Customer Reviews

Imperial Grunts: On the Ground with the American Military, from Mongolia to the Philippines to Iraq and Beyond

5 star:		(47)
4 star:		(23)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(10)

 

 

Most important in this book is Kaplan's documentation of the fact that transformation of the U.S. military is NOT taking place--Washington is still enamored of multiple layers of rank heavy bureaucracy, the insertion of very large cumbersome task forces in to every clime and place; an over-emphasis on technology; and a lack of appreciation for the urgency of providing security, food, water, and electricity IMMEDIATELY so as to start the cycle of counter-insurgency information collection from volunteers. The author is brutal in his indictment of the bureaucracy for failing to provide the linguistic skills, four years after 9/11, that are far more important to transformation than any weapons system. He is also brutal on the delays in approving operations in the field that are associated with layered bureaucracies that come with joint task forces, and completely detrimental to fast moving tactical success at the A Team level.

Key here is the conclusion that American power can only be exercised in a sustained way through discreet relationships at every level from neighborhood and village on up to provinces and tribes. The emphasis here is on discreet, humanitarian, tangible goods and services including security. When America introduces major forces, it spikes resistance and delays the achievement of its very objective. What jumps out is the need to change how the US achieves its presence around the world. The author recommends a change in the State Department model of embassies focused on countries--State tends to be co-opted country by country and loses sight--if it ever had it--of regional or tribal nuances. The author also recommends a sustained peaceful presence at the provincial and village level around the world, through a combination of modern civil affairs and humanitarian assistance cadres and retired military given leave to choose a place they get to know and stay there to finish out their careers and then be "on tap" for retired reserve plus up.

A third theme in this book, one that Ralph Peters also makes in "NEW GLORY," is that a lot of these countries are NOT countries and should not be countries. Many borders imposed by colonialism are simply lunatic when taking into account historical and geographic and related ethnic realities. It *makes sense* to have regional summits that re-locate borders in a manner that respects historical, geographical and cultural realities, and to do so with a massive Berlin Airlift/Marshall Plan application of the benefits of peace. Ceding southernmost Thailand and the insurgent southern part of the Philippines to Malaysia, and establishing an Indonesian-Malaysian Muslim Crescent, makes sense. Similarly, in Africa and in the Middle East, there is good that could come of a deliberate recalculation of borders.

A fourth theme, and I share his admiring view of Special Operations and the Marine Corps, is that of the separation of the military ethos of service and dedication to mission, from that of the Nation at large, where Tom Friedman in "The World is Flat" declares that we are suffering from a new generation that is, in a word, apathetic. We need to return to universal service, with options for serving in the Peace Corps or the local constabulary at home. America has lost its civic integrity.

A fifth theme, one that corrected a misimpression I have shared, was of the rather special nature of the National Guard elements of the U.S. Special Forces and the Army civil affairs teams. They come out in this book as being among the best of the best.

Sixth, I found the author's field appreciation of citizen militia in Iraq, Afghanistan, the Philippines, and elsewhere to be quite illuminating. Washington is wrong to rush the transition to a centralized Army in places where tribes and militia still hold sway and can be used to provide provincial stability. We ignore the possibilities of unconventional indigenous forces at our peril.

Seventh, as on page 230, the author highlight those occasions when our unconventional warriors point out that Toyotas are better than Humvees, commercial cell phones are better than military communications alternatives. Across the book, a few good men and women with independent authority and cash resources to do instant compensation and instant aid authorization come across as vastly superior to Washington-style contracting and major joint force insertions.

Eighth, throughout the book, force protection mania is killing us and gutting our counter-insurgency potential. This comes out especially strongly in Colombia, where A Teams are forbidden to go tactical with the forces they are training, and are limited to training within safe encampments only. Force protection is a modern variation of the Soldier's Load-we are so nuts about force protection and heavying up that we are shackling our troops and our small unit leaders and completely avoiding the military value of "fast and furious."

Ninth, national and military intelligence are not meeting needs of front-line grunts. Bottom-up intelligence collection, including passive collection from observant civil affairs teams and foot patrols, is what is really working. We appear to need a whole new concept of operations and a whole new doctrine for field intelligence, one that floods areas with non-official cover and overt personnel, one that puts analyst and translators heavy-up into the front lines.

Sidenotes include great admiration for SOUTHCOM, accustomed as it is to getting along with the short end of the stick; and derision for PACOM, "twenty years behind the times, afraid of messy little wars and of a transparent humanitarian role for SF." The author regards the Global War on Terror (GWOT) as a convenient "set up" for a future war with China, not something I agree with but evidently a perception within the military that has specific outcomes from day to day. Other side notes include a brutal indictment throughout of "Big Army" and also of the US Air Force which is obsessing on more super-bombers and unwilling to fund what really works well, long-haul transports, AC-130 gunships (Puff the Magic Dragon), and more air controllers in the field with the grunts.

