What Are You Currently Reading? 2010

[davidbfpo]

Moderator at work

New thread created to enable easier searching, so now split into years, started with 2007.

[FlyFisher]

U509: If you haven't got it already, I'd really recommend tracking down a copy of David Zabecki's The German 1918 Offensives: A Case Study in the Operational Level of War (2006). It's excellent and well worth a read; he's got a great deal of new stuff in there. It's also quite heavily noted so you can follow him to other sources for anything that catches your interest.

I read a couple others recently that were also very good, though only tangentially related: Paul Harris's new biography of Haig (Douglas Haig and the First World War) is, I think, about as balanced a view of the man that I have ever seen -- not shy of criticizing Haig, but doesn't ignore things that were worth praising. Andy Simpson's Directing Operations: British Corps Command on the Western Front was also excellent.

Ian

[Tukhachevskii]

A long time since I read on this subject, IIRC Professor Geoffrey Parker wrote about this (I have an emailed a friend more familiar with this subject) and there was a series of books on European warfare, edited by Prof. Geoffrey Best IIRC. Fuchs might know more as his grasp of history is wider than mine and of course the wars centred in what was to become Germany.

Added after reply email:

Geoffrey Parker has written some very readable and yet scholarly books on 16th and 17th century European History which are in print - or at least widely available.

Geoffrey Elton (better know as GR Elton)'s 'Reformation Europe' in the Fontana paperback series of the 1960s/70s is still the best and clearest intro for the non-specialist.
That book takes you roughly just past the 1555 Augsburg treaty.

JH Elliot's 'Europe Divided' is the very clear, well-organised sequel to Elton in the same Fontana series; he's also a lively but reliable author best known for 'Imperial Spain'.
Europe Divided takes you to 1598, death of King Philip II of Spain.

The following volume in the Fontana series - I forget the title ('Europe in Crisis' ?) - is by Parker and takes you up to the Westphalia treaties of 1648. My special subject at college was the Revolt of the Netherlands, 1568 - 1648, about which he has written a lot e.g. 'The Army of Flanders and the Spanish Road' (1970s).

.

Parker is required reading especially after he extended/developed the concept of a military revolution first touted by Michael Roberts in the 50s. I would also recommend anything written by Jeremy Black esp.; Rethinking Military History, Warfare in the Eighteenth Century, Europe and the World 1650-1830, and A Military Revolution? Military Change and European Society 1550-1800 among others.

As for (G) Elton I have never much liked the "Whig historian" which see Herbert Butterfield and The Whig Interpretation of History

[Tukhachevskii]

Recently read...


David Bellavia (with John Bruning), House to House: An Epic of Urabn Warfare

Mark N. Woodruff, Unheralded Victory: Who won the Vietnam War?

&

Robin Moore, Task Force Dagger: The Hunt for Bin Laden

[Wargames Mark]

Eastern Approaches, by Fitzroy MacLean

Complexity: A Guided Tour, by Melanie Mitchell

[davidbfpo]

Wargames Mark,

Eastern Approaches, by Fitzroy MacLean

Excellent book, the authors tour descriptions through Stalinist USSR are really amazing and the chapter on the conflicts in Yugoslavia i.e. Bosnia is an excellent primer on why the communities fought.

[Spud]

Recently read...


Robin Moore, Task Force Dagger: The Hunt for Bin Laden

Burn it ... Burn it with fire

[Tukhachevskii]

Burn it ... Burn it with fire

I, too, have come to the same conclusion. There was much in it that was factual nonsense whilst the rest of it appeaered to be pure fantasy. Don't get me wrong, much of it does reek of virsimilitude but of a strained variety. Still, it was interesting nonetheless.

Just finished reading Sniper One, by Sgt Dan Mills. Scorching stuff!!

[Vahid]

This has been a very contentious book expatiating on the futility of financial aid to the poverty-stricken world for the most part. What also adss to its controversy is the foreword by Niall Ferguson (who is known to have been appallingly unapologetic stance on the British colonisation of the developing world). I haven't read the book, but it has purportedly generated a huge fuss in amongst many NGOs

http://www.dambisamoyo.com/deadaid.html

[PeaceOutE]

I am currently reading Reconciliation in Afghanistan by Michael Semple, The Accidental Guerrilla by David Kilcullen, I am American (And so can you) by Stefphen Colbert. Good times.

