What Are You Currently Reading? 2013

[Old Eagle]

Hank Crumpton's explanation of espionage and covert action. Crumpton was a long-time member of the Former Directorate of Operations at CIA. Thinking about working the book into one of my intel courses.

His tactical descriptions of HUMINT ops is pretty graphic. I'm a little surprised they got cleared.

His description of the initial deployment into Afgh is also very interesting. I recommend coupling it w/Gary Schroen's First In, Gary Berntsen's Jawbreaker rant and Bob Woodward's Bush at War. Maybe by comparing multiple sources you might get a clearer picture of the action. I'm still looking for a good military book on the same op.

To my way of thinking, there are some loose ends that never quite get tied up, but the book still deserves critical reading.

[DDonovan]

For those interested in a view on counterinsurgency not coming from the usual suspects, you might take a look at David Donovan's new ebook, War of a Kind: Reflections on Counterinsurgency and Those who do it. Donovan is the author of Once a Warrior King, a well-regarded memoir of his experiences in a counterinsurgency program in Vietnam.

WAR OF A KIND addresses key issues in counterinsurgency, but it does so without being a technical manual. Rather, it is a commentary based on personal counterinsurgency experiences from Vietnam with many years of thought applied afterwards. Real-life vignettes from the author and others illustrate many of the issues discussed. WAR OF A KIND will be of interest to those who work in counterinsurgency and to the general reader who wants to understand a style of war that affects American foreign policy and defense planning.

Link to Amazon for 'War of a Kind', no reviews:http://www.amazon.com/War-of-a-Kind-...+david+donovan

Link to Amazon for 'Once a Warrior King', with excellent reviews:http://www.amazon.com/Once-Warrior-K...+david+donovan

[jmm99]

You caused me to download the Amazon and Kindle apps to my Android tablet - previously used to read pdf files. The funny thing is that I couldn't order the e-book directly using the Android (it wouldn't place the order). But, adaptation being in order, I ordered it on my desktop and it was automatically delivered to the Android.

Warrior King was an excellent book.

Regards

Mike

[TheCurmudgeon]

I know I shouldn't be, but because I became so interested in the idea based on my recent research into primitive war I am reading "less than human: Why We Demean, Enslave, and Exterminate Others"

It has an interesting slant:

In this book, I will argue that dehumanization is a joint creation of biology, culture, and the architecture of the human mind."

Dehumanization is a scourge, and has been so for millennia. It acts as a psychological lubricant, dissolving our inhibitions and inflaming our destructive passions. As such, it empowers us to perform acts that would, under other circumstances, be unthinkable.

[ganulv]

Lawrence in Arabia is on my reading list after yesterday’s Fresh Air interview with author Scott Anderson. Non-fictional T. E. Lawrence was actually even more interesting than semi-fictional T. E. Lawrence, if this interview is at all accurate.

[Bob's World]

I just placed my order on Amazon for Colonel Brian Petit's first (there will be more) book. I had the distinct pleasure to serve with Brian in both the Pacific and in Afghanistan. Brian is one of our great operators as well as one of our great thinkers. He has served in critical SOF assignments in Iraq, the Philippines, and Afghanistan. Perhaps as important he served in a critical SOF assignment at Fort Leavenworth where he was often the intellectual connective tissue between the Army and Army SOF.

From the Amazon page:

Going Big by Getting Small examines how the United States Special Operations Forces apply operational art, the link between tactics and strategy, in the non-wartime, steady-state environments called Phase Zero. With revised and innovative operational art constructs, US Special Operations offer scalable and differentiated strategic options for US foreign policy goals. This book analyzes light footprint special operations approaches in Yemen, Indonesia, Thailand, and Colombia. When a large military presence may be inappropriate or counterproductive, Colonel Brian Petit makes the case for fresh thinking on Phase Zero operational art as applied by small, highly skilled, joint-force teams coupled with interagency partners. The past decade (2002-2012) of operations focused on large-scale, post-conflict counterinsurgency. Less publicized, but no less important in this same decade, was the emerging application of nuanced campaigns, actions, and activities in Phase Zero. These efforts were led or supported by special operations in countries and regions contested, but not at war. This book fills a gap in the literature of how to adapt the means, method, and logic of US military foreign engagements in a diplomacy-centric world with rapidly shifting power paradigms. Going Big by Getting Small is not a yarn on daring special operations raids nor a call for perpetual war. It is the polar opposite: this book contemplates the use of discreet engagements to sustain an advantageous peace, mitigate conflict, and prevent crises.
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Link to Amazon.com, note no reviews:http://www.amazon.com/Going-Big-Gett...+Getting+Small

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

About the Author
Colonel Brian S. Petit is a US Army Special Forces officer with worldwide experience in combat, conflict, and peacetime environments. He has written articles on special operations for Special Warfare and Military Review.