Super book! NOTE: I have the sense that some in the SF community have taken an intense dislike to Kaplan, and vote against the review as a way of voting against Kaplan. Fair enough, but for what it's worth, the review is a good summary intended to be helpful to all in appreciating what I take to be some pretty useful themes.

Robert Kaplan spent the second half of 2003 touring with special ops counterinsurgency US military teams in the Philippines and Afghanistan. Given their under cover nature, these special ops interventions are not covered by the press. Thus, Kaplan brings a huge amount of intelligence and insight on this nearly mysterious subject.

The book is fascinating on a couple of levels. The first one is that the U.S. military contrary to what everyone believes has a rather effective counterinsurgency apparatus. Since 9/11 we have all read about the ineffectiveness of our lumbering military complex. Many have recommended the military develops small, flexible teams that could be rapidly deployed where they are needed at a much lower cost than sending aircraft and tank fleets. But, these experts are recommending something that already exists: our nearly unknown counterinsurgency teams. And, these teams will play an increasingly important role in fighting the Islamic insurrection and terrorism.

The second insight that is most interesting is the strange profile of the men who staff these teams. They look like buffed up thugs. But, they are well educated with college and occasional masters degrees in engineering, linguistic, and political science. They are anti-establishment and love their independence from the Pentagon bureaucracy. They have beards, and do not wear soldier's helmets, but caps instead. They feel the helmets don't protect them anyway, so they would rather be comfortable. Finally, they are Christians. They explain their maverick profile by stating that in general the more educated the more risk averse one becomes. This is unless one has religion. Their religion allows them to have a sense of mission greater than themselves and to take on risk that secular people would not take. Finally the beard thing is to fit in with the local Muslim population. This is because their goal is to befriend the local population, assist them in building infrastructure including schools and hospitals. And, by doing so attempt to isolate the violent fundamentalist elements.

Not all is perfect with these teams. Kaplan mentions they suffer from lack of linguistic skills that hinders their integration with locals. That's not a surprise. Pashto, Persian and Arabic dialects are not readily taught in the U.S. Nevertheless, after reading this book you feel that the political return on investment on these special ops is far greater than in investing in more tanks.

If you liked this book, I also recommend Robert Kaplan's "The Coming Anarchy," Thomas X. Hammes's "The Sling and the Stone," and van Crevald's "The Transformation of War." All these books focus on the changing nature of military conflict in the 21st century. Of the three books, van Crevald's is especially prescient as it was written nearly a decade before 9/11. While the others were written after.

Kaplan starts with the premise that the US is de facto an empire, and he argues that we can best understand the outlines of this "ambiguous process" by observing the beliefs and actions of soldiers in the field. Some may disagree with this opinion or may distrust Kaplan's admiration for the military people he encounters. But few of us are likely to grab a backpack and head out into the field the way Kaplan does. We can learn a great deal by following him in his travels.

And he takes the reader on a tour of some very tough and distant places, like Yemen, the Horn of Africa, Columbia, the Phillippines, Afghanistan, and the China/Mongolian border. The narrative concludes in Iraq, where the author follows a Marine battalion into combat as it attempts to expel insurgents from the town of Fallujah.

Along the way, we learn something about the people and culture of the US military. Among the Green Berets, Kaplan meet a succession of tough, smart, and dedicated individuals. We discover something about the influence of Christian fundamentalism and southern culture in their ranks. It is clear that Kaplan respects them. But he is critical of what he perceives as an excess of gung-ho attitude and a shortage of linguistic and cultural skills.

We also learn something about the intractable problems of fighting terrorism in third-world countries: the deep hold of tribal politics, the prevalence of corruption, poverty, the sway of vicious criminal organizations, like FARC, which kidnaps children for its ranks threatening to kill their families if they run away. Or the impossible geography of places like the Phillippines, Yemen, or Columbia, where central governments cannot physically project power much beyond the capital. Much of the world falls under a "Hobbesian state of affairs."

As a result of his travels, Kaplan comes to certain conclusions about the application of military power. He is critical of the bureaucracy of the US military, which appears "still organized for World War II and the Korean War, with too many chiefs at massive rear bases and too few Indians at the edges." He comes to this conclusion after visiting the posh facilities of the Bagram support base in Afghanistan, then finding special forces operators held back from aggressive patrolling tactics by multiple layers of oversight. Rather than nation-building, Kaplan also favors narrow objectives and an "off camera" strategy, i.e., quietly training and developing relationships with indigenous soldiers (the traditional Green Beret mission).

