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powerful understanding: that we need a years from 1969 to 1991 in the Central Joseph Collins, USA (Ret.), Ph.D., a former global perspective” (p. 491). Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense, is the Intelligence Agency (CIA) and on the What accounts for Galvin’s success director of the Center for Complex Operations, National Security Council (NSC). While as a strategic leader? Having known him Institute for National Strategic Studies, at the the chronological approach to storytell- National Defense University. for some years, I am tempted to say that ing is similar to that found in Shadows, his most astounding trait was that he Duty sustains an intense and passionate was a wonderful, thoughtful man, but narrative unrivaled in Gates’s 1996 work. there must be more. First, Galvin had Duty is a conspicuously rich tome. that global perspective that he preached It came as little surprise that political about. He saw local culture and individu- passions were aroused by Duty’s early- als as very important. He found time to 2014 publication. With President Barack learn German and Spanish , but with Obama still in office, Gates’s commen- a hint of a Boston accent. tary on the inner workings of security Second, he was a consummate mili- decisionmaking in the final 2 years of tary professional. He could talk tactics the George H. Bush Presidency and the with the captains and discuss arms- first 2½ years of the Obama administra- control proposals with the experts and tion was bound to generate a noisy and the eggheads. The details of operational partisan clash. Even before Duty hit art and the peculiarities of low-intensity stores, some labeled it as harsh and highly conflict were subjects that he mastered. critical of President Obama and claimed He knew when to stay at a high altitude that it painted an antagonistic portrait of and when to dive into the details, many a sitting President while failing to note of which were recorded on his omnipres- that Gates mainly chided White House ent note cards. counselors while applauding Obama’s Third, like the American eagle, Galvin decisionmaking style. A Republican for- did not flock. He was his own man. He mer defense policy advisor and university understood and wrote about the require- scholar wrote that it was less Gates’s criti- ments for low-intensity conflict when Duty: Memoirs of a cisms that were wrong than his timing. few in the Army cared about it. Galvin Secretary at War The politically inspired reviews of also wrote three books: two on the Duty focused on the superficial and By Robert M. Gates Revolutionary War and one on modern missed the substance. This included the Borzoi Books and Alfred A. Knopf, 2014 airmobile operations. Most generals do deeply etched lessons of executive-level 640 pp. $34.95 not have time to do this kind of in-depth strategic leadership when engaged in a ISBN 978-0307959478 intellectual work, but he did. Galvin complex and costly undertaking such as studied the past for clues to the future, Reviewed by Thomas F. Lynch III and counterterrorism but he could also spot trends that were operations in two disparate countries with new factors for analysis. NATO was for- a domestic political dynamic that is any- tunate to have his leadership during the uty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War thing but collaborative. As the lead agent years. Steeped in the is a valuable work by a unique for the conduct of that undertaking, for 40 years, Galvin also knew D public figure. Former Secretary Gates’s assessments tell us a great deal that change was a constant, even with the Robert M. Gates recounts his 4½ about how difficult an endeavor war is in . Finally, Galvin saw his mis- years at the helm of the Department general and how demanding counterin- sion as including the need to learn from of Defense overseeing two separate surgency operations are in particular. and to teach others, sometimes directly wars for first a Republican and then a From the beginning of Duty, Gates and other times so subtly that they did Democratic President. In this regard, reminds his reader that he was happily re- not notice that it was taking place. Bob Gates has no peer; he is the only tired from government and ensconced as Fighting the Cold War is a big book, Defense Secretary to serve for consecu- the president of Texas A&M University but it is worth every minute that you tive Presidents from opposing political before coming to the Pentagon. He invest in it, whether you are a historian, parties. had declined an administration feeler a student of leadership, a NATO-phile, Gates is no stranger to the business about a return to Washington in 2005 a USSOUTHCOM staffer, or just inter- of scribing memoirs. He previously pub- to become the first Director of National ested in the Cold War as seen through lished From the Shadows: The Ultimate Intelligence. He had grudgingly accepted the eyes of a general raised in Boston’s Insider’s Story of Five Presidents and a temporary appointment to serve on the working class. JFQ How They Won the Cold War (Simon Study Group (ISG) and was often and Schuster, 2007), recounting his surprised and irritated by what he saw