[Backwards Observer]

Battling to the End: Conversations with Benoit Chantre (Studies in Violence, Mimesis, & Culture). A discussion of Clausewitz by the anthropological philosopher, Rene Girard. Interesting if you like that sort of thing.

Ren Girard: Achever Clausewitz is a book about modern war, really. Clausewitz is a writer who wrote only about war; he was in love with war. He hated Napoleon, the enemy of his country, Prussia, but he also loved him because the emperor had restored war to its glorious nature after the eighteenth century, which weakened war by having conflicts that made maneuvers and negotiations more important than actual fighting. That is why Clausewitzs hatred for Napoleon was curiously united to a passionate admiration for the man who had restored war to its former glory.

CH: The love-hate nature of mimetic rivalry is apparent here but is there anything else that attracted you to this offbeat topic?

RG: I found another interesting correspondence with my own work. Because Clausewitz talks only about war, he describes human relations in a way that interests me profoundly. When we describe human relations, we usually make them better than they are: gentle, peaceful, and so forth, whereas in reality they are often competitive. War is the most extreme form of competition. That is why Clausewitz says that business commercial business and war are very close to each other.

CH: Youve pointed out that our whole contemporary society is reaching a point of mimetic crisis. What, exactly, causes a mimetic crisis?

RG: A mimetic crisis is when people become undifferentiated. There are no more social classes, there are no more social differences, and so forth. What I call a mimetic crisis is a situation of conflict so intense that on both sides people act the same way and talk the same way even though, or because, they are more and more hostile to each other. I believe that in intense conflict, far from becoming sharper, differences melt away.

When differences are suppressed, conflicts become rationally insoluble. If and when they are solved, they are solved by something that has nothing to do with rational argument: by a process that the people concerned do not understand and even do not perceive. They are solved by what we call a scapegoat process.

CH: You say that the history of scapegoating is suppressed by those who do the scapegoating.

RG: Scapegoating itself is the suppressing. If you scapegoat someone, only a third party can become aware of it. It wont be you, because you will believe you are doing the right thing. You will believe that you are either punishing someone who is truly guilty, or fighting someone who is trying to kill you. We never see ourselves as responsible for scapegoating.

If you look at archaic religions, it becomes clear that religion is a way to master, or at least control, violence. I think that archaic religions are based on a collective murder, on a lynch-mob murder, which unites the people and saves the community. This process is the beginning of a religion: salvation as a result of scapegoating. That is why the people turn their scapegoat into a god.

Christianity will be victorious, but only in defeat. - Girard Interview - First Things - 7.16.2009

During a meeting last year of an informal philosophical reading group, Girard recounted the Old Testament story of Joseph, son of Jacob, bound and sold into slavery by his "mob" of 10 half-brothers. At first, "they all get together and try to kill him. The Bible knows that scapegoating is a mob affair." Joseph establishes himself as one of the leaders of Egypt and then tearfully forgives his brothers in a dramatic reconciliation. It is, Girard said, a story "much more mature, spiritually, than the beginning of Genesis." Moreover, the story has no precedent in archaic literature.

"Like many biblical stories, it is a counter-mythical story," he said, "because in myth, the lynchers are always satisfied with their lynching."

History is a test. Mankind is failing it. - Girard Interview - Stanford Magazine - July 2009

Rene Girard - wikipedia

Battling to the End - Amazon

***

The Cambodian Wars: Clashing Armies and CIA Covert Operations by Kenneth Conboy.

***

The Whole Heart of Zen: The Complete Teachings from the Oral Tradition of Ta-Mo (Bodhidharma) by John Bright-Fey.



the violence inherent in the system - monty python

Up the Irons \m/

[davidbfpo]

I have finally finished reading Carter Malkasian's slim book 'War Comes to Garmsir: Thirty Years of Conflict on the Afghan Frontier'. Read on the train commuting to London and Oxford and finally at home.

There are a number of other SWC reviews of the book in this thread and his name appears in nearly a dozen threads.

His style and the content are simply gripping. Human terrain at it's best, context, details and insight.

I have not read many of the books on the contemporary Afghan conflict, it is for this "armchair" observer too sad. This book is different, it is about the Afghan people, their leaders, institutions and their visiting foreign guests.

