What Are You Currently Reading? 2009

[William F. Owen]

John Buchan, Greenmantle. A work of fiction which, IMO, contains more words of wisdom than will be found in your average, bog standard, academic tome.

Concur. It's orld Class fiction. It's excellent. My other favourite in this vein is Rogue Male.

Shimon Naveh, In Pursuit of Military Excellence: The Evolution of Operational Theory. I first read this during my undergraduate studies and, like most fresh faced and easily impressed layabouts, was bowled over by his verbose and self-important proclamations. Though still a valuable study of the development and conceptual foundations of Soviet/Russian deep operations theory (if anything this is its saving grace) I am not surprised that the IDF found his recent theory of SOD (Systematic Operational Design) so hard to digest that they spat it out in favour of a more traditional emphasis on "actual" military art in their recent Gaza campaign which paid dividends.

Sorry, but IMO, this book is garbage. He gets it all wrong. He doesn't seem to understand the dissonance between "Deep Battle" theory and actual practice. Big ideas, with little else to support them. All the big ideas fall over when faced with actual operational conditions.
Naveh also plays very fast and loose with the historical record.
Read Nikolas Zetterling rebuttal of Naveh if you can find it. I have a copy, if you PM me your e-mail.

[Red Rat]

Concur. It's orld Class fiction. It's excellent. My other favourite in this vein is Rogue Male.


Sorry, but IMO, this book is garbage. He gets it all wrong. He doesn't seem to understand the dissonance between "Deep Battle" theory and actual practice. Big ideas, with little else to support them. All the big ideas fall over when faced with actual operational conditions.
Naveh also plays very fast and loose with the historical record.
Read Nikolas Zetterling rebuttal of Naveh if you can find it. I have a copy, if you PM me your e-mail.

Glad it is not just me that is finding it somewhat verbose! Looks like I could do with the Zetterling rebuttal as well.

Also on the reading list at the moment:

• Gretchen Peters - Seeds of Terror A look at the heroin/Taliban nexus
  
• History of European Morals by William Lecky - something I should have probably read as an undergraduate...
  
• 41 Years in India by Field Marshal Roberts

and

• The Big katie Morag Storybook by Mairi Hedderwick - at the behest of my 4 year old daughter who has her priorities very clear and generally sets mine!

[REMF]

On the reading list at the moment:
Just finished The Black Swan by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. Wars/conflict being the least predictable of things right after women , it's rewarding reading and a good addition to any perspective of conflict.
Baghdad at Sunrise by P.R. Mansoor. I've been recommended this one, but I've heard mixed reviews. Is it any good?
War Comes to Long An by Jeffrey Rice.
Modern Warfare by Roger Trinquier.

[Tukhachevskii]

Some thoughts on Shimon Naveh’s In Pursuit of Military Excellence that I thought I’d share with you. In many places in his turgid tome Naveh claims that the Soviet Army came up with something approximating what scientists would call a universal or general covering law (i.e, Hempel) regarding operational manoeuvre which formed the foundation of Deep Operations Theory. To prove this Naveh often approvingly cites or paraphrases from the Red Army Field Regulations of 1936;

“By employing the universal combination of the linear holding group and a columnar shock group and an appropriate organisation of troops and resource s for combat the Red Army managed to create both the right synergy and the proper conditions for executing a coherent manoeuvre” (my italics, p. 172-3 but cf. pp. 187-9, 190, 218-9, 224-26) .

Yet for all his “research” Naveh ignores or is ignorant of facts which upset his theoretical edifice. If the Soviet Army did indeed develop a theory of Deep Operations which, in terms of the relationship between a linear front and the operational depth, as the example above purports, came to represent something approaching the fundamental truths of operational art then why did the Red Army Field Regulations of 1944 (which is not cited by Naveh in the text or bibliography) state the following in no uncertain terms;

“The concept of “striking and holding forces” as a part of combat formations which existed in the previous Polevoy Ustav (the 1936 Regulations venerated by Naveh) confused command personnel and led to inaction of so-called “holding forces in combat [!]. This Polevoy Ustav abolishes the division of a combat formation into a striking and a holding force, but it requires the concentration of main effort on the axis of the main attack and a determined attack by lesser forces on the axis of secondary attack” (my italics, p. 5)

Thus, the theoretical tents expounded by Naveh were never actually adhered to by the Red Army and were promptly abandoned in 1943 during which time the 1944 regulations were being revised. For all of Naveh’s linguistic acrobatics it appears the supposedly pristine theory of Deep Operations (in the above respects at least) never existed outside Naveh’s own head. As D. M. Glantz explained in Soviet Military Operational Art, which Naveh cites but evidently never read, Deep Operations “theory” was actually a set of assumptions which were in constant evolution (p.12). The Red Army constantly went back and forth over their experiences in an attempt to ascertain which facets of the “theory” were applicable and which, like the above, could be jettisoned (at any given time). Relying on the 1936 Regulations to prove that the Red Army had discovered the timeless “laws “ of operational art is sheer nonsense given they themselves had the good sense to ditch much of what they had initially assumed correct. Funny that.

[Tukhachevskii]

On a different note I have recently downloaded a number of works which I shall soon be tackling with gusto. I got them free from www.archive.org.

J. H. Breasted, The Battle of Kadesh

C. E. Callwell, Military Operations and Maritime Preponderance

Moltke, Moltke’s Military Correspondence, 1870-71

C. von der Goltz, The Nation in Arms

F. A. Bayerlin, Jena or Sedan? (think Tolstoy’s War and Peace)

U.S . War Department, A Survey of German Tactics, 1918

Prince Kraft zu Hohenlohe Ingelfingen, Letters on Infantry (1889)

F. N. Maude, Military Letters and Essays

A.J. Tonybee, The Murderous Tyranny of the Turks
A.J. Tonybee, Turkey and the Western Question

[goesh]

Crazy Horse: Strange Man of the Oglalas by Marie Sandoz

[William F. Owen]

“The concept of “striking and holding forces” as a part of combat formations which existed in the previous Polevoy Ustav (the 1936 Regulations venerated by Naveh) confused command personnel and led to inaction of so-called “holding forces in combat [!]. This Polevoy Ustav abolishes the division of a combat formation into a striking and a holding force, but it requires the concentration of main effort on the axis of the main attack and a determined attack by lesser forces on the axis of secondary attack” (my italics, p. 5)

... or even that the very reason PU-44 was written is stated that PU-36 "Has become obsolete!! - and "requires thorough revision."

A constant feature of Naveh is stating that sources says "X" when in fact, if studied in detail, it does not. I recently discovered Naveh was very influenced by Simpkin ("Pursuit" is actually dedicated to Simpkin) and I think Simpkin has a nasty habit of ascribing qualities and insights to Soviet thinking that simply did not exist. I think Naveh continues this, in the belief that in by doing so, he is doing something useful. I submit he is wrong.

[selil]

For the fun of it I'm reading "The complete book of running" James F. Fixx

[Rifleman]

For the fun of it I'm reading "The complete book of running" James F. Fixx

Read it in high school 25 years ago.

Captivating read at the time. In hindsight, it seems Fixx ran too much for his own good; seemed to be doing it for the endorphin rush, not health.

Shame he dropped dead doing something that he preached for health. There's only so much you can do with a genetic issue.