JFQ 80, 1st Quarter 2016 Book Reviews 141 in Iraq, , and elsewhere in that eyes, too many Air Force and Navy lead- explosives caches followed. He also took late-2006 venture. Thus, when called on ers saw the challenge of Iraq as an Army aim at the most expensive and poorly by President Bush to succeed Secretary and Marine Corps issue and were satisfied performing procurement initiatives across Donald Rumsfeld after the November to continue with business as usual. He the military Services, questioning their 2006 elections, Gates tells us that he also saw a labyrinth of procurement and relevance and financial sense in public took the job largely to show faith with operational bureaucracy lumbering along speeches. Gates reminds the reader that the young men and women in uniform with historic programmatic concerns and he was successful in a number of these he had met during his ISG travels. He largely unengaged with, if not downright procurement-busting endeavors, but suc- also took the job under the conditions ignorant of, the wars so many young cess came at a cost to his relations with that he would have Presidential sup- Americans were busy fighting. Here the members of Congress. The Secretary port to oversee a temporary troop surge new Secretary was in for an even harder grew increasingly weary of congressional in Iraq, to turn renewed attention to slog. So he resolved to use every tool parochialism and theatrics. It is in de- Afghanistan, to support an expanded at his disposal to change the Pentagon scribing his dealings with Congress that Army and Marine Corps to properly culture. Secretary Gates’s memoir becomes most resource these fights, and to push big- Gates tells us that he paddle-shocked frustrated—if not disgusted—in tone. ticket procurement programs into the the Pentagon toward inter-Service In 2007–2008, Secretary Gates put future to win the wars we were in. teamwork and counterinsurgency into place the strategic and operational True to Bob Komer’s narra- focus. Within 3 , he fired Army framework for fighting and winning tive of bureaucratic resistance and inertia, Secretary Francis Harvey over a fes- Defense Department components of the the newly minted Gates confronted the tering scandal over the treatment of counterinsurgency and counterterrorism challenges of a Pentagon largely run- wounded soldiers at Walter Reed Army fights we were in. That framework bore ning in place, constrained by outside Medical Center. He hired Navy Admiral fruit in Iraq before the end of the Bush forces and those deep within. Outside as the Chairman of administration. But Duty reminds its the building, he found personal working the Joint Chiefs of Staff in late 2007. reader that success is both relative and relationships among the Department of It was Mullen, then the Chief of Naval fleeting. The effort to extend progress State, National Intelligence Directorate, Operations, who expressed his greatest from counterinsurgency in Iraq to the CIA, and NSC severely strained and leadership concern in early 2007 to be fight in Afghanistan began in 2008 but in need of serious repair. Gates tackled an astoundingly anti-parochial one: the would await the arrival of a new senior this challenge on instinct, working health of the Army. The Secretary then leadership team in early 2009—an with Cabinet-level colleagues suffering lost confidence in Air Force Secretary Obama administration team with its own from “Rumsfeld fatigue” in a man- Michael Wynne and Chief of Staff personalities and coordination challenges. ner that made it clear that the Defense General Michael Moseley, who appeared Secretary Gates tells the reader that Department would be part of an inter- committed to the procurement of an in this new White House, the debate agency team pulling together for success expensive fighter aircraft and seemingly over the way forward in what Presidential in the “wars we are in.” Gates supported without interest in the ever-deepening candidate had labeled a full range of authorities for the new counterinsurgency fight. The decline “the good war in Afghanistan” would be U.S. commander in Iraq, General David in confidence on these issues was com- unhelpfully bruising throughout 2009 Petraeus, and encouraged Petraeus’s pounded in 2008 when an independent despite its acceptable outcome late that close partnership with the new U.S. review of Air Force stewardship of its year. While Gates commends President Ambassador to Iraq, . The nuclear weapons arsenal revealed serious Obama’s decisionmaking style in the Secretary quickly saw the need for a point deficiencies. Gates relieved both. high-level debate on Afghanistan- of fusion for Washington interagency Finally, the new Secretary grappled policy and strategy that dominated 2009, support to a holistic counterinsurgency with the intransigence of Pentagon he bridled at the manner in which he felt program in Iraq, offering then–Joint Staff bureaucracy. Frustrated with the plod- Vice President Joseph Biden and what Operations Lieutenant General ding nature of resource acquisition and he calls the White House “politicos” Douglas Lute to the NSC as master coor- planning processes, Gates insisted that came to display a paranoid mistrust of the dinator for the Iraq surge in military and newer, sharper programs focus directly on military. Gates recounts that this group of civilian efforts. In these and other efforts, the needs of the troops in the fight. He Obama political advisors consistently