Max G. Manwaring, Edwin G. Corr, and Robert H. Dorff (Eds.), THE SEARCH FOR SECURITY: A U.S. Grand Strategy for the Twenty-First Century (Praeger, 2003), 149 pp. ISBN 0275968634
This book is a gem, and it is worth every penny, but it is a pity that it has not been priced for mass market because every U.S. citizen would benefit from reading this superb collection of chapters focused on how to keep America both safe and prosperous in a volatile world of super-empowered angry men, ethnic criminal gangs, mass migrations, epidemic disease, and water scarcity.
President David Boren of the University of Oklahoma, himself a former Senator and former Chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, provides a non-partisan foreword that clearly indicts both Democrats and Republicans for what he calls a "zig-zag" foreign policy that is guided by TV images and weekly polls, rather than any coherent and calculated evaluation of ends, ways, and means.
Divided into three parts, the book first addresses the Global Security Environment (2 chapters), then discusses elements of a grand or total strategy (5 chapters), and concludes with a prescription (2 chapters). Every chapter is good.
Chapter 1 by Richard Millet does an outstanding job of discussing the global security environment in terms that make it crystal clear that the highest probability threats are non-traditional threats, generally involving non-state actors in a failed state environment. These are not threats that can be addressed by a heavy metal military that is not trained, equipped, nor organized for humanitarian or constabulary operations. Among his most trenchant observations: America can not succeed when the local elites (e.g. Colombia) are not willing to pay the price for internal justice and stability; sometimes the costs of success can exceed the costs of failure (Afghanistan?); what America lacks today is any criteria by which to determine when to attempt coalition building and when to go it alone; the real threat is not any single government or non-state organization, but the millions of daily decisions (e.g. to buy cocaine or smuggle medicine) that incentivise crime and endless conflict.
Chapter 2 by Robert Dorff dissects existing U.S. national security "strategy" and shows clearly, in a non-partisan manner, that the U.S. does not have a coherent inter-agency capability for agreeing on ends, ways, or means. He calls what we have now--both from the past under Clinton and in the present under Bush, "adhocery" and he makes the compelling point that our failure to have a coherent forward-looking strategy is costing the U.S. taxpayer both money and results.
Chapters 3-7 are each little gems. In Chapter 3 Max Manwaring suggests that our existing assumptions about geopolitics and military power are obsolete, and we are in great danger if Americans cannot change their way of thinking about national security issues. He suggests five remedies, the most important of which is the establishment of a coherent inter-agency planning and operational control process for leveraging all sources of national power--political, diplomatic, economic, military, and informational--simultaneously and in balance. In Chapter 4 Edwin Corr and Max Manwaring offer a fine discourse on why legitimate governance around the world must be "the" end that we seek as a means of assuring American security and prosperity in the face of globalization. Chapter 5 by Leif Rosenberger addresses the economic threats inherent in globalization, including free flows of capital, concluding that fixed exchange rates divorce countries from reality, and that the US must sponsor a global early warning system dedicated to the financial arena. Chapter 5 by Dennis Rempe is good but too short. He clearly identifies information power as being the equal of diplomacy, economics, and military power, going so far as to suggest an "International Information Agency" that could eventually become a public good as well as an objective arbiter of "ground truth." I like this idea, in part because it is consistent with the ideas I set forth in NEW CRAFT, to wit that we need to migrate from secret intelligence intended for Presidents (who then manipulate that intelligence and lie to their people) toward public intelligence that can be discussed and understood by the people--this makes for sounder decisions. Chapter 7, again by Edwin Corr and Max Manwaring, discusses deterrence in terms of culture, motive, and effect--they are especially good in pointing out that traditional deterrence is irrelevant with suicidal martyrs, and that the best deterrence consists of the education of domestic publics about the realities of the post-Cold War world.
The book concludes with 2 chapters, the first by Edwin Corr and Max Manwaring, who discuss how values (education, income, civic virtue) must be the foundation of the American security strategy. They then translate this into some specific "objectives" for overseas investments and influences by the U.S., and they conclude that the ultimate investment must be in better educating both domestic and international audiences. They recommend the legitimacy of all governments as a global objective; End-State Planning (ESP) as the way to get there; and a new focus on holistic and long-term programs rather than "adhocery" as the best way to manage scarce means. One can only speculate how differently Afghanistan and Iraq (and Haiti, now discarded for a decade) might have turned out if the US had rolled in with a Marshall Plan or Berlin Airlift equivalent the minute organized hostilities ceased. Robert Dorff closes the book by pointing out that state failure is not the root cause, but rather the symptom, and that the U.S. must intervene before a state fails, not after.
