Strategy
Arms Control at a Crossroads: Renewal or Demise?
Edited by Jeffrey A. Larsen and Shane Smith
Reviewed by Dr. Ronald J. Granieri, acting chair, Department of National Security and Strategy, US Army War College
With the impending expiration of the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) in 2026, the era of classic US–Soviet/Russian nuclear arms control agreements that began with the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty in 1963 and the first Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT) in 1972 will come to an end. Although the need for some kind of agreement to manage the continued proliferation of weapons of mass destruction will certainly remain—if not grow—whatever may come next in arms control will be much different than what came before. Future negotiations will probably require a multilateral rather than bilateral framework (at the very least to include the People’s Republic of China, if not the British, French, Indians, Israelis, North Koreans, Pakistanis, and whoever else may be an officially recognized nuclear power by then) and may also have to deal with a bewildering array of new delivery technologies. By then, the issue will not be merely placing limits on the size of national arsenals but also question who should be allowed to have nuclear weapons—or other weapons of mass destruction—at all.
Serious contemplation of the complexity of such negotiations makes it difficult to imagine them happening anytime soon, making this perhaps the most discouraging period for the cause of nuclear arms control since the first decade of the arms race.
This collection of essays from a range of scholars in the field of arms control thus appears at a particularly interesting moment. It is the fourth in a succession of collections that have been at least coedited by Jeffrey Larsen since 1996, who is a research professor of national security affairs at the US Naval Postgraduate School and president of Larsen Consulting Group LLC. Larsen and his 17 coauthors, drawn from a panoply of universities, government agencies, think tanks, and consultancies cover a wide range of topics in their 16 contributions to this volume. The essays begin by providing general context, then analyze the perspectives of the three major nuclear powers, followed by a survey of arms control domains, which includes discussions of nonnuclear strategic weapons of mass destruction, new technologies, and domains beyond the terrestrial, including cyberspace and outer space. The final section considers the future, including discussions of geopolitics, the possibilities for cooperative security, and the overall uncertainties about the parameters of arms control agreements to come.
The concise essays and bibliography make this book a useful addition to the library of any specialists in the field. As one can expect in an edited collection, it is hard to boil down the book to a single argument, but the judicious assessment by Larsen and Shane Smith in their preface sets the stage well: “[W]hile there may be pessimism within the security community over the possibility of a return to traditional arms control, there may perhaps also be optimism about cooperative approaches that could one day lead to renewed negotiations and the return of arms control to a central role in the relationship among nations” (xi). At the moment, even the most informed experts do not know what form such negotiations might take. Much will depend on how the United States and its allies manage the increasingly complex international environment. As Brad Roberts concludes in the book’s final essay, any new arms control strategy must “adapt to the multipolar competition now unfolding” (283). The difficulty of the task, however, intensifies the necessity of planning for the new era of arms control to come. Even if new agreements may appear far off, the need to develop visions for future arms control remains essential to national strategy.
Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2024 ▪ 330 pages ▪ $115.00
Keywords: arms control, strategic domain, cooperative security, deterrence, weapons
Ground Combat: Puncturing the Myths of Modern War
by Ben Connable
Reviewed by Justin R. Lynch, lecturer, Georgetown University
The defense community has no shortage of forecasts about how the next wars will be fought. Unfortunately, many rely on selective anecdotes, over index on a single trend, or mistake models for reality. Even more unfortunately, these mistakes are far from harmless. They can drive choices whose consequences ripple across strategy, budget, and battlefield performance.
Ben Connable’s Ground Combat: Puncturing the Myths of Modern War offers a corrective. Drawing on 468 coded cases between 1942 and 2022 and extensive historical research, he offers a deliberately empirical, rigorous approach. The monograph is written in a clear and accessible style, with methodological choices and findings transparent to readers. The result is a book relevant to senior members of the defense community that should be read by anyone predicting the future of conflict or making decisions based on such predictions.
Connable’s central claim is that the essential character of ground combat has displayed remarkable continuity over the past 75 years. The core elements of battle—infantry, artillery, armor, and air support—remain dominant, while newer systems such as drones or precision-guided munitions have altered tactics at the margins without fundamentally transforming warfare. He is skeptical of bold, declarative forecasts, noting in the introduction that “Ahistoricism and lack of empiricism render most of these claims unsound” (xi).
The book is at its best when it casts doubt on the most common methods used to predict the future of warfare and when it identifies intellectual gaps in the US military. Connable carefully reconstructs how enthusiasm for military-technical revolutions, analyses of Blitzkrieg, and more recent claims about multidomain operations have repeatedly produced overconfidence and distorted priorities. At the same time, he warns that traditionalists who dismiss the impact of technological change fall into the same trap. Both camps rely on ahistoric and overly selective reasoning, one through overstatement and the other through understatement. He also criticizes forecasters that act as though models, games, and simulations fully represent reality rather than characteristics of a narrow problem, or a set of assumptions by planners.
Connable also raises doubts about the case studies many Western experts use to understand warfare. He highlights large combined-arms battles fought between militaries in the developing world during periods typically viewed through the lens of irregular warfare. These battles, rarely examined in Western literature, raise uncomfortable questions: Do American and allied analysts grasp the full spectrum of global combat trends? Is the US military’s operational experience a significant advantage, or do foreign commanders, including those outside Ukraine and Russia, now have more experience in high-intensity warfare than their American counterparts? The answers may be debatable, but the questions themselves should give US leaders pause.
The book is less convincing when it moves from a critique of methodologies to claims about how ground combat has or has not changed over time. Connable’s dataset focuses on combined arms battles involving two or more platoons between 1942 and 2022. The exclusion of World War I and the large-scale deployment of attritable drones in Ukraine in 2023 creates a bias toward continuity and underestimates the risks posed by changes that upend assumptions and require significant adaptation. Connable also occasionally drifts into unnecessarily personal critiques, particularly in his discussion of Marine Corps Force Design.
