What Are You Currently Reading? 2012

[Mike in Hilo]

Owen West,The Snake Eaters....I highly recommend this book.

I had as much difficulty putting this one down as I did Owen's father Bing's The Village. Like The Village in an Iraqi context, the theme is advisers being most effective by fighting alongside their host country counterparts. The key to what is essentially a territorial security role is shown to be aggressive patrolling to seek out and engage the enemy. In The Snake Eaters, as engagements are won, the populace begins to shift their allegiance toward the winner, generating important momentum.

[From what I was privileged to observe, momentum--I mean generating and maintaining it--is a critical principle for both insurgents and COIN forces: So out of curiosity, a question: Did von Clausewitz speak to "momentum?" I looked for it in English and German versions and found nothing....]

Cheers,
Mike.

[Bill Moore]

Mike,

I agree momentum is a beautiful thing, but unless it can be advantaged to the point of culmination, the effects on the enemy are normally transient, especially if the insurgent has a safe haven across a border where they can regroup. In Afghanistan we have only been able to leverage momentum up to tactical and operational level victories, not strategic.

Clausewitz addressed this from conventional stand point, but it applies to some extent to irregular warfare.

http://books.google.com/books?id=xym...mentum&f=false

The situation is completely different when a defeated army is being pursued. Resistance becomes difficult, indeed sometimes impossible, as a consequence of battle casualties, loss of order and of courage, and anxiety about the retreat.

Skip a couple of lines to talking about the pursuer:

The faster his pace, the greater the speed with which events will run along their predtermined course: this is the primary area where psychological forces will increase and multiply without being rigidly bound to weights and measures of the material world.

[Bill Moore]

http://www.amazon.com/In-Ruins-Empir.../dp/0375509151

In the Ruins of Empire, The Japanese Surrender and the Battle for Postwar Asia, by Ronald Spector

I think this book is a must read for anyone interested in Small Wars and the recent and very relevant history of the Asia-Pacific. I also read Spector's "Eagle Against the Sun" and highly recommend it also. Back to the Ruins of Empire, this short excerpt from the NYT review sums it nicely:

With access to recently available firsthand accounts by Chinese, Japanese, British, and American witnesses and previously top secret U.S. intelligence records, Spector tells for the first time the fascinating story of the deadly confrontations that broke out–or merely continued–in Asia after peace was proclaimed at the end of World War II. Under occupation by the victorious Allies, this part of the world was plunged into new power struggles or back into old feuds that in some ways were worse than the war itself. In the Ruins of Empire also shows how the U.S. and Soviet governments, as they secretly vied for influence in liberated lands, were soon at odds.

At the time of the peace declaration, international suspicions were still strong. Joseph Stalin warned that “crazy cutthroats” might disrupt the surrender ceremony in Tokyo Bay. Die-hard Japanese officers plotted to seize the emperor’s palace to prevent an announcement of surrender, and clandestine relief forces were sent to rescue thousands of Allied POWs to prevent their being massacred.

In the Ruins of Empire paints a vivid picture of the postwar intrigues and violence. In Manchuria, Russian “liberators” looted, raped, and killed innocent civilians, and a fratricidal rivalry continued between Chiang Kai-shek’s regime and Mao’s revolutionaries. Communist resistance forces in Malaya settled old scores and terrorized the indigenous population, while mujahideen holy warriors staged reprisals and terror killings against the Chinese–hundreds of innocent civilians were killed on both sides. In Indochina, a nativist political movement rose up to oppose the resumption of French colonial rule; one of the factions that struggled for supremacy was the Communist Viet Minh led by Ho Chi Minh. Korea became a powder keg with the Russians and Americans entangled in its north and south. And in Java, as the Indonesian novelist Idrus wrote, people brutalized by years of Japanese occupation “worshipped a new God in the form of bombs, submachine guns, and mortars.”

Through impeccable research and provocative analysis, as well as compelling accounts of American, British, Indian, and Australian soldiers charged with overseeing the surrender and repatriation of millions of Japanese in the heart of dangerous territory, Spector casts new and startling light on this pivotal time–and sets the record straight about this contested and important period in history.

I worked in this part of the world for a long time and felt like a novice after reading this book. I won't go as far to say the book offers lessons for post decisive operations in Iraq, but it does provide historical insights on previous efforts where a U.S. led coalition struggled with post war occupation and policy issues. As the author points out, in many countries more people were killed after Japan's surrender than during the actual war.

[carl]

Owen West,The Snake Eaters....I highly recommend this book.

I had as much difficulty putting this one down as I did Owen's father Bing's The Village. Like The Village in an Iraqi context, the theme is advisers being most effective by fighting alongside their host country counterparts. The key to what is essentially a territorial security role is shown to be aggressive patrolling to seek out and engage the enemy. In The Snake Eaters, as engagements are won, the populace begins to shift their allegiance toward the winner, generating important momentum.

Agree absolutely. I always thought of The Village as almost a how to book for small war in a rural area that was written a compelling way. The Snake Eaters is the same in that it is almost a how to book for small war in a more urban area written in a compelling way. The huge strength in both books is that the readers know as much about the Iraqis and Vietnamese in the stories as they do about the Americans.

Both are brilliant books.