partisan Failure, Reform), Intelligence (Government/Secret)

Deep Insider-Doctoral History, Relevant Today,

October 13, 2000

David F. Rudgers

This is an admirable and unusual work, of doctoral-level quality in its sources and methods, while also reflecting the professional intelligence career status of the author. It complements Amy Zegart's broader book, Flawed By Design, in an excellent manner. This book, focusing as it does on the CIA alone, and on internal sources not readily available to Zegart, fills a major gap in our understanding of the CIA's origins. The author excels at demonstrating both the actual as opposed to the mythical origins of the agency, and pays particular heed to the role of the Bureau of the Budget and that Bureau's biases and intentions. At the end of it all, the author notes that the agency was moving in controversial directions within four years of its birth, quickly disturbing Harry Truman, who is quoted as saying, twenty-years after the fact (in 1963), “For some time I have been distributed by the way CIA has been diverted from its original assignment. It has become an operational arm and at times a policy-making arm of Government….I never had any thought when I set up the CIA that it would be injected into peacetime cloak-and-dagger operations.” The author himself goes on to conclude that “the nature of the new threats and the revolution in information acquisition and dissemination have thrown traditional ways of intelligence organization, collection, evaluation, and distribution into question. … CIA has entered the second half-century of its existence striving to avoid the fate of its OSS parent. In the process, it is groping for new missions and purposes while blighted by the legacy of its past derelictions, and while operating amid a rapidly changing global environment and technological revolution that are rendering its sources, methods, organizations, and mystique obsolete.” I would hasten to add, as my own book documents, that we will always have hidden evil in the world and will always needs spies and secret methods to some extent, but this book, combining academic rigor with insider access, must surely give the most intelligent of our policy, legislative, and intelligence managers pause, for it very carefully documents the possibility that 75% of what we are doing today with secret sources and methods need not and should not be done. This book has much to offer those who would learn from history.

Category: Reviews (Books & DVD)

Review: 10 Minute Guide to Business Research on the Net

Review: Confessions of a Venture Capitalist–Inside the High-Stakes World of Start-up Financing

Review: The American Encounter–The United States And The Making Of The Modern World: Essays From 75 Years Of Foreign Affairs

Review: Anticipating Ethnic Conflict

Review: Sources of Conflict in the 21st Century–Strategic Flashpoints and U.S. Strategy

Review: Policing the New World Disorder–Peace Operations and Public Security

Review: Creating the Secret State–The Origins of the Central Intelligence Agency, 1943-1947