Finally, Connable offers only a partial sketch of what a better forecasting methodology might look like. His call for more empirical study is well made, but readers seeking a clear alternative to today’s most popular methods will be unsatisfied. Given the clarity with which he explains his own process, the lack of a similarly detailed vision for future analysis is noticeable.
Despite its limitations, Ground Combat makes a significant contribution to existing literature. It compels readers to reconsider their assumptions about how wars change and how we know what we think we know. It is a digestible, rigorously documented work that highlights intellectual pitfalls too often overlooked in US defense debates. Connable may not resolve the challenge of forecasting war, but he makes it harder for analysts and leaders to hide behind confident but untested narratives. In an era awash with debates about transformation, the book is a pointed reminder that humility and evidence should be the watchwords of any attempt to divine the future of conflict. That reason alone is enough for Ground Combat to deserve to be widely read.
Georgetown University Press, 2025 ▪ 352 pages ▪ $36.95
Keywords: land warfare, modern war, force planning, military-technical revolution
Sun Tzu in Space: What International Relations, History, and Science Fiction Teach Us About Our Future
by Gregory D. Miller
Reviewed by Lieutenant Colonel Timothy S. Martin, director, Defense Strategy Course, US Army War College, and Captain Stephanie St. Louis, strategic planner, Office of the Chief of Army Reserve, Fort Belvoir
©2025 Timothy S. Martin and Stephanie St. Louis
Stephen Hawking strongly advocated for humanity’s move into space, believing that the species’ long-term survival depends on becoming multi-planetary. Successful investments by governments such as the Chinese National Space Agency (CNSA) and private corporations like SpaceX suggest that Hawking’s dreamt-of future in space will not be the stuff of science fiction for much longer, prompting the question: “What will that future look like?” In Sun Tzu in Space, Gregory D. Miller uses possible scenarios, history, and established science fiction to examine this question through the lens of international relations (IR) theory.
The book’s subtitle, What International Relations, History, and Science Fiction Teach Us About Our Future, aptly summarizes its central thesis: that these three fields together can provide insight into potential futures as we shape space-related investments and policies. Miller, dean of space education for the United States Space Force and professor of military and security studies at Air University, states that his goal is to “identify the best strategies to pursue now to aim for the future that will be most advantageous to humanity.” He uses four measures of evaluation to judge potential futures—reducing the likelihood of major war; promoting human space exploration; advancing science and technology; and improving human standards of living—nested in the idea that a preferred future should be analogous to our national security interests of security, prosperity, values, and international order (2, 4).
Miller’s perspective on how states and nonstate actors might cohabitate and cooperate in space may seem familiar to readers acquainted with alternative futures analysis (AFA) in US intelligence studies. Miller’s approach to creating futuristic scenarios to identify social and political variables in space closely resembles the Intelligence Community’s AFA. For context, AFA is a structured way to engage in anticipatory intelligence to identify and assess emerging trends, highlight underappreciated developments, and challenge assumptions. Miller accomplishes his analysis by linking IR theory, history, and science fiction to analyze seven possible futures involving human exploration of the solar system. As he notes in the introduction, the greatest challenge lies in avoiding the creation of scenarios that reflect desired outcomes or biases. To counter this possibility, he relies on historical analogies and IR theories to influence plausible outcomes.
To illustrate how he presents his arguments, in chapter 1, “Hegemony,” Miller theorizes that an offensive realist (belief of a nation’s primary self-interest is the quest for more power) would view space as more territory and resources to absorb and control, in the way our history’s Roman Empire did or the Galactic Empire did in the Star Wars universe (38). The following chapters are also structured around a possible scenario based on IR theory, a Sun Tzu maxim that grounds the scenario to theory, and examples from history and science fiction. They include scenarios surrounding defensive realism, institutional liberalism, commercial liberalism, and constructivist perspectives on futures in which Marxism and class struggle, feminism, and ascendant artificial intelligence (AI) dominate humanity’s move into space.
Sun Tzu in Space is a pulse check on the potential for violent future conflicts. Miller does not shy away from the unpredictable aspects of human nature, encouraging readers to explore prominent and lesser-known IR theories. While he does not contribute new material to the field of IR, he innovatively applies existing theories to frame possible futures. He concedes that the scenarios he developed for each IR theory are not meant to represent what will happen in that case but are each one of multiple variations possible, dependent on other political and social forces, economics, and the development of new technology (285).
By its nature, Miller’s book is speculative and food for thought rather than a proposal for a way forward. In that regard, it does very well. Most policymakers tend to think in terms of news cycles or budget cycles. Deep thinking about where we as a nation (or a species) want to be in 100 year—and what decisions and sacrifices are needed to get there—is required by decisionmakers with the power to enact change. Sun Tzu in Space is easy to read and thought provoking. It should be on the reading list of policymakers, futurists, science fiction fans, and anyone interested in international relations.
Naval Institute Press, 2023 ▪ 299 pages ▪ $34.95
Keywords: future, international relations, science fiction, history
The Retreat from Strategy: Britain’s Dangerous Confusion of Interests with Values
by David Richards and Julian Lindley-French
Reviewed by Dr. James D. Scudieri, senior research historian, US Army Heritage and Education Center, US Army War College
David Richards and Julian Lindley-French have written an unrelenting, blistering indictment of British strategy since the end of the Cold War. Richards is a retired four-star British Army general and former Chief of the Defence Staff. Lindley-French is chairman of the Alphen Group, strategic thinkers on wider European defense and security studies and the transatlantic relationship.
The book’s detailed structure warrants careful study. James Joye Townsend Jr., former US deputy assistant secretary for defense, penned the foreword. The preface’s second subsection delivers three critical messages: 1) a vital need to balance ends, ways, and means of grand, national, and defense strategy; 2) a critical need to create a “systems of systems” approach across government in London capable of devising and executing British strategy; and 3) London must create a grounded, proven, and robust mechanism for managing crises much better in real time (xxxi).