I devoured the book in two days, completely enthralled by the exotic and dangerous landscapes through which the author journeyed, the interesting personalities he encountered, and the deft weaving of his narrative together with an explanation of the history and current affairs of these regions. As I closed the cover, I thought to myself that, whether we think of the US as an empire or not, we ought to be very careful in choosing the missions for our dedicated military people. The threat is endless, but our resources are not.

I am a soldier in the US Army. I served in 2ID in Korea and I am now with the 101st airborne(aaslt).

I saw this book at Borders while I was home on leave from Iraq. I needed something to read on the flight back, and the title seemed interesting, so I bought a copy.

I loved this book. Kaplan was able to articulate all the things I was never able to explain properly to my civilian friends and family. He really was able to capture what real soldiers and marines are like, not like the stupid Hollywood stereotypes. If anyone has family serving overseas, get this book.

This was my first exposure to Robert Kaplan, on the recommendation of a history professor at Northern VA Community College. He steered me right, on this selection. I would call this book a must-read for anyone trying to understand the current state of American military and foreign policy.

Kaplan narrates his travels, over the course of a few years, to several trouble spots around the globe. From freezing in Iraq and Afghanistan, to roasting in Colombia and the Philippines, to drinking antelope blood in Mongolia, the man gets around. He also renders an excellent picture of the Legionnaires (in the Roman sense), laboring to establish a Pax Americana.

My Army hitch ended twenty-five years ago. I served at a time that was probably the nadir of the US military, the last of the 1970s. By the time I was a Sergeant and getting short, we were getting functionally-illiterate privates assigned to my rather technical job specialty - Artillery fire direction geek. Contrast that with today's Army, Navy, and Marines. The Air Force has always been able to attract brains, so they haven't changed all that much.

Kaplan, in Afghanistan, gets a historian's treat. The commander of a forward Special Forces base opens the captured-weapons locker, and takes the author and some goodies to the firing range. Between rounds with a century-old Lee-Enfield rifle, the officer gives him a cultural-anthropology lecture on what the innards of an AK-47 can tell about Soviet culture.

In Kuwait, about to go into Iraq with the Marines, our correspondent hops up in a Humvee, and introduces himself, mentioning that he's a journalist. The Lance Corporal on the machinegun turns out to be an aspiring author who writes haiku and science fiction. This marine is not unique in his level of intellect. The book illustrates very well the point that today's military is the smartest, best-trained, and toughest of any in the past 50 years, and possibly even in American history.

Besides painting an excellent picture of today's military, this book is also a whacking good story. I had trouble putting it down, when I had to do something else. Get the book. Read it. You'll be glad you did.

Kaplan refers to the various observers who have commented that empires are accidental, "acquired in a fit of absent-mindedness".

When he speaks of the various European empires beginning during the Age of Reconnaisance (1450-1650), he may be correct.
However, there are two very large empires in history which came about for another reason.
The Czarist empire of Russia came about because wherever the power of the Czar ended, there was somebody else on the other side. Usually, this somebody else was a threat, or had stuff the Czars wanted. Given the geography of Asia, there were few suitable borders. Wherever the border was, there was Somebody Else looking, and frequently raiding, in. The only solution was to keep moving out.
The European solution of semi-independent marcher lords protecting the inner territory didn't seem to work, or it made the Czars nervous or something.
Rome had some of the same problems. Except where the Empire bounded on trackless desert or sea, there was always Somebody Else out there looking in. Wherever there was a border, there was Roman land behind it needing protection. Pushing the barbs back was the natural solution. So the process continued.

We are in something of the same difficulty. Since the Somebody Elses out there can come to us by container ship, or e-mail to believers, or jetliner, the entire world is in the position of the land beyond the border.

The development of forward defense looks to Kaplan and others like an Empire. Since discussions of this nature usually depend on defintions, I'd say he was right, or wrong, depending, but it doesn't actually matter. Forward defense is a given. He shows us a map which divides the world into Commands, such as the famous Centcom and the less well-known commands. He notes that, were he standing on the North Pole, he could shuffle from one command to another of the several which go as far north as one can go without going south.
The map says to the rest of the world, "It's our world. You're just living in it. This is both a horrible thing for them to hear, I expect, and absolutely true, whether people think this is a good idea or not.

Kaplan loves the grunt. To be more precise, he loves the professional small-unit, near-irregular. He loves the Marines whom he sees run to the sound of the guns in the first battle of Fallujah--botched for political purposes.

Kaplan tells the stories of how major differences are being made by small numbers of tough, smart, disciplined, and surprisingly human men. Those who do not understand the military may be surprised, to the point of not believing. But it's true.

Kaplan's major fault is to not notice that this work is being done in the shadow of The Hammer, which is to say, the Big Army, the carrier groups, fleets of heavy bombers.
Small groups of men could work in, say, Haiti, because when the junta got uppity, somebody came running in and said, "The Eighty-Second's taking off from Pope.", and things changed. The Taliban and Saddaam depended not on their own defenses, but on US politics for their protection. We may not know this, but the rest of the world does. The rest of the world is, therefore, limited, and those limits provide scope for the Imperial Grunt.

