Customer Reviews

7 Deadly Scenarios: A Military Futurist Explores War in the 21st Century

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Looking at the changing face of war in the 21st Century, this book looks at several deadly scenarios that will threaten America's, and the world's, security in the near future.

A large part of the world's oil tankers have to travel through two geographic choke points: the Strait of Malacca, between Malaysia and Indonesia, and the Persian Gulf. What would happen to the price of oil, and the world economy, if one was closed because a supertanker was sunk in the most inconvenient spot, and the other was closed because Iran decided to flex its political muscle?

Muslim terrorists set off several black-market nuclear weapons in US cities. Beset with internal strife, China decides to take back Taiwan, once and for all. They also send diesel submarines all over the world, to cause lots of economic trouble for any country who considers doing something about it. The Pakistani government collapses, and some of its nuclear weapons find their way into the hands of the more fundamentalist members of the military. There's one about America dealing with a major cyberattack, and one about what will happen after America withdraws from Iraq (faster than it intended). Remember bird flu, from a couple of years ago? Well, it's back, mutated into a form that can be easily transmitted from person to person. Shopping malls and other public places are deserted, hospitals are flooded with the sick and dying, America doesn't have nearly enough retroviral drugs even for emergency personnel, and it takes time to make more. To make things worse, the White House has just gotten word of a human flood of 8 million sick Latin Americans, desperate to reach America. They are scheduled to reach the US-Mexican border in a couple of days.

This is avery sobering, and utterly fascinating, look at what the future may hold. It's not an attempt to predict the future, but to show the sort of things that senior planners at the Pentagon are, or had better be, thinking about. Highly recommended.

Unless you are not planning to be around in a few years, this book should scare the $#!&@ out of you. Why you ask? Is it about graphic violence and torture? No. Is it about Monsters and Demons? No. Is it about the end of the world? Well - maybe.

"7 Deadly Scenarios" is not a "story" book per se. It's an exposition on seven possible scenarios that could confront the US and our military in the not too distant future. It's written by Andrew F. Krepinevich, president of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. He's also a distinguished visiting professor at George Mason University's School of Public Policy. He served for 21 years in the Army and has a PhD from Harvard. You could say that he knows his stuff.

I won't dive deep in to the scenarios themselves - I'll leave those for you to read - but here is a tease:

- What would happen is Pakistan collapsed and their nukes fell in to rouge hands?

- How would we react if terrorist where able to detonate a series of nuclear bombs in major American cities?

- Could we maintain order and civility if America were hit with a pandemic illness, much like the last great flu pandemic in 1918?

- If the Middle East finally dissolved in to open warfare, and Iran pledged nuclear attack on Israel - would we come to their aid?

- In a conflict over Taiwan, how would China use cyber warfare and asymmetrical force to counteract US military might?

- If Muslin extremists disrupted global shipping lanes and oil delivery - could the world economy survive?

- If we pull out of Iraq, would it create a power vacuum ready to be filled by Muslim extremists, Iran, Russia, or even China?

All of the scenarios are eerily plausible, and written in a style that could have come straight from a news report, five years in the future. They make you stop and think - are we ready for what could be coming our way?

7 Deadly Scenarios is a logically presented, well written and nicely crafted wake up call for the defense establishment and the Nation. Krepinevich uses history to illustrate how ill prepared we are for the next likely conflict. The scenarios are as believable as they are horrific both in the scope of the threats and our inability to parry them effectively. It is not hard to imagine a few million Mexicans fleeing a pandemic and streaming unchallenged across the Rio Grande. The circumstances leading to each are believable, appropriately documented and accurately portrayed. A smuggled nuke explodes in San Antonio and paralyzes first responders across Texas.

The narratives read like a newspaper account should - factual and devoid of commentary or political agenda. The writing style oscillates between scholarly presentation and captivating contemporary thriller. As a reader you get scared by the threats, alarmed by the facts and enthralled by the projections.

These are not pie-in-the-sky scare tactics by some minor novelist stacking assumption upon nonsense. Krepinevich is a strategic insider who knows the players; but unlike much of what comes out of Washington, he writes without ideological agenda. He lines up his facts and presents them constantly whether meshed into the narratives or included in the ubiquitous footnotes. Unlike most of the bias that comes out of Washington this author has no deep agenda other than the security and prosperity of the United States. His purpose is as clarion call to warn us to action out of our insistence on preparing for the last conflict not the one we'll surely face.

This book brings up many of the things that we just don't want to think about. We hope the 'think tanks' in DC and the brain trusts in the Pentagon planned for these situations. Can we really trust our government to be prepared. A well written book all about 'what if".