“Scenario: Britain Defeated” depicts how China and Russia defeated Britain under a full-scale hybrid and cyberattack with the main effort in the Arctic, despite NATO participation. The introduction cited contradictory forces of geopolitical threat and fragmenting society and provided a concise overview of the book’s two parts with eight chapters and a concluding scenario (14, 26–29).
Part 1: “The Retreat from Strategy” explains Britain’s loss of strategic acumen. Chapter 1 explains British senior political leaders’ unbalanced default to doing good rather than what was necessary. Chapter 2 assesses the 2000 Operation Palliser in Sierra Leone as the last effective intervention. Unsparing dissection detailed Britain’s subsequent failures in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and Syria. Chapter 3 returns to the domestic scene, noting the long-term effects of a devolution from London at the center, to Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales (110). This drift compounded the dominant entrenchment of fiscal affordability over defense without proper analysis of tradeoffs. Russian actions in 2006–18 on British soil were still no wake-up call. Chapter 4 dismantles existing strategic assumptions with unrealistic policy and planning documents. Britain needs to rediscover land war fighting by transforming into a small, high-end, strategic raider and avoid extended campaigns (146).
“Part 2: The Return to Strategy” declares very specific fixes. Chapter 5 showcases domain defense with particular emphasis on the grand strategic information domain. Chapter 6 prepares a viable reestablishment of British military power in national and allied contexts. They surmised the US Marine Corps as an organizational model for the British Army but structured as the Allied Reaction Force. Overdue changes include acquisition reform and bloated command structure reductions.
Chapter 7 is a joint evaluation, but British Army numbers are especially stark. In 2000, there were 110,000 regular personnel and 45,000 reservists. The 2024 numbers of “full-time trade-trained strength” were 76,000 slated for reduction to 72,500 in 2025. A detailed analysis of personnel strength explains the requirements to meet NATO commitments.
Chapter 8 provides four takeaways: 1) Britain should act as a force for good if values and interests align properly and the will exists to pay the price; 2) Britain wields enormous soft power, but also requires hard power commensurate with its development, economy, and technology; 3) British security necessitates a new balance between power projection and people protection; and 4) Politicians must cease to view sound defense as cost rather than value (239).
“Scenario: Britain Defended” is the same wartime situation but with diametrically opposite results from the earlier “Scenario: Britain Defeated.” Britain has in essence reinvented itself strategically, based on rethinking and reforms. The final section, a two-page “Elite Questionnaire,” poses 11 questions to senior leaders, past and present.
This book is a powerful commentary. The breadth shows the dilemmas over time and within periods, though the twenty-first century predominates. The depth buttresses the authors’ arguments, for example, delving inside multiple policy and planning documents. The effective integration of nuanced historical examples eschews superficiality. The authors say Britain created balance of power in 1815. Several analogies to the 1930s and a sweeping review of British experiences in 1936–44 are included. Munich itself in 1938 is especially enlightening. It bought a year to avoid war until rearmament had achieved meaningful progress, not mere appeasement. Britain still could not avoid catastrophe in May–June 1940 due to internal failures, the rapid fall of France notwithstanding.
This painful sojourn through Britain’s strategic dilemmas from the end of the Cold War through the post-9/11 deployments is very closely intertwined with American actions. Indeed, some might say that British challenges derived from US behavior.
US security professionals should read this work now. They understand how strategy requires making hard choices. This case study showcases when skewed strategy becomes inexecutable but lacks difficult reanalysis. Readers will likely identify readily with the authors’ clarion call. Critical thinking is warranted, given the vociferous, passionate presentation.
Hurst & Co., 2024 ▪ 336 pages ▪ $33
Keywords: strategy, grand strategy, army and politics, civil-military relations, British national security, NATO
Military History
The Clausewitz Myth: Or the Emperor’s New Clothes
by Azar Gat
Reviewed by Colonel Darren W. Buss, faculty instructor, Department of Military Strategy, Planning, and Operations, US Army War College
Carl von Clausewitz, the early nineteenth-century Prussian general and war theorist, unjustly holds mythical soothsayer status among scholars and national security professionals—at least in Dr. Azar Gat’s opinion. For the past 35 years, Gat, an Israeli professor of national security at Tel Aviv University, has sought to clarify and correct what he believes are misperceptions regarding Clausewitz’s thoughts on war. Gat’s unlikely villains are noted strategists Sir Michael Howard and Peter Paret, whom he blames for introducing errors through their 1976 English translation of Clausewitz’s magnum opus, On War—a book that likely sits on the shelf of every reader of Parameters.
In The Clausewitz Myth: Or the Emperor’s New Clothes, Gat clarifies the “real” Clausewitz as compared to the “absolute” mythical icon portrayed by Howard, who ironically advised Gat during his doctoral dissertation in the 1980s (2). Gat claims Howard’s introductory essays and commentary to On War and other essays written by Paret and Bernard Brodie are guilty of misrepresentation. In his relatively short book, Gat consolidates the arguments he initially proffered in earlier works while incorporating and critiquing more recent Clausewitz scholarship. He voices his frustration regarding the Clausewitz “hype”; he believes many scholars misinterpret Clausewitz’s dialectic writing style, falsely conclude Clausewitz’s intent, and lead readers awry. As stated in the introductory chapter, “[My] objective is to portray a clear scholarly picture of what Clausewitz was about; what gave his ideas their particular form and trajectory; which of them still possess a ‘lasting’ value; which are simply wrong; and which are those whose significance is hugely inflated in the current discourse” (2).