Also, I miss Applebee's.

[SMM]

Currently in the queue:

Global Jihadism: Theory and Practice, by Jarret M. Brachman

Voices from Post-Saddam Iraq: Living with Terrorism, Insurgency, and New Forms of Tyranny by Victoria Fontan

Suicide Bombers in Iraq, by Mohammed M. Hafez

Al Anbar Awakening, vol. II: Iraqi Perspectives, ed. by Gary W. Montgomery and Timothy S. McWilliams

[AusPTE]

Leaderless Jihad - Marc Sageman
A Problem from Hell - Samantha Power
The Sling and the Stone - Col Thomas Hammes

[OfTheTroops]

The next 100 years George friedman

[Tukhachevskii]

My reading of late has centred on a re-appreciation for, and, to some extent, a re-discovery of, the art of war in antiquity (or thereabouts). I suspect that recent discussions on the SWC regarding Roman COIN operations and Luttwak’s rekindling of interest in Byzantine strategic thought may have had something to do with it. Nonetheless, the works consulted over the past weeks comprise;

The Interlinear Translation of the Anabasis of Xenophon. There has been renewed interest in Byzantine strategy, especially in the recent article by Edward Luttwak in Foreign Affairs and reading the original really is enlightening if only for comparing what Xenophon actually says with Luttwak’s, and other commentators, interpretations.


The works by Theodore Ayrault Dodge (c. late 19th Century) though having been largely superseded, by the work of (for instance) Adrian Goldsworthy with respect to Roman Warfare, still repay reading if only for the wealth of information and depth of analysis Dodge provides. Which see;
Alexander and the Macedonian Art of War,
Caesar and the Roman Art of War and
Hannibal and the Carthaginian Art of War.

Indeed, Dodge’s observations regarding Caesar’s Gallic campaign are no less true of today’s small wars;

(From Dodge’s, Caesar and the Roman Art of War); Statecraft counts for much in a great captain's work. Caesar's policy in Gaul was on the whole so harsh as scarcely to rate as policy at all. This is the civil aspect of the matter. From another point of view it was as masterly as the problem was difficult. Caesar had to conciliate some tribes while attacking other neighbouring and friendly tribes. He had to supply himself while destroying victual for the enemy. He had to elevate part of the people in order to suppress another part. He had to play one half of the population against the other half. He had a population of eight million Gauls to oppose his dozen legions.(p.341)

Richard D. Hunt, Queen Boudicca’s Battle of Britain. Using primary sources (Caesar, Cassius Dio, Suetonius and Tacitus) Hunt reconstructs the events that led to the “Iceni uprising” (covered in Chapter VIII). Hunt gives a masterful account of the political background, tribal composition of Britain, Roman polices and Boudicca’s CoA and resultant aftermath in a book numbering only 137 pages all told (as a writer of crime fiction, rather than a historian, he also writes a cracking narrative). I often thought of the tribal uprisings in Iraq when I read this book and of the travails of an occupying power attempting to reorganise a foreign land (though the Romans came to annex not liberate). The parallels are striking right down to the complex interplay of carrot and stick and patron-client relations employed by the Romans towards Britain’s tribes and their “notables”. Caesar and Tacitus knew the importance of understanding the “Human Terrain” something which has recently come into vogue (but which is nothing if not common sense- “know your enemy” and all that);

(says Caesar) By far the most civilised inhabitants are those living in Kent[sic!], a purely maritime district, whose way of life differs little from that of the Gauls. Most of the tribes in the interior do not grow corn but live on milk and meat, and wear skins. All the Britons dye their bodies with woad, which produces a blue colour, and this gives them a more terrifying appearance in battle. Their wear their hair long, and shave the whole of their bodies except the head and the upper lip. Wives are shared between groups of ten or twelve men, especially between brothers and between fathers and sons; but the offspring of these unions are counted as the children of the man with whom a particular woman cohabited first[!](p.11)

Nor were they lax in IPB...

