Quote Originally Posted by Steve the Planner View Post
I really wish that, at some point, these military think tankers actually took the time to understand how real nations and regions work, before they throw all the soup knives and tea cups around in support of Nation-building. It really misses the whole point of why, when not properly targeted, our valuable resources get mis-deployed, mis-applied, and mis-successful.
I think that the problem is that they are military think tankers and lack a broad perspective? Certainly my experience of the UK military is that there is depressingly little cross fertilisation amongst the social sciences when it comes to the application of force and the consequences thereof (and I regard military studies as a social science). Clausewitz (a leading military theorist that some will have heard of...) was widely read in the fields of science and arts and social sciences. SurferBeetle's post below (127036) is a good example of a highly relevant reading list for operational and strategic level planners; but with very little about military theory in it.

Originally Posted by Surferbeetle
Here are some of the places that I am looking (and ideas are always welcome):

How Soccer Explains the World, Franklin Foer, 2004, Harper Collins Publishers, NY
A History of Iraq, Charles Tripp, 2000, Cambridge University Press
Inside Rebellion, Jeremy M. Weinstein, 2007, Cambridge University Press
Strong Societies and Weak States, Joel S. Migdal, 1988, Princeton University Press
A History of Islamic Societies, Ira M. Lapidus, 2002, Cambridge University Press
The Financial Times Guide to Options, Lenny Jordan, 2011, Pearson Education LTD,