Gat analyzes numerous historical texts, including unpublished drafts of On War not available during his prior research, to advance his arguments and clarify misperceptions. He begins by stressing the importance of interpreting Clausewitz’s writing through the intellectual and cultural context in which he lived and that inspired his writing style—the German Romantic or Counter-Enlightenment movement. Gat notes that Clausewitz sought an enduring theory of war throughout most of his life and did so to generate practical applications for war fighting rather than for theory’s sake, as Paret suggests. As evidence, Gat examines numerous Clausewitz texts, highlighting that Clausewitz’s posthumous collected works were titled On War and the Conduct of War. For most of his scholarly life, from 1804 until 1827, Clausewitz deduced decisive battle or violent total war as war’s enduring nature. According to Gat, Clausewitz’s description of the defense in On War best illustrates the Prussian’s long-held belief that war is annihilation. After completing Book VI in 1827, however, Clausewitz could not reconcile this assertion through historical analysis. The resultant intellectual crisis led him to reverse his entire theoretical journey, ultimately concluding that the relationship between politics and war defined the enduring nature of war—a conclusion Paret claimed that Clausewitz reached much earlier in his career. Many of Gat’s arguments rest on the unknowable question of when Clausewitz drafted an undated letter found posthumously in his manuscripts. Gat believes Clausewitz wrote the letter in 1827, implying that the current version of On War is more complete than other scholars, who deduce an 1830 penning, just under two years before his death. The later date leaves little time for manuscript revisions due to Clausewitz’s military deployments from 1830–31.
Whether Gat effectively debunks the Clausewitz myth depends on whether one believes a myth exists. From an army practitioner’s perspective, I find Gat’s arguments interesting and compelling but not myth-busting, perhaps because my educational experience provides a balanced and holistic view of Clausewitz’s work. Reading The Clausewitz Myth forced me to revisit elements of On War with a more critical eye, particularly its introductory sections. Clausewitz scholars and lecturers will benefit from considering Gat’s arguments and critiques to develop a more comprehensive view of the Prussian and his writings. Gat’s critiques of fellow Clausewitz commentators, whether scattered throughout the text and endnotes or in the final chapter, benefit scholars and practitioners by providing a fuller picture of existing literature.
Ultimately, Gat achieves his objective of portraying a holistic and contextual view of Clausewitz—the man, the soldier, and the scholar. Readers will have to decide whether he shatters the myth of Clausewitz or if one exists. Regardless, Clausewitz remains perhaps the most important war theorist, and engaging with his thoughts through the lens of Gat is a valuable experience for readers.
Chronos Books, 2024 ▪ 201 pages ▪ $15.95
Keywords: Clausewitz, theory of war, military science, history
Outmaneuvered: America’s Tragic Encounter with Warfare from Vietnam to Afghanistan
by James A. Warren
Reviewed by Dr. Marie Louise deRaismes Combes, assistant professor of national security, Department of National Security and Strategy, US Army War College
©2025 Marie Louise deRaismes Combes
Hubris lies at the heart of James A. Warren’s book, Outmaneuvered: America’s Tragic Encounter with Warfare from Vietnam to Afghanistan, which examines the United States’ torturous relationship with countering insurgency. While Warren does not offer groundbreaking insights or new cutting-edge analysis, he effectively compiles the narrative of this relationship into a chronological account that is accessible to a general audience. At times overly simplistic, Warren’s central message about the political nature of irregular warfare bears repeating—especially since, as he notes, the United States appears persistently unable to internalize it. Like others, Warren places the blame for America’s past failures abroad squarely on the shoulders of politicians and their top advisers in Washington, few of whom were willing to acknowledge that irregular conflicts are, above all, political in nature. Indeed, Warren traces America’s experiences in Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Somalia, and Vietnam to highlight that, “history has a way of confirming over and over that . . . Political organization, mobilization, and the production of effective narratives invariably prove to be more important than battles and raw military strength” (2). These “tragic encounters,” he argues, continue to have deleterious effects on US foreign policy, having “exacerbated Islamic militancy and terrorism, further destabilized the Middle East, and seriously eroded American prestige among allies, partners, and neutral parties,” (136).
Three points of praise and two critiques. First, Warren’s chapter on North Vietnamese strategy, “The Vietnamese Communists: Masters of Irregular Warfare”—offers an excellent overview of the unique brand of irregular warfare practiced by Ho Chi Minh and Vo Nguyen Giap, which is too often overshadowed in the literature by Mao Zedong or the red blanket of Cold War Communism. Second, Warren’s chapter on special operations, “The Rise of Special Operations Forces,” observes that the limelight too often goes to direct actions, (such as the raid that killed Osama bin Laden), but the true value of Special Operations Command lies in its political side of the house. Yet, consistent with the book’s broader argument, Warren laments that, “indirect missions demand long-standing commitments and patience, neither of which has been the strong suit of our political leaders, or of an American military culture that strongly inclines toward technologically driven solutions to problems” (251). Third, though not novel, Warren consistently acknowledges how “the shock and anger that afflicted the American body politic in the wake of 9/11” shaped poor decision making, serving as a valuable reminder (157). The tragedy of that morning has been lost in the subsequent analyses of the wars, but as time continues to afford us distance, the causal role of collective trauma deserves greater scrutiny.
Now, the criticisms. Warren’s coverage of irregular conflicts prior to 2001 feels like an extended prelude to the main event, which is an explanation of the last two decades of war. While his pre-9/11 chapters do establish a convincing pattern of [bad] behavior, ending the book with reflections risks the sublimation of important social and political differences that existed between the 1960s and today into a single narrative of failure.
Second—and admittedly unfair—Warren, like many scholars of irregular warfare, gets caught in analytical dragnet. Fulminating against US leadership’s consistent and/or willful ignorance of the political machinations driving these conflicts, his book remains centered on the American military campaigns that followed. Even when the military adapted, as seen in Afghanistan and Iraq, nation-building programs were insufficient to achieve positive results and instead spurred rampant corruption making matters worse. If the solution is fundamentally political, then any policy rooted in military force is bound to be, in Warren’s words, “tragic.” Here is why this critique may be unfair: Warren is correct in asserting that counterinsurgency cannot succeed without social and institutional development. Until we can figure out how to pursue such development ethically, responsibly, and comprehensively in dangerous environments, however, the military will continue to be the instrument of choice for politicians with few viable alternatives—short of not intervening at all.
Warren’s (and my) preferred solution is just that: Do not intervene in the first place. As his book makes clear, perhaps the greatest tragedy of all is our unwillingness to look long and hard before we leap.
