Call for Professional Reading Lists

[Umar Al-Mokhtār]

For the Common Defense by Allan R. Millett and Peter Maslowski

A concise, yet excellent, overview of American military history from 1607 through Desert Storm.

US Army Counterinsurgency and Contingency Operations Doctrine, 1860-1941

and

U.S. Army Counterinsurgency and Contingency Operations Doctrine, 1942-1976.

Both by Andrew J. Birtle

How “big” Army has dealt with the many small wars it has fought since the Civil War and how the soldiers involved not only fought but often found themselves in roles as governors, constables, judges, diplomats, explorers, colonizers, educators, administrators, engineers, and more. Birtle basically points out that while the Army continually devotes most of its planning and training to “big” war it has actually spent most of its time involved in “small” wars.

[Steve Blair]

If you want to look at the issues faced by the Army both before and after the Civil War, Robert Utley's books "Frontiersmen in Blue" and "Frontier Regulars" should be at the top of the list. Both will help put some of those cavalry paintings in context...something that is sorely lacking from most discussions about the period.

Utley's books show both the organizational challenges the army faced during the major Indian Wars, as well as the governmental issues (relations with the Indian Bureau, competing goals and objectives for field operations, and a host of problems with personalities and institutions both inside and outside the Army) they confronted on a regular basis. And contrary to what one might think, some of these challenges seem almost familiar when placed against contemporary operations.

[Umar Al-Mokhtār]

I would posit that almost anything authored or coauthored by Utley should be read.

[Steve Blair]

I would posit that almost anything authored or coauthored by Utley should be read.

Quite. But I was trying to keep it simple....

[Steve Blair]

I think I'd put forward The Past as Prologue as a better examination on the whole of military history and its possible use for making policy. As it's an anthology, you get more than one viewpoint and it does deal with many of the same issues that Black covers without getting bogged down in some of the "pet rocks."

[Bill Moore]

While hardly a great book, it is still worth the small investment of time required to read it. "The Age of the Unthinkable", by Joshua Ramo focuses on complexity, rapid change, and concludes we can't predict or prevent all future threats, so our strategy should be focused on resilience. In other words designing a political/economic/social structure that can survive and continue to thrive in the unavoidable 9/11 like events in the future. Hardly a complete strategy, but resilience should definitely be a component of our national strategy. Especially since the trend enabled by technology is greater centralization of critical infrastructure, because it is cost efficient, but it makes us increasingly vulnerable. One example is our power grid.

I found this book to be a good supplement to the Joint Operational Environment (the JOE) published by JFCOM, and it also sounds like it would nest nicely with the "The American Culture of War", which I haven't read yet (but intend to).

[slapout9]

Since this book raised a few eyebrows on a another thread I will submit it here, especially since this for senior leadership. If you want to understand networks and how to do Human Terrain Analysis this is for you. A more detailed analysis of my famous 3F analysis (Family,Friends and Finances). Our own davidbfpo says I should repeat this more often so here it is.

Discovering National Elites: A Manual of methods for Discovering The Leadership of a Society and its Vulnerabilities to Propaganda.

The link is listed below and you can read it for free. It is from 1952 and most of the techniques are manual but they could be automated. Should be read by senior leadership IMO.


http://www.grazian-archive.com/gover...0Contents.html


Oh yea there is some War Winning Stuff in here!!!!