The last chapter, the conclusion 'The End or the Intermission', is excellent. I expect those who have served anywhere in Afghanistan, outside the wire, will agree with his reflections and so taken from his final paragraph:

What I think I can say is that Afghanistan surely will not be the last of America's interventions in messy wars in developing states - our history is too full to think otherwise......Garmser offers no answers as to whether such conflicts are worth it. It merely suggest they are likely to be troublesome, murky, messy and grey.

Link:http://www.amazon.com/War-Comes-Garm...rter+malkasian

If you now intend to buy a copy there is a SWJ link, so we get a commission.

[Firn]

I have come back to the great book Wages of Destruction to get the German economic reality in one or two periods of interest.

The British author, which speaks more then excellent German, has in my opinion been able to write the book on the German economy of that timeframe which will set the standard for quite some time. Based upon increasingly better research, good economic understanding and clear thinking he is able to tie up a considerable amount of lose political, military and economic threads. Many decisions, right or wrong, make a lot more sense when you can put them into the big picture of the specific timeframe.

You can put yourself into the shoes of many different German decision makers from the Weimar days onward which had to face stark and diverse constraints. A cronic lack of foreign-currency reserves, evaporating exports due to the Great Recession, severe lack of investment and the inferior capital stock, the severe economic and political damage inflicted by the hyper-inflation and the harsh austerity, the resulting long-term damage of the economic potential, the policial instability and so forth were arguably bigger problems then those faced by the rest of the Powers. It is no surprise that the rearmament could only operate within severe limits even when it was greatly pushed after the rise of the brown shirts.

Some chapters were especially insightful like the one showing the trade-offs between production, human capital and food and the 'rational' consequences of the grim logic under the brutal ideology with the implications for the Jews, other 'foreign' labor, German army logistics and the German labor force. The relationships between the small, undermechanized and relative inefficient Central European agriculture and the partly hidden high participation of women in the work force which in turn can be tied up with the desperate need for foreign labour. The low degree of efficency was partly due the low mechanization which can be explained by the small farm sizes and the more general lack of capital and ressources. It is impossible to mention even all the most important relationships, some already quite known some not.

It is quite ironic to read about the dire situation in oil and food the British war economy faced in the darkest days of the Uboat war and to compare it with the small amount available to the German one. Amusingly the British came up with a surprisingly accurate account of the the German oil reserves and oil production around 1940 but doubled the former because they just could not believe that Germany could be able to wage war with that.

I think it is fair to say that it is difficult to get a good understanding of the whole war without understanding some key concepts presented in the book. Some may know them from other studies and sources but for people with less available time the best way is to read it in Toozes work.

P.S: It is also highly informative to look at the current world through the lens of that book, for example from an European/American/Indian/Chinese/Russian point of view. As an European the even greater reliance on imports for many basic ressources becomes obvious and many vital supply chains have links overseas which sometimes are impossible to replace. The substitution of others would greatly decrease efficiency and productivity. Sadly my secret plan for world domination is thus unlikely to work.

[AmericanPride]

I recently started reading Knowing One's Enemies: Intelligence Assessment Before the Two World Wars.

[Granite_State]

I have finally finished reading Carter Malkasian's slim book 'War Comes to Garmsir: Thirty Years of Conflict on the Afghan Frontier'. Read on the train commuting to London and Oxford and finally at home.

There are a number of other SWC reviews of the book in this thread and his name appears in nearly a dozen threads.

His style and the content are simply gripping. Human terrain at it's best, context, details and insight.

I have not read many of the books on the contemporary Afghan conflict, it is for this "armchair" observer too sad. This book is different, it is about the Afghan people, their leaders, institutions and their visiting foreign guests.

The last chapter, the conclusion 'The End or the Intermission', is excellent. I expect those who have served anywhere in Afghanistan, outside the wire, will agree with his reflections and so taken from his final paragraph:

Link:http://www.amazon.com/War-Comes-Garm...rter+malkasian

If you now intend to buy a copy there is a SWJ link, so we get a commission.

Agreed, great book for anyone looking to understand the campaign in Helmand. I was also just across the river from some of the places and people mentioned, the book made me aware (far too late to be of use) of a lot of local dynamics that I either didn't know or partially puzzled out during my last deployment.