Scribner, 2025 ▪ 336 pages ▪ $29.99
Keywords: irregular warfare, leadership, strategy, hubris and arrogance
Valiant Women: The Extraordinary American Servicewomen Who Helped Win World War II
by Lena Andrews
Reviewed by Dr. Christine Cook, director of theories and war, Department of Distance Education, US Army War College
©2025 Christine Cook
In Valiant Women, Lena Andrews presents a history of women from all branches of the US military whose service was crucial to our nations’ success in World War II. Through interviews with women who served, Andrews found that, despite extraordinary contributions, many felt their service was “too small, too peripheral, too feminine to count in a meaningful way” (3). Andrews argues to the contrary, that the US military would not have been victorious in World War II without the essential services women provided. For example, Pacific amphibious landings may have been catastrophic failures without tide maps drawn by WAVES working for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). These contributions are rarely discussed—academically or historically. The author’s goal is to change the lack of written history by including stories of how women served in crucial roles.
Andrews primarily relies on oral histories with women who served during the war and rounds out this research with materials from the National Archives and the Dwight D. Eisenhower and Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Libraries. The back matter lists sources but no bibliography, and the footnotes lack extensive use of secondary historical analysis. Andrews references Mattie Treadwell’s Special Studies: The Women’s Army Corps, a Center of Military History Publication (Center of Military History, 1954) and Tanya Roths’ Her Cold War: Women in the U.S. Military, 1945–1980 (The University of North Carolina Press, 2021) but asserts that historical analysis about military women has been minimal.
The book is structured into two parts. The first part, titled “The Problem,” consists of 16 chapters, each focusing on military branches in rotation, from the United States Army Nurse Corps and Navy Nurse Corps to the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps (WAAC), the Navy’s Women Accepted for Voluntary Emergency Service (WAVES), the Women’s Air Service Pilots (WASP), women Marines, and Coast Guard SPARs, named after the Coast Guard motto, “Semper Paratus,” “Always Ready.” Andrews covers the story chronologically, beginning in 1942, when the military faced a shortage of men to fulfill combat and support roles, and concluding in mid-1943. The solution was to enlist women volunteers. The second part continues the rotation between branches of service and highlights the critical roles women performed from 1943 through the end of the war in 1945. Women exceeded expectations, as they followed units across North Africa into Italy, across the English Channel, and into the Pacific theater, despite earlier assurances they would not deploy overseas. However, WASP pilots were denied full military status and were deactivated before the end of the war.
This book presents an engaging history of women’s accomplishments across all military branches during World War II, featuring dozens of previously untold stories. Andrews uses virtually all primary sources, including oral histories and papers of people such as Jacqueline “Jackie” Cochran, who led the WASPs. The bibliography does not include academic histories of World War II, women’s military service during World War II, or societal histories of the time. While it is true, as Andrews asserts, that published histories of military women are limited, there is expanding literature about military women during World War II. Notable examples include Code Girls: The Untold Story of the American Women Code Breakers of World War II (Hachette Books, 2017); D-Day Girls: The Spies Who Armed the Resistance, Sabotaged the Nazis, and Helped Win World War II (Crown, 2019); The Girls Who Stepped Out of Line: Untold Stories of the Women Who Changed the Course of World War II (Sourcebooks, 2021); and The Women with Silver Wings: The Inspiring True Story of the Women Airforce Service Pilots of World War II (Crown, 2021). Not mentioning these academic histories creates a missed opportunity for the author to be in conversation with other historians who study aspects of the same subject.
Readers interested in the untold story of women’s military service during World War II will enjoy this book and its inclusion of all military branches and the personal histories of military women interwoven with a general history of World War II. By overlaying storylines, Andrews proves the women’s service was extensive and far-reaching. This book is relevant for senior defense community members as it shows how women have played critical roles in the military for more than 80 years.
Mariner Books, 2023 ▪ 368 pages ▪ $17.59
Keywords: Allied strategy, World War II, military history, biography
The Dark Path: The Structure of War and the Rise of the West
by Williamson Murray
Reviewed by Dr. John A. Nagl, professor of war-fighting studies, US Army War College
©2025 John A. Nagl
I met Williamson “Wick” Murray at a now-forgotten academic conference some three decades ago; while I have forgotten the venue, I vividly remember introducing myself to him on a shuttle bus taking us from the conference venue to another location, striking up a conversation and then a relationship with one of the more important students of war of our times. As kind and generous as he was erudite, Wick served as the external examiner for my doctoral dissertation, asking deeply thoughtful questions, suggesting edits and publication, and then buying me my first pint as a newly minted PhD.
Wick was already an emeritus professor at The Ohio State University by then, teaching at a succession of professional military education institutions as a distinguished chair while writing more than 20 books on war and strategy. The Dark Path, published posthumously after his passing in 2023, synthesizes his career in an important and accessible package well worth the time for readers of this journal. He does nothing less than follow the threads of “logistics, finance, innovation, and the culture of military organizations” over the past five centuries, arguing that these factors “are what drove the West’s expansion and domination over the globe” (3).
Wick’s voice became important during the so-called “Revolution in Military Affairs” in the immediate aftermath of Operation Desert Storm and the Kosovo War, when theorists suggested that the application of digitized information to the field of warfare had resulted in the potential for bloodless battle for the technologically superior side. Wick strongly disagreed, believing that there had been no less than five revolutions in military affairs over the course of modern European history: the creation of the modern state and the gunpowder revolution some five centuries ago; the Industrial Revolution, with coal-powered steam engines driving mass production of weapons; the French Revolution, with its ideological mobilization of society and the beginnings of “total war;” the Fourth Revolution, a combination of the previous two, marked by the application of the internal combustion engine and the airplane to warfare; and finally, the scientific / computing revolution, from 1944 to the present, including nuclear weapons, computers, precision strike, and artificial intelligence (9).
