Unlike other books about the war in Iraq, this study covers both Operations Desert Storm and Iraqi Freedom and all the smaller operations in between. The result is a detailed military narrative of America's fifteen-year struggle against Iraq's Baathists between 1990 and 2005. This unique perspective sets the scene for a new and constructive critique of U.S. military power and the asymmetric resistance capabilities of U.S. adversaries at the dawn of the twenty-first century. Threading together the political-military and military-technical aspects of the struggle, Michael Knights traces the evolution of the threat posed by Saddam Hussein's regime and identifies the strengths and weaknesses of the military approaches used by the United States to contain and finally roll back the threat. A recognized authority on U.S. military operations in the Gulf, the author was given insider access to American military and political decision-makers with hands-on experience of operations in Iraq. Drawing on twenty-seven months of interviews and research, he provides information that has never before been released, including the first unclassified accounts of such operations as Desert Strike, Desert Fox, Northern Watch and Southern Watch, and Southern Focus. He argues that Iraq operations can only be effectively analyzed if considered as a continuum. Knights assesses how political objectives become military objectives and how military objectives guide military-technical operations. This thoughtful work is essential reading for anyone wishing to understand the factors and actions that limit U.S. military power in practice rather than in theory.
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About the Author
Michael Knights, a freelance journalist and consultant, completed his Ph.D. on U.S. military operations in Iraq at the Department of War Studies, King's College London. During and after Operation Iraqi Freedom, he was a Mendelow Defence Fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy in Washington, D.C. Since March 2003 he has been a Middle East terrorism and insurgency analyst for Jane's Intelligence Review.
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Amazing Changes in Fifteen Years,
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This review is from: Cradle of Conflict: Iraq and the Birth of the Modern U.S. Military (Hardcover)
More than just a study of how the modern American military goes to war, this book is a study of the conflict in Iraq since Gulf I.
It covers the impact of the Goldwater-Nichols defense department reorganization that has worked wonders in reducing inter-service rivalry and which was first put to the test in Gulf I. It covers the changes in munitions, equipment, training, recon that comprise the present day forces. It is also the most complete story I've seen on what Saddam was doing during the gaps between Gulf I and Gulf II. You get the feeling that a local, not well educated or travelled person, focused on his own issues just couldn't see what his statements were saying to the rest of the world. My only complaint is that the book ends just a little bit too early. There's not much on hos we are to get out of the mess that exists over there now. This is a book on how the military fights wars, not on how we conduct the peace afterwards. Highly recommended.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Cradle of Conflict: Iraq and the Birth of the Modern U.S. Military,
By
This review is from: Cradle of Conflict: Iraq and the Birth of the Modern U.S. Military (Hardcover)
Many recent books about Iraq address only the current conflict while earlier studies limit themselves to Iraq under sanctions or Operation Desert Storm, the military operation that ousted Iraqi forces from Kuwait in 1991. In Cradle of Conflict, Knights, a risk consultant at Jane's Information Group, integrates all three eras to provide context to the current situation.
Knights' focus is on military decision-making. With so many of the same decision-makers serving during the first and second Iraq wars--Dick Cheney and Colin Powell, for example--why did policy toward Iraqi president Saddam Hussein change so dramatically? How did the intermediary years of sanctions and containment change both Iraqi and U.S. military tactics? His narrative is detailed but flows well. He understands the policy process and military decision-making better than most journalists. With a rich array of textual sources and interviews with key U.S. officials, Cradle of Conflict serves well as a reference for now distant episodes such as the 1994 Iraqi deployment toward the Kuwait border and U.S. military planning spurred by Baghdad's obstruction of U.N. inspections in 1997 and 1998. His military analysis is astute. He shows, for example, how the Iraqi military adapted to U.S. tactics during the interwar years. Knights also interweaves detailed knowledge of Iraqi politics. He explains with insight, for example, Saddam's oil-smuggling schemes with Kurdistan Democratic Party leader Masoud Barzani. He examines the mutual decisions which led to the Kurdish leader betraying competitors and other Iraqi opposition figures by allowing Iraqi Republican Guards to attack Erbil in 1996, an episode that challenged the Clinton administration during a sensitive electoral season. Cradle of Conflict's contribution to understanding the planning behind Operation Iraqi Freedom is especially valuable as the Iraq war continues in its fifth year. While many embedded journalists and military correspondents focus only on the U.S. Army and Marines' contribution to the war, Knights adds insight into the decisions surrounding the air war. He discusses, for example, the failed attempt to decapitate the Iraqi leadership on the first night of the conflict as well as the U.S. decision to dilute the "shock and awe" bombing campaign and to stage it at night rather than in the morning when it might have killed Iraqi intelligence and military planners. He astutely recognizes that Iraqis go passive in the face of crisis until they sense who will be the victor. Still, Knights leaves some questions unanswered. While acknowledging the CIA's faulty analysis, he does not address the source of its identification of the bunker targeted by the decapitation strike. The bunker did not exist. While Iraqi National Congress leader Ahmad Chalabi is the usual scapegoat in such matters, he could not be in this case because Langley did not talk to him. Knights also accepts too readily the conventional wisdom about the impact of de-Baathification and exaggerates the numbers affected. He also overestimates the willingness of top-tier Saddam loyalists to reintegrate into a new Iraq. Here, greater attention to preexisting insurgency plans would be welcome. While many journalists--George Packer, David Rieff, and others--skew analysis to fit politics in their accounts, Knights researches, fact-checks, and relies upon more than blogs and fellow journalists. Knights has constructed a superior account that deserves to be read by serious journalists and policy practitioners. Michael Rubin Middle East Quarterly Spring 2008
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