[omarali50]

Just finished "Pirates of Barbary" http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/022...6YW3HWK55XCGG2
My quick review on Goodreads: This book is NOT a systematic history of the Barbary pirates. The chronology is sometimes confusing and there is little attempt to present facts and figures systematically, nor is there much in the way of social or economic analysis.But its a very readable collection of highlights and anecdotes. The focus is on Britain, so don't expect much about the French, Italian or Spanish sides of this saga (all of whom had more experience with Barbary pirates than Britain did, but then, this is a British book). The Arab/Turk side is presented with a lot of sympathy and one hears more about their side of the story than usual. I also had no idea that so many "renegade" Christians played such a large role in this business. There is a mild postcolonial tinge at times, but by recent standards the book is not too overloaded with political correctness.
After a rollicking read, the author decides to wrap it up with a strange sentence about colonialism finally solving the problem. I say "strange", because just a few pages earlier he has explained how the US and the now VERY powerful Western fleets finally ended the long saga of Barbary piracy around 1816 or so and the last persons to be hanged for piracy in Britain were in 1830 (and they were NOT Barbary pirates), and colonial invasions did not even start until 1830 (when the first French invasion had nothing to do with piracy). That reference to colonialism seemed a bit out of place.

Overall, great fun to read. Lots of very interesting anecdotal history. A bit thin on analysis

[Firn]

In the current year I read You are you own gym and pushed on with it's training plans.

Overall the book has a clear structure and keeps things simple. Some explanation are a bit questional but the core is logical and fits with the best supported scientific evidence I have gathered. More about warm-ups and cool-downs would have been nice in my opinion as well as some integration of some more aerobic exercise. Still one should not discount the aerobic qualities of some sessions, as they are do make your lungs and heart work for a considerable time with a good intensity. I think that is also partly due to large amount of muscle mass you need to work in some exercises.

As I do a good deal of aerobic activities and I'm still very flexible the training sessions fit my needs very well. If you have little time in the evening or in the morning or little equipment while traveling you can easily integrate them into your routine. Overall I'm very happy with the results so far, as I was able to claw back a great deal of the fitness I lost after stopping swimming on a uni level and having far fewer chances to go climbing. The good thing is that the progress can be monitored in a objective way and you get a good deal of positive feedback in different ways.


*P.S: My very personal explanation why the body is able to build up muscle efficiently after a intensive workout lies in the logic of evolution. Getting a lot of food after having worked hard is fantastic feedback, promoting the muscle groups which help the organism to secure a meal, be it a hunters kill or a gatherers find. Sadly nowadays we have to fool our body as our environment has become so different.

[Firn]

I finished recently my last book of 2014, The British War Machine by David Edgertron. It is the third book I have read which was mostly dedicated to the economic reality before and during WWII, covering the British Empire. The brilliant Wages of Destruction did an amazing job to analyse the German situation while the decent Freedom's Forge shows a partially good view of the economic framework of the USA. I hope to get decent works on the Japanese and Soviet realities.

There is a suprising amount of interesting details in the book, an understandably rather confusing picture about the politics concerning research and technology and a somewhat irritating focus on some after-war quirks of British Historiography. I will focus on the implication of the relative economic strenghs and weaknesses of the British empire compared to the other powers, especially Germany.

1) There is no doubt that Britain itself had a considerably higher GNP per capita and still a bigger one in absolute terms then the German empire. Overall productivity was higher, to a good degree due to the different structure of agriculture and the capital stock was far bigger with foreign investment playing a big role. Needlessy to say that Britain was for good reasons a net importer.

2) This high GNP was partly due to the effects of the empire and the deep intergration into international trade facilitated by the dominant role Britain played as a trading hub. The international acceptance of the pound sterling and the high credit made it the access to foreign capital and ressources in relative terms far easier.

3) The European trade was surprisingly important compared to the one with the USA. Scandinavian ships played the dominant part in it and came mostly over to the British side after the German conquests.

4) After the fall of France European trade was pretty much non-existent and shipping became quite streched as a higher amount had to cover much longer distances. As an reaction the British tried to cut down on bulky, low-value imports like timber and animal feed and pushed hard for high-value, finished imports to get as much bang for the buck as possible.

5) Shipping losses were severe in the first two years but the increasingly efficient imports, counter-measurements and vastly increased ship-building shaped the trend firmly into the Empires favour. (The German U-boat war was of course an efficient use of ressources for the German side, however hampered oversea trade is vastly better then having no oversea trade)

6) The high $ reserves of the Empire enabled them to tap very early into the big US production reserves and stimulated its mobilisation.

7) Lend-Lease became increasingly important after the first two war-years but was at first considerably less important then the credit given by the rest of the Empire.

8) The British government spent a surprising high amount of its GDP pre-war on rearmament and was not greatly outspent by Germany. Obviously Britain could ramp up the investments for productions in Britain and abroad far easier then Germany for the reasons mentioned before.

9) For similar reasons the war production itself tended rather naturally to be more efficient. An extreme example was of course the ability to import vast amounts of oil instead of having to get it from coal in hugely expansive plants with and inefficient conversion process.