It should be obvious from this list that Wick was a strong believer in the unchanging nature of war—that “the dominance of nonlinear factors . . . Friction, uncertainty, chance, and above all the horror of combat” combine to ensure that “the fundamental nature of war never changes” (8). The character of war does change, however, and “[s]ince the fifteenth century, radical and evolutionary changes have become integral to war in the West. Because it remains a human endeavor, a conflict between two learning and adapting military forces, changes in the political and strategic framework, innovation and adaptation, and the march of technology have formed and altered war’s character” (8).
In The Dark Path, Murray examines the course of each of the five Military-Social Revolutions, devoting the heart of the book to his examination of World War I and World War II. He spends more than 100 pages on each of the two “Fourth Revolution” wars, focusing on the effect of the combination of nationalism and technology on these two global events. Murray is a key student of the impact of nationalism on war, first harnessed by Napoleon in his conquests in Europe and Africa; there is a reason that the greatest book on war was written to explain the astounding power Napoleon put to such effective use. For the two-and-a-quarter centuries since, Murray argues that states have rarely stopped fighting when they ran out of will; instead, attrition has depleted the ability, not the desire, of the less successful party to continue fighting. He makes this point most clearly in his interesting chapter on the interwar years, the pivot of the book, noting that during that period “[o]nly the Soviets and the Americans recognized that the next war would prove an extended struggle of attrition resting on industrial power” (206).
That proved to be the case during the titanic conflicts that Murray says decided the greatest war in world history: “the air and naval struggle between the Western Powers and Germany; the Eastern Front, with its murderous war of attrition between the Wehrmacht and the Red Army; and the Pacific, with the struggle between the navies of the United States and Japan” (273). Astute readers will note that the Anglo-British assault on Nazi Germany from the beaches of Normandy to the Rhine does not make the list; the German military, Murray argues, had already lost much of its fighting ability due to the effects of the Combined Bomber Offensive and the bloody fighting in the east. There is room for debate on that point, but not on his conclusion: “in the end the outcome was decided by industrial and economic power” (273).
It is impossible to read this book and not project forward, to the possible war between China and the United States that occupies much of the Department of War’s planning and procurement efforts today. During World War II Germany and Japan struggled to create the sinews of war that were being expended at what today seem impossible rates to replenish. America, the “Arsenal of Democracy” during the last century, today is hard pressed to ramp up production of enough even relatively uncomplicated munitions like 155mm artillery rounds to support its Ukrainian ally in a single theater of war over a period of years. Today, at least, impartial observers would have to conclude that the advantage in a war of attrition would accrue to the nation with more active shipyards, a larger population, and a government more focused on the acquisition of military technology.
It would truly be a fitting memorial to Wick if his final book—synthesizing a lifetime of the study of the history of man’s travel down the dark path of war—spurred the country he loved so much to put its shoulder to the wheel and prepare again for protracted war, since preparedness ultimately preserves peace.
Yale University Press, 2024 ▪ 488 pages ▪ $40
Keywords: military revolution, western warfare, industrial warfare, strategic history, military innovation
Facing the Victorious Turks: How the French Misread the Turkish War of Independence
by Andrew Orr
Reviewed by Dr. Michael S. Neiberg, chair of war studies, US Army War College
I have a French friend who is fond of telling me that the United States has made a hobby of criticizing France, only to end up repeating French mistakes. He would find much to validate his views in Andrew Orr’s well-researched and thoughtfully argued book about a time when culturally and historically inaccurate intelligence estimates, during a period of global crisis, inflated a threat assessment to justify a Middle Eastern war. Fortunately for France in the 1920s, its political leaders—exhausted by the 1914–18 experience and suspicious of the claims of imminent peril—decided against war.
The crisis in this case centered on the Turkish nationalist movement led by war hero Kemal Atatürk. Rather than seeing the movement for what it represented, most French assessments mistook it as incontrovertible proof of one of three preexisting fears: a wider war between Islam and the west; a potential vehicle for the Ottoman Empire’s erstwhile German allies to undermine the results of the Paris Peace Conference, (1919–20) and continue to stir up trouble against French interests; or the wedge of a regional communist revolution masterminded in Moscow. Unable to see Atatürk as a genuine and sincere Turkish nationalist, they quickly read him and the movement he led as an agent or dupe of global movements to which he, in fact, had no meaningful connection. These misreadings nearly proved fatal in the short term and guaranteed instability in the long run.
Professor Orr helps readers understand the role of the French intelligence services, mainly understood in France today as the malicious actors of the Dreyfus Affair or as satirized in a recent Netflix comedy television series set in the 1960s, Au service de la France (broadcast in English as A Very Secret Service). In the show, the fictitious agents bumble around Paris and the empire, making a mess of everything they touch. Orr pushes against these stereotypes by arguing instead that France had a sophisticated and professionalized intelligence ecosystem that included a few clearheaded thinkers able to push against the consensus.
For Orr, an agent named Henri Rollin is the closest person to a hero in the sad and convoluted history of French involvement in Türkiye. Rollin appears almost George Kennan–like in his ability to see through the noise to place Atatürk within the wider sweep of Turkish and Ottoman history and politics. As a group, however, French intelligence officials failed to correct for their biases or their belief in the superiority of their civilization. They therefore misread Atatürk through the prisms of their fears rather than the true situation on the ground. These flaws caused them to misread events badly in Türkiye, Russia, and Syria.
The book misunderstands Georges Clemenceau and his approach to the Middle East. It presents the French prime minister as struggling to find forces to colonize Syria and unable to justify his policy. He thus appears confused and almost irrational. To understand Clemenceau’s actions, however, it is important to note that he cared first and foremost—indeed, almost exclusively— about the security of metropolitan France in response to British and American unwillingness to make the alliance permanent. The venomously revisionist, more populous, and more industrial Germans worried him—not what happened in faraway Cilicia, Syria, or Palestine. In any case, he had little love for the conservative French colonial parties who wanted to expand into the Middle East, mainly due to the religious motivations he did not share.
Facing the Victorious Turks provides a detailed case study of officials profoundly impacted by recent events and inclined to read local events in Türkiye through their fears and insecurities. French political leaders, better able to see the wider picture and place it in its proper context, avoided the worst of the potential pitfalls. In presenting an analysis of such a multifaceted case study, this book has obvious implications beyond the Middle East. This meticulously researched study offers a powerful reminder of how historical understandings and cultural myopia can blind officials to present realities and future threats.
