Terrorism, National Security & Conflict Studies
These books are drawn from the Chester W. Nimitz Memorial Lectures in National Security Affairs, which each year brings a distinguished scholar, professional military person, or government official to Berkeley for a series of lectures on national security affairs.
War, Ancient and Modern: What the Conflicts of the Past Teach Us about the Fighting of Today
Victor Davis Hanson, $10
Hanson presents an elegant, lucidly written analysis of the 27-year civil war, a "colossal absurdity," that ended in Athens's 5th-century B.C. loss to Sparta and the depletion of centuries of material and intellectual wealth. Hanson deftly chronicles these destructive decades, from the conflict's roots (e.g., the fundamental mutual suspicion between Athens and Sparta) to its legacy (the evolution of the nature of war to something "more deadly, amorphous, and concerned with the ends rather than the ethical means"). Hanson considers the war's economic aspects and the ruinous plague that struck Athens before delving into his discussion of warfare. He offers a tour de force analysis of hoplite (or infantry) combat, guerrilla tactics, siege operations and sea battles in the Aegean. Though landlocked Sparta ultimately brought down Athens's once-great naval fleet and replaced democracy with oligarchy by 404 B.C., Hanson complicates the received notion of a lost Hellenic Golden Age. Throughout this trenchant military and cultural history, he draws parallels between the Peloponnesian War and modern-day conflicts from WWII to the Cold War and Vietnam. Across the centuries, these are lessons worth remembering.
A Future Worth Creating
Thomas P.M. Barnett, $10
This bold and important book strives to be a practical "strategy for a Second American Century." In this brilliantly argued work, Thomas Barnett calls globalization "this country's gift to history" and explains why its wide dissemination is critical to the security of not only America but the entire world. As a senior military analyst for the U.S. Naval War College, Barnett is intimately familiar with the culture of the Pentagon and the State Department (both of which he believes are due for significant overhauls). He explains how the Pentagon, still in shock at the rapid dissolution of the once evil empire, spent the 1990s grasping for a long-term strategy to replace containment. The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, Barnett argues, revealed the gap between an outdated Cold War-era military and a radically different one needed to deal with emerging threats. He believes that America is the prime mover in developing a "future worth creating" not because of its unrivaled capacity to wage war, but due to its ability to ensure security around the world. Further, he believes that the U.S. has a moral responsibility to create a better world and the way he proposes to do that is by bringing all nations into the fold of globalization, or what he calls connectedness. Eradicating disconnectedness, therefore, is "the defining security task of our age." Ultimately, however, the most impressive aspects of the book is not its revolutionary ideas but its overwhelming optimism. Barnett wants the U.S. to pursue the dream of global peace with the same zeal that was applied to preventing global nuclear war with the former Soviet Union. High-level civilian policy makers and top military leaders are already familiar with his vision of the future--this book is a briefing for the rest of us and it cannot be ignored.
Max Boot, Book #4148, $10
"This may turn out to be one of those hinge moments in history-events like the storming of the Bastille or the fall of the Berlin wall-after which everything is different."-Max Boot on the war in Iraq.
In this challenging and thought-provoking look at the war in Iraq and America's role in the Middle East, Boot argues that preemptive war is nothing new and most wars that Americans have fought have been "wars of choice." Nor, he asserts, is there anything new about wars in which U.S. troops act as "social workers." Contrary to popular myth he argues, more often than not, America has fought wars without a vital national interest, without significant popular support, without a declaration of war, and without an exit strategy. And the world, he says, is a better place for it.
Max Boot is a senior fellow in national securities studies at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York and a contributing editor to the Weekly Standard. This series of three talks at Berkeley are drawn from, and expand on, his new book, The Savage Wars of Peace: Small Wars and the Rise of American Power.
Strategy, Ethics, and the War on Terrorism
Albert C. Pierce, Book #4040, $15.95
In two long, thoughtful essays, Albert Pierce, the first director of the Center for the Study of Professional Military Ethics at the U.S. Naval Academy, explores the shifting terrain where strategy and ethics collide in the war on terrorism. The third piece of this important work is a detailed case study of the United States' ill-fated intervention in Haiti. Pierce, a professor of military strategy at the National War College, is currently directing a multi-year project on ethical challenges and the future of conflict.
Lessons from the Iraq War
Robert H. Scales, Jr., 78 pages, Book #4164, $10
A decorated soldier and a distinguished scholar, Major General Robert H. Scales, Jr. USA (ret.) is the author of Certain Victory, the official account of the Army in the Gulf War, and Firepower in Limited War, a history of the evolution of firepower doctrine since the end of the Korean War. In 1995 Scales created the Army After Next program, which was the Army's first attempt to build a strategic game and operational concept for future land warfare. This volume, Lessons from the Iraq War, is drawn from a series of talks Scales gave in the Spring of 2004 as the Nimitz Memorial Lecturer at UC, Berkeley. He offers an insider's analysis of and insight into the Iraq war. Casting his observations forward, Scales reflects on what these events augur for the future of warfare and how the American military will adapt to what it has learned.
