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Book Review: Armies in Retreat: Chaos, Cohesion, and Consequences
Get PDFEditors: Timothy G. Heck and Walker D. Mills
Reviewed by Dr. J.P. Clark, associate professor of strategy, Basic Strategic Art Program, US Army War College
Dr. J.P. Clark provides a thoughtful analysis of this anthology on retreat, an under-studied topic in the US military. The book covers case studies spanning from the ancient world to the US withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021 and even discusses retreat in the context of cyberspace. Clark employs his expertise as a strategy professor to give a valuable critique, highlighting the book’s merits (for example, the “intriguing angle” of the Gallipoli Campaign analysis) and some weaknesses (such as “a conflation of retreat with defeat”). Overall, Clark concludes that the “volume as whole” is “well worth readers’ time,” which he supports through his engaging expert assessment.https://press.armywarcollege.edu/parameters_bookshelf/1046/thumbnail.jp
US-Taiwan Relations and the Future of the Liberal Order
Get PDFStrengthening ties with Taiwan is the best chance the United States has to preserve the liberal international order in Asia and improve its security relative to China. This study offers a normative perspective on how Taiwan can contribute to US-led international institutions and the Asian regional order and reduce conflict risk. It concludes with recommendations for the United States and its partners to integrate Taiwan into multilateral institutions in Asia
Ukraine: The Case for Urgency
Get PDFIf the United States and its allies seek to deny Vladimir Putin an objective victory in the Russia-Ukraine War, they must commit to providing sufficient aid to the Ukrainian army soon because the window of opportunity to provide sufficient resources is narrow—and closing. This article argues that the West must articulate a reasonable strategy for Ukrainian victory now, as a failure in Ukraine will weaken relationships between the United States and Western European states and their global partners while emboldening state and non-state actors to threaten the rules-based international order
Book Review: The World: A Family History of Humanity
Get PDFAuthor: Simon Sebag Montefiore
Reviewed by Lieutenant Colonel Zachary Griffiths (US Army), Special Assistant to the Chief of Staff of the Army
The Harding Project’s Lieutenant Colonel Zachary Griffiths reviews this best-selling, epic in scope history of the world framed by powerful families and gives an honest evaluation of the book’s potential value (and shortcomings) for soldiers. Griffiths notes that the book provides insight into the “richness of the human experience” with “vignettes to give color to historical military campaigns and humanize those campaigns’ participants.”https://press.armywarcollege.edu/parameters_bookshelf/1057/thumbnail.jp
Restoring Priority on Cultural Skill Sets for Modern Military Professionals
Get PDFThe Department of Defense has failed to distinguish and sustain cultural education relative to foreign language and regional expertise, putting servicemembers at a competitive disadvantage in developing skills to engage other cultures. This article draws on recent retrospective publications and multidisciplinary social science perspectives but goes beyond them to argue for social science approaches to culture, department-wide efforts to revive culture education, and an improved transition of sociocultural research to practice. Policy and military practitioners will benefit from understanding how culture-general skills complement other important skills in the human domain and from implementing its recommendations
The Challenges of Next-Gen Insurgency
Get PDFStates and their security forces often assume future insurgency will be versions of Mao Zedong’s “people’s war,” and counterinsurgency remains backward looking without a theoretical foundation to situate it within broader global security environment and armed-conflict trends. Next-gen insurgency will be networked, swarming, global, and focused on narrative-centric conflict and integrated cost imposition, and social media and the virtual world will be its central battlespaces. No nation has fully grasped that the “people’s war” reflected the military, economic, political, informational, technological, and social conditions of its time. Through an examination of insurgency’s nature, character, patterns, and trends and a thought experiment about next-gen insurgency, states and their security and intelligence services can think about what insurgency will be (rather than what it has been) and prepare
Book Review: The Ballad of Roy Benavidez: The Life and Times of America’s Most Famous Hispanic War Hero
Get PDFAuthor: William Sturkey
Reviewed by Dr. Wylie W. Johnson, chaplain, colonel (US Army, retired), US Army War College Class of 2010
Dr. Wylie W. Johnson presents a review of a recent publication on one of the most celebrated Hispanic war heroes in US history—Medal of Honor recipient Roy Benavidez. Johnson overviews author William Sturkey’s biography of Benavidez, which discusses Benavidez’s “perseverance against racial prejudice, poverty, substandard education, bureaucratic inertia, popular bias against patriotism, anti-military sentiment, and physical disabilities” and also his heroism in the Vietnam War and his lifetime of service afterward. Johnson recommends the book as “military leaders need to be reminded about our heroes and honor the examples they set.”https://press.armywarcollege.edu/parameters_bookshelf/1065/thumbnail.jp
Book Review: How the Army Made Britain a Global Power: 1688–1815
Get PDFAuthor: Jeremy Black
Reviewed by Dr. James D. Scudieri, senior research historian, Strategic Studies Institute, US Army War College
Senior research historian Dr. James D. Scudieri provides a detailed outline of Jeremy Black’s history of the British Army from 1688 to 1815, highlighting the author’s “theme that the British Army made the empire as much as the Royal Navy—through projecting Landpower.” Scudieri also notes the book’s value to American readers, writing, “American security professionals will see parallel insights from this small regular army within a parliamentary system” and that the “US Army’s evolution in a republic that centers the military establishment in Congress, including wartime expansion and peacetime reductions, developed from this British basis.”https://press.armywarcollege.edu/parameters_bookshelf/1073/thumbnail.jp