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Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary At powerful understanding: that we need a years from 1969 to 1991 in the Central Colonel 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 well, 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 counterinsurgency 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 Mikhail Gorbachev years. Steeped in the is a valuable work by a unique for the conduct of that undertaking, Cold War 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 Soviet Union. 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 Iraq 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, Kuwait, 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 Vietnam narra- focus. Within 3 months, 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 Michael Mullen 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 Barack Obama 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.
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