(Says Tacitus) Their strength is in their infantry. Some tribes also fight from chariots. The nobleman drives, his dependants fight in his defence. Once they owed obedience to kings; now they are distracted between the jarring factions of rival chiefs. Indeed, nothing has helped us more in war with their strongest nations that their inability to co-operate. It is but seldom that two or three states unite to repel a common danger; fighting in detail they are defeated wholesale.(p.16)

And like Petraeus in Iraq the Roman governor Publius Ostorius Scapula, sent to bring order and replace his ineffectual predecessor, inherited a situation in Britain, writes Tacitus in his Annals, that was nothing short of...

...chaotic. Convinced that a new commander, with an unfamiliar army and with winter begun, would not fight them, hostile tribes had broken violently into the Roman province. But Ostorius knew that initial results are what produce alarm or confidence. So he marched his light auxiliary battalions rapidly ahead, and stamped out resistance. The enemy dispersed and were hard pressed.p.47

And what of Roman motivation to invade? Perhaps those of a cynical bent will find parallels here too...

(...says Tacitus) Britain yields gold, silver and other metals, to make it worth conquering.(p.11)

In fact, seen in the perspective of antiquity Boudicca’s uprising is little different to those experienced by the Allies in Iraq (sans AQI and WMD of course; although the idea of equating Boudicca with people like Moqtada As-Sadr makes my stomach churn). Obviously, the Allies in Iraq were nothing like Rome and her Legions when it came to COIN; today’s RoEs are more humane (for good or ill) and less brutal than were Roman SOPs. Yet, skilfully applied violence works; nothing like a swift sharp blow to the head to bring people to their senses (as riot police know full well). Who knows, maybe one day an Iraqi will write about the uprisings against the US and Allies with the same fond if critical commemoration that one usually affords to lost causes. Perhaps over time even they will appreciate the ‘civilitas’ which they were bequeathed however strange and unappealing it may have appeared to them beforehand and however “alien” America and her allies may appear now.


B.H Liddell Hart, Scipio Africanus: Greater than Napoleon. Originally written in 1926 by the irascible B. H. Liddell Hart of “indirect Approach” fame the book purports (if the introduction is anything to go by) to be a biography of the famous roman general Scipio Africanus but is instead a history of his campaign against Hannibal in North Africa during the 2nd Punic War. Indeed, the work is really rather more of a study of the generalship of Scipio vs. Hannibal with an admixture of Roman domestic political shenanigans thrown in. However, unsurprisingly for Hart, he often falls into the trap of attributing Scipio with having discovered principles that Hart would later popularise. I find the following quote ironic for being a refutation of what one of my old university lecturers called the fallacy of “Liddell-Hartism”; i.e., that the indirect approach worked only if the enemy was caught napping or decided to stand still while Hart’s forces manoeuvred around him. In this quote Hart seems to comprehend the importance of needing to hold or fix the enemy in order to develop a “decisive” manoeuvre;

In the sphere of tactics there is a lesson in his [Scipio’s] consummate blending of the principles of surprise and security, first in the way he secured every offensive move from possible interference or mischance, second in the way he “fixed” the enemy before, and during, the decisive manoeuvre. To strike at an enemy who preserves his freedom of action is to risk hitting the air and being caught off one’s balance. It is to gamble on chances, and the least mischance is liable to upset the whole plan. Yet how often in war, and even in peace-time manoeuvres, have commanders initiated some superficially brilliant manoeuvre only to find that the enemy have slipped away from the would be knock-out, because the assailant forgot the need of “fixing” and the tactical formula of fixing plus decisive manoeuvre is, after all, but the domestic proverb, “First catch your hare, then cook it”. (p.43)

[Van]

A new one from the author of "Psychology of Intelligence Analysis"; "Structured Analytic Techniques for Intelligence Analysis".

I can't recommend it highly enough. He lays down a broad range of techniques in the framework of an adaptable methodology. A little more depth in the practice of the techniques might have been nice, but he provides references and sources for further reading for each technique.

I'm going to be rereading this one, piece by piece, for weeks.