My Amazon Review of Hal Brands' Ed. "The New Makers of Modern Strategy...."

Thinking Strategically

 

Johns Hopkins professor Hal Brands has updated Peter Paret’s 1986 “Makers of Modern Strategy,” which in turn updated Edward Mead Earle’s 1943 version. It is a very long book consisting of 45 separate essays by different authors that runs 1168 pages. In my opinion this is way too long for the average educated lay reader. Nevertheless, there is much to be learned and I will highlight below a few of the essays that caught my attention.

 

Walter Russell Mead’s discussion of Thucydides is on the mark because it deals with the timeless question that the fear of a rising power (Athens) engenders in an established power (Sparta). I wish he spent more time on Graham Allison’s parallel thoughts on the U.S. vis-à-vis China. (Shulmaven: My Amazon Review of Graham Allison's "Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides's Trap" ) Matthew Kroenig’s essay on Machiavelli’s realism is spot on. Further he understands that despite Machiavelli’s bad rap, he was a republican at heart seeking to unify Italy. (Shulmaven: My Amazon Review of Philip Bobbitt's "The Garments of Court and Palace: Machiavelli and the World that he Made")

 

I was disappointed in Hew Strachan’s essay on Clausewitz. To be sure he emphasizes that war is the extension of politics by other means, but he is all to brief on friction, the fog of war and the center of gravity of the enemy. He does, however, mentions Col. Harry Summers’ Clausewitzian critique of U.S. military policy in Vietnam.

 

The essay by Charles Edel on John Quincy Adams’ realism hits the mark. Understanding the U.S. was not ready for the global stage, Adams utilizes the implicit support of the British navy to establish the Monroe Doctrine and further avoids direct U.S. involvement in the Latin American and Greek revolutions. At the time the U.S. could rightly only offer moral support.

 

I didn’t realize how influential Alfred Taylor Mahan’s treatise in sea power until I read John Maurer’s essay. Mahan’s influence extended well beyond the United States to Germany and Japan with global consequences. Robert Kagan’s essay on Woodrow Wilson casts him, not Theodore Roosevelt, as the architect of American global strategy for the 20^th Century. Wilson comes off far more realistic than I expected as he protected U.S. interests at Versailles.

 

Nobel Laureate Thomas Schelling’s theories of nuclear deterrence and flexible response are examined by Eric Edelman. Schelling’s theories were in contradiction to the Eisenhower Administration’s massive retaliation response to potential Soviet aggression. One of the problems, as Edelman notes, is that sometimes the message you want to send is misinterpreted by the enemy, which is what occurred during the Cuban missile crisis. The Russians thought the embargo was a far bigger deal than how the Kennedy Administration viewed it.

 

Mark Moyar’s essay on U.S. strategy in Vietnam accuses the Johnson Administration of refusing to listen to its military advisors who wanted to go all-in at the start of the war. Simply put, gradual escalation failed. However, it is not clear that Johnson would have had the political support for what his advisors advocated. Nevertheless, this debate echoes to this day with the Biden policy with respect to Ukraine. Biden has been a gradualist, but ultimately, he is doing far more than what he thought practical at the start of the war.

 

I am glad that Dmitry Adamsky has given credit to Andrew Marshall, the long-time Pentagon guru of the net assessment project. If any one person has been the architect of U.S. military strategy in a networked age, it is Marshall. (Shulmaven: My Amazon Review of Andrew Krepinevich's and Barry Watts' "The Last Warrior: Andrew Marshall and the Shaping of Modern American Defense Strategy")

 

The book ends with a summation essay by Yale’s John Lewis Gaddis. It is a well thought out summary, but where he errs is that he gives too much credit to Franklin Roosevelt’s recognition of the Soviet Union as a strategic decision that would play out in World War II. To me, it is an ex-post rationalization where Roosevelt’s motivation had more to do with the hope of near-term trade deals.

 

I know I have only scratched the surface of Brands’ book, but if the reader puts in the effort there is much to be learned here.

For the full Amazon URL see: Thinking Strategically (amazon.com)

My Amazon Review of Dennis Ross' "Doomed to Succeed: The U.S. Israeli Relationship from Truman to Obama"

Myth Buster

Diplomat and former national Security Council member Dennis Ross has busted three important myths that have been guiding U.S. –Israeli policy since 1948. They are:

1   1)  Distance from Israel engenders Arab cooperation towards the U.S.  Ross convincingly notes that Arab states follow their own national interest irrespective of U.S. relations with Israel.

2   2)    U.S. cooperation with Israel will lose Arab support.  Fails for the same reason as above. And it doesn’t explain the growing Israeli-Saudi rapprochement.

3   3)    Solving the Israeli-Palestinian issue will lead to a transformation of the Middle East.  This myth obviously fails because settling that issue has nothing to do with the ongoing Sunni-Shia split.

Ross presents us with a clear-eyed view of U.S. –Israeli relations since 1948 as he thoughtfully reviews the policies of all of the presidents from Truman to Obama. Ross had a ringside seat in the formation of policy from Carter to Obama and he worked for all of the presidents since Carter with the exception of George W. Bush in various Pentagon, State and National Security Council capacities where he was for the most part up to his eyeballs in U.S. – Israeli relations. Of special note for me was that he worked for the legendary Andrew Marshall in the Pentagon’s Office of Net Assessment and he was Director of Policy Planning in the State Department. He is especially good when he was “inside the room” where the decisions were actually made.

He characterizes the various administrations as having policies of either cooperation or competition with Israel and those policies typically alternated. For example Truman was cooperative while Eisenhower was competitive; both Kennedy and Johnson were cooperative while Nixon initially was competitive. However when Nixon saw the potential of Soviet arms winning the 1973 war, he tilted dramatically in favor of Israel. Thus objectively he was cooperative. On the other hand, in Ross’ view, Carter was outright hostile to Israel. Ross theorizes that Carter felt so guilty about not fully supporting the civil rights revolution in his home state of Georgia; he tilted U.S. policy towards the Palestinians.  In contrast Reagan had a deep affinity towards Israel establishing a strategic cooperation arrangement. However that did not stop him in pushing through the AWACS deal over Israeli opposition and in censuring Israel for its invasion of Lebanon.

Although President George H.W. Bush moved the relationship back towards a more competitive one and was extremely unpopular with American Jewry, he continued the strategic cooperation agreement and worked a diplomatic miracle in keeping Israel out of the Iraq War all the while Israel was under rocket attack. Ross has extraordinarily kind words for the first President Bush.

President Clinton also had a deep affinity for Israel and thought of Israeli President Rabin as the father he didn’t have. He was crushed when Rabin was assassinated. He also learned not to trust the Palestinians after a series of Camp David meetings.

President George W. Bush continued the cooperative relationship with Israel while President Obama continued the high degree of cooperation on the military side; he was far from cooperative on the diplomatic side. On his first trip to the Middle East for his Cairo speech, he intentionally avoided going to Israel. Ross’ book ends before the U.S. abstention on the Security Council resolution condemning Israel for its settlement policy.

Two thoughts come through loud and clear from Ross’ important book. First the Israeli’s live up to their biblical forebears by being a “stiff-necked people.” It is hard to make a deal giving up tangible land for an intangible peace. In contrast the Palestinians come across a duplicitous. They say the right words, but when it comes down to it, they won’t make a deal. For them it remains “from the river to the sea.” They just can’t accept Israel as a Jewish State.

Ross has written an important book that should be read by all serious students of the Middle East. I highly recommend it.

The full amazon URL appears at:

https://www.amazon.com/review/R38N0PQ2QT5257/ref=pe_1098610_137716200_cm_rv_eml_rv0_rv