10) The many land defeats in the first years were, as it is now well documented by recent works, not due to inferior and fewer machines but due to and inferior performance of the British army especially compared to the German one.

11) Much of the former advantages rested of course on the shoulders of the vast navy with its many long-lead investments in shipping and it's ability to cut overseat trade for its European enemies, protect it's own and force the neutrals to switch theirs to the Empire.

12) The military success of Japan was more dangerous then I thought for Britain due to it's big navy, strong military forces and the ability to disrupt and conquer vital ressources of the Empire.

13) The British way of war seemed pretty American in comparision with the German one, with far superior capital endowment per fighting man.


I will leave it at that for the time being, the party does not wait. Happy new year.

[omarali50]

Am in the middle of "Empires of the Silk Road" and absolutely loving it. A must read. A complete re-evaluation of the role of Central Asia in history.
http://www.amazon.com/Empires-Silk-R.../dp/0691150346

[omarali50]

and simultaneously reading (aka listening in the car) "Lawrence in Arabia". An interesting read, but the "Guardian" level determination to correct "historical wrongs" sometimes gets a bit irritating. It would have been a better book if it had more of the stories, less of the interpretation. Its still a lot of fun and full of interesting information, so dont get me wrong. That irritation is personal and rather mild.
http://www.amazon.com/Lawrence-Arabi.../dp/038553292X

[Biggus]

I would be more than happy to second Firn's recommendation of Wages of Destruction. I think that it was the first book that challenged my beliefs about the motivations driving the major players. I'd always looked at the politics of the period through an exclusively moral (and somewhat awestruck) eye, but Tooze significantly altered my perspective to one far more focused on the economic reality. I'm not entirely sure why, but understanding the economic and social pressures of the era made it all somewhat more relatable.

I'm currently reading (and enjoying) Four Ball, One Tracer by Roelf van Heerden and Andrew Hudson. It's a great book, well written and edited. I get a little bit uncomfortable when an author badmouths other individuals (deservedly or not - I find it a little cringeworthy when the other parties have no recourse to defend themselves) but it's an important element in understanding the dynamics of EO at the pointy end of the spear. I'm not yet finished, but right now I'd recommend it. I'd really like to read Eeben Barlow's EO book, but it doesn't appear to be available on Kindle and the actual books are somewhat out of my price range.

[Firn]

I just wanted to add a podcast about with David Edgerton, the author of Britain's war machine. Obviously it lacks the depth of the book and the stats but it gives a decent overview on the economic and military situation. I just had to cringe that the interviewer, after coming up with good questions and decent imputs finished it off with the terrible conclusion that in 1940 Britain, not Germany actually understood how to win a modern war.

Modern research makes it in my opinion rather obvious that while there was (almost naturally) a great amount of miscalculations on all sides the importance of a highly productive economy for the modern's war effort was all too plain for both. Mr. Hitler himself was all too concerned with the lack of basic ressources like oil, ore and food that the purpose of wars was to conserve, get and to secure access to them. Ironically Britains plans concerning Norway reflected a very similar British mindset in that instance, but in general Britain could get it's necessary imports, financed mostly by others no less, by different means. In short a negative outcome does not necessarily mean that the problem was not understood, in this case there were certainly wrong conclusions but most of all one side just had far weaker starting position. There are a great amount of ifs and buts to go into as well as much scope to discussions but economically I will leave it there.

@Biggus: I agree and it retrospective it is surprising that it took the scientific community so long to come up with a book like Wages of Destruction or partly Britain's War Machine. The importance of economic aspects was very well understood during the war by all sides but those aspects became pretty unpopular compared to the 'real' cool, heroic or brutal stuff. Sadly it is understandable as its narrative tends to be far less gripping and spectacular but fortunately there are examples like Tooze's work which are excellent proof to the contrary.

[davidbfpo]

A new 'What are you reading? thread has been opened for 2014. It makes searching easier and the thread remains open for comments.

[davidbfpo]

In part:

I'm currently reading (and enjoying) Four Ball, One Tracer by Roelf van Heerden and Andrew Hudson. It's a great book, well written and edited. I get a little bit uncomfortable when an author badmouths other individuals (deservedly or not - I find it a little cringeworthy when the other parties have no recourse to defend themselves) but it's an important element in understanding the dynamics of EO at the pointy end of the spear. I'm not yet finished, but right now I'd recommend it. I'd really like to read Eeben Barlow's EO book, but it doesn't appear to be available on Kindle and the actual books are somewhat out of my price range.

Are you aware of Eeben Barlow's blogsite:http://eebenbarlowsmilitaryandsecuri....blogspot.com/

He is a SWC member too, so may notice your post.