University Press of Kansas, 2024 ▪ 256 pages ▪ $49.99
Keywords: World War I, allied powers, nationalism, imperialism, intelligence
A Search for Strategy: British-American Military Collaboration in 1942
by John F. Shortal
Reviewed by Colonel William Phillips, US Army retired, assistant professor, Department of Joint, Interagency, and Multinational Operations, Command and General Staff College
©2025 William Phillips
John F. Shortal is a retired brigadier general and the former director for Joint Military History for the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. In his latest book, A Search for Strategy: British–American Military Collaboration in 1942, Shortal offers vivid accounts of British and American cooperation in developing a comprehensive strategy to defeat the Axis powers in 1942. Although President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Prime Minister Sir Winston Churchill maintained a special relationship while pursuing their national interests, the rapport among the British–American Combined Chiefs of Staff (CCS) was often fraught with conflict and occasionally masked by a facade of collegiality.
In the first chapter, Shortal begins the World War II retrospective by immersing readers in the inner circle of strategy titans, including General George Marshall, Henry Stimson, Admiral Ernest King, Admiral Dudley Pound, and others at the American–British Joint Chiefs of Staff Conference, known as the Arcadia Conference, held shortly after the Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. Arcadia laid the foundation for the British-American coalition and showcased the strong influence of Churchill and the leadership of Roosevelt, providing national-level policy guidance that informed the development of theater-level military strategies. The conference resulted in a significant agreement on the Germany-first strategy and included a brief discussion on the viability of an unpopular operation called Gymnast (35).
In the next six chapters, Shortal chronicles the impact of national priorities on strategies as the harsh realities of war, including battle losses, encroached upon the sovereignty of nations and their populations. Churchill advanced the indirect approach, while the Americans, particularly Marshall, believed the direct approach was the most effective way to defeat Germany (22). Today, every proficient strategist and planner should understand the importance of identifying the objective and selecting the right approach early in strategy development to achieve unity of effort while ensuring the prudent use of valuable and limited resources.
Nevertheless, these and other related differences, including the intent and practicality of Operation Sledgehammer, emerged repeatedly throughout the text. Shortal exposes complications that arise from fixating on a plan, leading to rigidity and inflexibility. These traits stifle creativity when intentionally developing timely alternative plans. In chapter 7, Shortal states, “Roosevelt was clearly frustrated with his chiefs. Their thinking was rigid and inflexible. Marshall was so fixated on protecting his plan for a 1943 invasion of Western Europe that he failed to offer any option to Gymnast other than a poorly thought-out threat to pivot to the Pacific” (165). According to Shortal, the British and US joint staffs were united against Gymnast but supported operations Bolero and Roundup (143). Furthermore, the impasse continued even after Roosevelt provided specific guidance to his staff.
In concluding A Search for Strategy, Shortal reveals the success of Operation Torch, originally called Gymnast, but primarily summarizes the tumultuous relationship among the members of the CCS. He reminds readers that “without the constant pressure from Churchill or Roosevelt, the Combined Chiefs of Staff discussions more or less collapsed” (176). He further notes, “throughout 1942, the British-American planners on the CCS argued for eight months over a grand strategy, forcing Churchill and Roosevelt to intervene and eventually approve Torch” (205). Lastly, Shortal asserts, “The strategic debates of 1942 would prove the genesis for bitter recriminations, mistrust, and future disagreements on grand strategy” (205).
A Search for Strategy naturally reflects the handiwork of a historian and includes a biography, glossary, and 30 pages of notes and references to primary sources. The narratives feature multiple maps and images to engage readers and spark imagination. A Search for Strategy is much more than a World War II retrospective that highlights a dysfunctional British-American Combined Chiefs of Staff; it imparts valuable lessons for modern strategists and planners tasked with collaborating with multinational partners to develop theater strategies and plans for unified action. A Search for Strategy is relevant and will appeal to senior leaders involved in advancing multinational efforts.
Texas A&M University Press, 2025 ▪ 256 pages ▪ $50.00
Keywords: British-American Alliance, military collaboration, strategic planning, Combined Chiefs of Staff, diplomatic history
Defining the Mission: The Development of US Strategic Military Intelligence up to the Cold War
by Scott A. Moseman
Reviewed by Dr. Thomas W. Spahr, Francis W. De Serio Chair of Strategic and Theater Intelligence, US Army War College
When I volunteered to review Defining the Mission, I hoped to expand my understanding of the early evolution of American military intelligence. Author Scott Moseman fulfilled my expectations and, in the process, reinforced many principles I came to know about military intelligence.
Moseman, a retired Navy officer and professor at the US Army Command and General Staff College, is well positioned to publish a book focused on the Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) and the Army’s Military Intelligence Division (MID), two key actors in early US strategic intelligence history. Moseman traces the evolution of strategic intelligence between 1882 and 1947, alongside developments in American politics and society—including debates between Jeffersonian isolationists and Hamiltonian free-trade globalists, the early twentieth-century Progressive Movement, and significant societal upheavals such as the Red Scare of 1917–20. The ONI and MID’s changing missions over time were influenced by the personalities of military and political leaders, bureaucratic requirements, and societal demands. Moseman’s central thesis asserts the ONI and MID evolved alongside American society and were never equipped to produce strategic intelligence. Political and military leaders tasked their intelligence organizations with a myriad of missions, and it was not until the post–World War II era and the establishment of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) that the ONI and MID found their niche in supporting military planning and operations.
For example, the ONI and MID focused on domestic security versus foreign intelligence immediately following World War I, as the United States trended toward isolationism and experienced the communist Red Scare. Early twentieth-century Progressives, seeking centralized management and efficiency, subordinated military intelligence to the Army and Navy War Colleges, actively preventing the ONI and MID from providing analysis to war planners and strategic leaders. Instead, Navy and Army Intelligence collected and organized information, along with other miscellaneous duties, including military propaganda and censorship.