Contextual Reading: Asked by the Editor to suggest what other books I might recommend as supplemental readings to reinforce and follow-on from this brilliant work, I have selected the following 19 books to create a “short course” about the “new” national security paradigm that I call 5th Generation Warfare—the full use of all instruments of national power, all of the time, to create a total war for a total peace culture. My reviews of all of these books are available at Amazon.com.
02Colin Gray, MODERN STRATEGY (Oxford, 1999), 412 pp. Ref A for any strategist.
03Derek Leebaert, THE FIFTY-YEAR WOUND—The True Price of America’s Cold War Victory (Little Brown, 2002), 750 pp. Demolishes the Cold War strategy and its costs.
04Robert Coram, BOYD: The Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War (Little Brown, 2002), 485 pp. People first, then ideas, structure and technology last.
05MacGregor Knox and Williamson Murray, The Dynamics of Military Revolution, 1300-2050 (Cambridge, 2001), 203 pp. It’s not about technology.
06Joseph S. Nye, Jr., Understanding International Conflicts: An Introduction to Theory and History (Longman, 2003), 275 pp. Ref B for a refreshed adult understanding of the broader battlefield.
07Richard H. Shultz, Jr., Roy Godson, and George H. Quester (eds.), Security Studies for the 21st Century (Brassey’s, 1997), 466 pp. Superb complement to Nye, with readings.
08Marq de Villiers, WATER: The Fate of Our Most Precious Resource (Houghton Mifflin, 2000), 352 pp. It does not get any more fundamental—water scarcity fuels ethnic conflict & border wars.
09Andrew Price-Smith, The Health of Nations: Infectious Disease, Environmental Change, and Their Effects on National Security and Development (MIT, 2002), 220 pp. Diseases of mass destruction—lots more dangerous than terrorists.
10Michael T. Klare, RESOURCE WARS: The New Landscape of Global Conflict (Metropolitan, 2001), 289 pp. It’s about oil, natural gas, strategic minerals, and lumber....
11William Shawcross, DELIVER US FROM EVIL: Peacekeepers, Warlords and a World of Endless Conflict (Simon & Schuster, 2000), 447 pp. How we intervene fuels black markets and genocide.
12Robert S. McNamara and James G. Blight, WILSON’s GHOST: Reducing the Risk of Conflict, Killing, and Catastrophe in the 21st Century (PublicAffairs, 2001), 270 pp. America is perceived by billions to be the primary threat, and what we do overseas determines how safe we are at home.
13Robert B. Oakley, Michael J. Dziedzic, and Eliot M. Goldberg (eds.), POLICING THE NEW WORLD DISORDER: Peace Operations and Public Security (National Defense University, 1998), 573 pp. We stink at non-military security—and most UN police can’t read or drive a car.
14J. F. Rischard, HIGH NOON—20 Global Problems, 20 Years to Solve Them (Basic, 2002), 241 pp. US spends almost $400B a year on military heavy metal at a time when the really big problems are not amenable to big stick unilateral coercive action.
15Eric Schlosser, Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal (Perennial, 2001), 383 pp. What we eat not only destroys the warrior ethic, it is killing family farms, expanding the circle of poverty, and creating billions harmed by the “hamburger virus” of capitalism run amok.
16Joseph S. Nye, Jr., The Paradox of American Power: Why the World’s Only Superpower Can’t Got It Alone (Oxford, 2002), 222 pp. Soft power, multilateral power, preventive power.
17David L. Boren and Edward J. Perkins (eds.), Preparing America’s Foreign Policy for the 21st Century (University of Oklahoma, 1999), 432 pp. The specifics of global engagement.
18Robert David Steele, THE NEW CRAFT OF INTELLIGENCE: Personal, Public, & Political—Citizen’s Action Handbook for Fighting Terrorism, Genocide, Disease, Toxic Bombs, & Corruption (OSS International Press, 2002), 437 pp. Take back the power—or lose the Republic.
19Ben de Jong, Wies Platje, and Robert David Steele (eds.), PEACEKEEPING INTELLIGENCE: Emerging Concepts for the Future (OSS International Press, 2003), 532 pp. Not only does the UN have to become intelligent, it needs to create a global architecture for unclassified intelligence.
20James MacGregor Burns, Transforming Leadership: A New Pursuit of Happiness (Atlantic Monthly Press, 2003), 319 pp. Restore the Republic’s commitment to the pursuit of happiness by all mankind, with transformative rather than political leadership, or watch the world burn us out.
Robert David Steele, a 25-year veteran of the U.S. national security community, is the foremost international proponent for intelligence and national security reform founded upon the dual premises of improved exploitation of unclassified information in all languages, and redirected investments from big war to small war, peace, and homeland security capabilities. A former spy who also served as the founding civilian architect and Deputy Director of the Marine Corps Intelligence Command, he manages OSS.Net, Inc., a corporation that trains governments and organizations in Open Source Intelligence (OSINT).