dis- Gates was a galvanizing agent with Bush’s accelerated funding and attention to the played aversion to any increase in military strategic-level leaders, generating a spirit Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat force growth in Afghanistan beyond that of collaboration never realized during Organization, which had been created which had been authorized late in the Vietnam and not before seen during the in February 2006. Programs to improve Bush administration. They did not want wars in Iraq or Afghanistan. explosive protection on Soldiers’ wheeled Afghanistan to become Obama’s war and Inside the Pentagon, Gates con- vehicles and to use persistent aerial obser- doom the President’s domestic agenda fronted a badly bifurcated culture. In his vation platforms to identify threatening in the process. Thus they argued for a

142 Book Reviews JFQ 80, 1st Quarter 2016 revised American strategy in Afghanistan “got it” when it came to achieving results and Pakistan focused mainly on coun- in complex and messy military operations. terterrorism in Pakistan, an effort to be He got it that the culture of Washington accomplished exclusively from offshore so bureaucracy must be energized at the that the issues of American ground forces highest levels to get beyond business as and a more vigorous effort at counterin- usual, for a counterinsurgency fight re- surgency in Afghanistan would be moot. quires exceptionally detailed coordination Gates recounts that he was never that can too easily become passé. He got himself all in for full-up counterinsur- it that Pentagon culture will snap back gency operations in Afghanistan, but he into one of a procurement-acquisition- believed that some of it was necessary. budgeting miasma unless corralled and The Secretary’s comfort with Obama’s spurred. Bob Gates also got that change late-2009 decision on Afghanistan- is a difficult but worthy endeavor. He Pakistan strategy favoring the Gates implores both his readers—and those approach—one that viewed limited coun- remaining on the Obama security terinsurgency in Afghanistan as the means team—to stay the course in Afghanistan to the strategic end—ultimately proved and Pakistan and not prematurely pull unsatisfying, however. Gates uses Duty the plug. In this exhortation, Gates cor- to call out Vice President Biden, NSC rectly anticipates the unabating worries -Pakistan director Lieutenant about U.S. force posture and strategy in General Douglas Lute, and other White Afghanistan that continued to consume House politicos for never accepting the the Obama administration throughout President’s decision and for working to 2014 and 2015. Knife Fights: A Memoir sabotage it in the President’s mind “be- Duty is an excellent memoir of a free- of Modern War in fore it even got off the ground.” It is in speaking and self-critical former Secretary Theory and Practice this context that Gates writes that by early of Defense. It lays bare the emotional 2011, he was increasingly confronted and bureaucratic grit involved with spear- By John A. Nagl with “[a] president [who] doesn’t trust heading a complex contingency operation Penguin Press, 2014 his commander, can’t stand [Afghan in hostile parallel environments: at home 253 pp. $27.95 President Hamid] Karzai, doesn’t believe and in the field. Duty is an important ISBN 978-1594204982 in his own strategy and doesn’t consider work and a great read. JFQ the war to be his . . . a President who was Reviewed by Richard McConnell expressing premature doubts about his own strategy.” Dr. Thomas F. Lynch III is a Distinguished Research Fellow for South , , and Out of office for just over 2 years the trajectory of radical Islam in the Center ohn Nagl, the author of Learn- when he wrote it, Gates seems to have for Strategic Research, Institute for National ing to Eat Soup with a Knife, intended Duty, at least in part, as a Strategic Studies, at the National Defense offers an intimate portrait of the University. J vehicle of external caution to President , experience, and practice that Obama and his advisory team in early contributed to his emergence as one of 2014. Gates’s passion for American men the premier advocates of counterinsur- and women in uniform and his belief gency () doctrine during the past that their role in Afghanistan deserved decade. In Knife Fights he provides an the President’s continuous full atten- unvarnished description of what it is tion—much as it had consumed Gates’s like to advocate doctrinal change to a attention as Defense Secretary—resonates nation at war. strongly. Nagl begins his story by giving read- On another level, Gates offers a ers vivid and engaging accounts of his unique vantage point on the special chal- early formative experiences: undergradu- lenges of executive leadership in both ate studies at West Point, his first combat bureaucratic and counterinsurgency action during Operation Storm, warfare. Far from dyspeptic, Duty delivers and his graduate and doctoral studies at a tone of urgency and commitment that Oxford. These accounts depict a journey Secretary Gates rightly brought to a try- of experience combined with scholarship ing set of missions at a very trying time. that laid the foundation for Learning to He demonstrates to his reader that he Eat Soup with a Knife. Although Nagl’s

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