Moseman never blames the ONI or MID for failures to provide intelligence during major wars, including the failure to predict the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Instead, he points to American culture and the misunderstanding of intelligence among senior leaders as the causes. Underfunded, burdened with menial and non-intelligence tasks, and buried within the military chain of command with limited access to decisionmakers, ONI and MID had little opportunity to provide strategic analysis. Furthermore, high-quality officers either avoided intelligence assignments or stayed briefly before moving on to more promising positions for promotion—typically at sea or in line command.
Moseman concludes that US leaders and the American public failed to recognize ONI and MID did not fully function at the strategic level. By the end of World War II, these actors discovered ONI and MID served the military better at lower echelons, focusing on operations and war fighting, while a strategic intelligence organization—the CIA—provided information to policymakers.
Politicians and senior military leaders must understand the military is a direct reflection of the society it serves, and Moseman succeeds in relating the evolution of strategic military intelligence to American society. Additionally, nearly every chapter captures how American culture viewed the intelligence agencies through Hollywood and newspaper reporting, concluding Americans did not understand the role of military intelligence, hampering its development as an analytical organization advising policy.
One critique of the book is Army intelligence often feels like an afterthought to the Office of Naval Intelligence, perhaps because ONI came first and Moseman’s background is in naval intelligence. Not a fatal flaw—there is plenty of detail on the Army—but it does make the book feel disproportional in places. Moseman writes strong introductions and conclusions to each of his chapters, while the pages in between are often dense and hard to follow as he jumps between the ONI and MID and the many players involved. Less detail in places could have improved the readability of the book.
Defining the Mission is a significant contribution to the historiography of military intelligence. The book is unique in the period it examines, offers a side-by-side consideration of the ONI and MID, and a description of the evolution of strategic intelligence alongside American society. It is an academic history, yet Moseman makes it accessible by providing summaries in each of the chapters. Military intelligence consumers and practitioners will benefit from this work as it reinforces age-old principles and the challenges associated with military intelligence, including the importance of access to decisionmakers, the role of senior leaders in intelligence, and failures when intelligence is misused.
University Press of Kansas, 2025 ▪ 408 pages ▪ $54.99
Keywords: civil-military relations, strategic intelligence, domestic security, national security, military profession, military intelligence
Generals and Admirals, Criminals and Crooks: Dishonorable Leadership in the U.S. Military
by Jeffrey J. Matthews
Reviewed by Lieutenant Colonel Josh VanBuskirk, instructor, Defense Strategy Foundation Course, Department of Distance Education, US Army War College
Professor Jeffrey Matthews, in Generals and Admirals, Criminals and Crooks: Dishonorable Leadership in the U.S. Military, delivers a compelling and sobering critique of the military’s highest echelons, challenging the entrenched paradigm of deference to rank. All too often, military professionals equate higher rank with greater competence and moral authority. This fallacy creates a culture of deference to flag officers. Matthews smashes the myth of senior leader infallibility with vivid storytelling. Across 307 pages and seven chapters, Matthews presents an exhaustive catalog of flag officers betraying the public trust, forcing readers to question whether the public’s reverence for the military is justified.
Matthews’s thesis is provocative but persuasive: flag officers, regardless of their competency, are capable of ethical and moral misconduct. Criminals and Crooks exposes this misconduct through case studies organized into seven chapters: war crimes, insubordination, moral cowardice, toxic leadership, obstruction of justice, sex crimes, and public corruption. By organizing the book this way, Matthews highlights the diversity of transgressions and underscores the pervasiveness of wrongdoing across different eras and branches of service. Each chapter centers on one or a small group of flag officers as a case study, while weaving in honorable mentions to illustrate the breadth of the problem.
One of the book’s more interesting cases examines Admiral Hyman Rickover. Known as the founding father of the US nuclear submarine fleet, Rickover is the paradigm of a technical expert promoted for his competence. Competency, however, came at a price. Rickover bullied, castigated, and pressured subordinates to achieve the highest standards of efficiency and quality. Leadership ignored his toxic leadership for decades until he was forced to retire after 64 years in the Navy.
Rickover is not the only flag officer to escape punishment. Then–Brigadier General Colin Powell survived the Iran-Contra affair and rode his competence to the position of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Matthews’s use of the Rickover and Powell case studies is particularly valuable because it highlights the military’s ability to overlook ethical lapses when they are overshadowed by unparalleled success.
After seven chapters detailing misconduct, Matthews provides an “exemplar of good leadership: effective, ethical and lawful” former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley. (302) Milley’s track record, while heroic to some, is considered insubordinate by others and might earn him a place among the villains in a sequel to Generals and Admirals, Criminals and Crooks written by another author. Using Milley as a hero reminds readers that the line between good and evil can be thin. Obstruction of justice can be viewed as a heroic display of loyalty to the chain of command. Insubordination to an autocrat is a display of moral courage. Toxic leadership is an example of a dedication to pushing subordinates to achieve the highest standards.
Milley aside, Matthews has only scratched the surface of unethical behavior among flag officers. The sheer volume of examples he references suggests that a longer work—or even a series—could be completed. Readers may want more analysis of the systemic factors enabling such behavior or a more detailed analysis of the military’s culture of deference to rank. In many ways, Criminals and Crooks is a good start, but not an exhaustive study of senior leaders’ wrongdoing.
Criminals and Crooks is a compelling book that exposes the darker side of military leadership. Matthews’s assertion that competence and ethics are not inherently linked is supported by a wealth of examples that are as disturbing as they are enlightening. While the book’s brevity leaves room for further work, it succeeds in starting a conversation about power and accountability at the senior levels of the military. For readers interested in leadership or ethics, this book is a good read—offering a sobering reminder that even those at the top can falter and that unquestioned deference to rank comes at a cost.
Notre Dame University Press, 2023 ▪ 432 pages ▪ $38.00
Keywords: ethics, leadership failure, war crimes, US military history, civil-military relations
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