Author Andrew Krepinevich has written a chilling cluster of future scenarios in which American power, society and safety may be challenged by both conventional and unconventional foes. 9/11 was minor league compared to some of the situations he describes.

Krepinevich is neither predicting nor ruling out these set pieces, aiming to stimulate strategic thinking and planning for the American military as part of its war gaming.

One can only hope that such scenarios remain in the realm of the abstract. Nevertheless, hope is not a strategy and it is this reader's hope that "Seven Deadly Scenarios" becomes must reading at the Pentagon in order to heighten U.S. preparedness for a perilous world bristling with threats.

Buy this book, or at least demand that your local library buy this book.

As a normal person with a reasonable IQ, I am continually frustrated by the inability of our government to look forward. Just two weeks ago someone attempted to take down a plane in its last hour of flight by igniting his underwear, so now our government, in all its wisdom, doesn't want us to have anything on our laps in the last 60 minutes. But one minute before that, it's OK. Huh?! (In my mind, that's reacting to the last threat, not preparing for the next threat.)

This book is about the next threats. Not someone taking down a single plane, but massive events that change the world.

After reading it, I expect that many interventionists will re-examine their beliefs. That's a powerful statement, but read this book, and you might agree with me.

Wall Street Journal? So, what do they know about good books? Well, their review of this one piqued my curiosity, so I ordered a copy. Virtually everything in this page-turner is sobering and frightening, and virtually nothing in it is all that far-fetched. If you think all is rosey up ahead after the economic recovery, think again, and check out this MUST READ!

I bought this book because I subscribe to the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assesments (CSBA) newsletter. I felt that CSBA President Krepinevich would have real insight into the future challenges for peace on our planet. What I find is seven scenarios of existing problems and assumptions, current military organization and defense strategies. The scenarios work through the non-new issues of avian flu as global pandemic, nuclear threat by Iran, the Muslin jihadists, Israel versus Lebanon (Hamas and Hezbollah), madrassas in Pakistan, and Taiwan versus Beijing, among others.

I accept that no one can predict the future, and prediction was not the purpose of this book. The point of the scenarios is to to think in new ways and begin to see global security trends. Yet, defining events that have changed our world since the 2009 printing of this book are not hinted at in these 7 Deadly Scenarios. All of the security knowledge and experience represented by the author and his colleagues does not mention North African regime instability or potential for revolutions. No scenario addresses the security impacts of the 2008 global economic restructuring that places financial actors as powerful shapers of global policy. The U.S. is consistently portrayed as the last Great Power with full military capabilities and the envy of the world for medical care, justice, and wealth.

The scenarios that I feel are missing from this book would address strategic and tactical changes that are required as new contexts reshape global security. Here are my 7 scenarios. First: The international and national security challenges from religions becoming the primary global nonstate political systems. Second: the security dilemma of protecting have's from have-not's as growing numbers of environmental refugees and economically forgotten homeless form a global network of transient people with nothing to lose. Third: the strategies and tactics necessary to protect and enable the flow of global food distribution for 7 BILLION people. Fourth: containing the violence of the international drug and human trafficking trade routes. Fifth: the transformation of international political economy by the overwhelming migration of people to accessible, renewable power that replaces the dying oil economy. Sixth: the changes to security as financial entities override nation-states and crown themselves the economic Napoleons of the world. Seven: Territorial nation-states are so weakened that borders have no meaning, thus nation-states do not maintain costly military/security except to protect economic flows.

Krepinevich's blind spot is that the military/security industry itself is being reshaped. In his scenarios the military/security structure and capabilities work at current levels of capability. Oddly, Krepinevich has not absorbed the data from his own CSBA newsletter. The U.S. military/security budget is dropping and will redefine security mission and structure. These seven scenarios do not strategize tactics for a reshaped U.S. national security. The military/security industry must look at it's own future before it can imagine salient scenarios for future, global security needs.

7 Deadly Scenarios is an extremely interesting (and niche) step into the world of scenario planning. The book is smart, insightful and asks the right questions. And the reader quickly realizes which role scenario planning should play in our world. None of the 7 deadly scenarios is probably going to happen. But elements of most of these scenarios might become reality. I think it's a great, exciting introduction into this field. I missed scenarios beyond the U.S. but particularly the economical scenarios were highly interesting.

I got this book three or four months ago and, since then, three of the scenarios have started to play out. A pandemic beginning in Mexico, denial of US naval access by China off their coast, and accelerating disintegration in Pakistan. Andrew Krepinevich has clearly been thinking about serious matters in imaginative and realistic ways.