Kaplan's book is especially interesting in light of his "Eastward to Tartary" in which Central Asia is--apparently correctly--characterized as having reverted to a time when the Golden Horde was distracted and its writ was weak. There really is Somebody Else out there, but instead of having galleys with which to prey upon shipping, he may have a couple of missile silos the Soviets overlooked. Or a biowar factory. Or a bunch of unemployed young men whose energy should be expended against a neighbor instead of against the government.

While Kaplan's stories of the Imperial Grunts are fabulous and worth every word, his book is most useful as a starting point for discussing empire.

I met Kaplan at Firebase Gardez when he was writing this book. He writes a great deal about the team I was on. Every one of us in SF were wary of his presence...until he began to talk to us, with us, just like we were real people. He was immediately accepted into our fold, not because he patronized us, but because he seemed to actually understand us.

I remember talking with him and seeing his frustration at not initially being able to go out on missions with us because of our higher ups, but that changed. He rolled out with my team on several ops.

On one particular night op, Kaplan was paired up with our Colonel (who was visiting the firebase) and rolled out with us. We hit a compound and were doing secondary searches when I heard a call out for a "flashlight up here". It was Kaplan on a mud rooftop...with the Colonel. He was unarmed and wanted to help with the search. It wasn't the best thing he could have done, but I give him an A+ for effort. The compound had been cleared of all possible threats at that point, he simply wanted to be right down in the thick of it.

I spoke with Kaplan on many occasions. He had a wealth of knowledge regarding Afghanistan and I learned more from him than the majority of our routine country reports and any other book I had previously read. He never tired of talking with us. He never "interviewed" us, he just talked with us.

I guess some may have an issue with his style and characterization of certain issues, but he is a true believer in what Special Forces does. We have very few supporters who know our real life, what we do, the frustrations we face, the lack of support we get from higher ups, and how we really feel about what we do. Reading Imperial Grunts brought a chill to my spine and a slight tear to my eye...as I was reading it standing in a bookstore shopping for books for my next deployment...where I am writing this review from.

Good luck to you Bob, we hope to see you again!

This book is an excellent glimpse of what life is like in the modern American military for the civilian reader who may not know the first thing about the intricacies of military bureaucracy, acronymese and other forms of military-speak, and the like. Quite simply, and quite at odds with 99% of what is written about the military (flattering or negative) he simply seems to get it, to have some understanding of the men and women who choose to wear the uniform, their world view, and why so many choose to continue serving despite danger, protracted and repeated deployments overseas, etc. In this, the book is wonderfully refreshing.

One reviewer expressed a negative opinion of the book because the author admits he tends to like the people he interviews and travels among. So what? Kaplan himself assesses issues of objectivity even as he discusses his fondness for the American officers and NCOs he meets. It is rather refreshing to see a journalist admit his bias and place himself in the narrative rather than cling to the fiction that any human being can be truly neutral and objective, hiding real motives and agendas behind a facade of false impartiality. So long as an author is forthcoming about his personal opinions and background I can only see the narrative enriched, rather than flawed, by such candor.

For any reader who wants to understand American foreign policy and the role of the military this is a reasonable book, though there are better. But, for a reader who wants to understand the mid-level officers and sergeants who are called on to enact American foreign policy and, in some cases, create and define it this book is as good a read as you will find. You may or may not like what Kaplan has to say (and even more so the officers and NCOs he quotes in the book), but if you are not a member of the US military you will learn something about how the men and women in uniform view the world and their place in it.

Addendum: In reading over other reviews of this book, I'm struck by two intriguing, but, in my opinion utterly wrong notions.

First, are those reviewers who fault Kaplan for favoring foreign involvement over the defense of the continental United States. This is simply ill-informed isolationism. Preventing the next regional war before it begins by deploying a few dedicated and veteran troops is not skimping on the defense of the United States or its interests, it is the absolute antithetis of the critics' claims.

Second, one reviewer claims that the lesson of the last 40 years is that special operations forces cannot win wars by themselves. They certainly cannot win every war scenario, but the belief that they cannot win wars is the same thinking that transformed Vietnam into a decade long bleeding wound as Big Army thinkers found the absolute worst way to fight that war, ignoring the historical value of special operations and unconventional warfare in both American history as well as our foreign allies such as the British in Malaya. The reason Americans do not reflect back on our war in El Salvador is because a handful of Special Forces personnel, tied in with indigenous forces, won that war quietly and without requiring an ordeal on the order of Vietnam.

Concerning both these topics, Kaplan seems far more coherent and far more in tune with reality than the critics.

What we know about the Roman Empire comes to us from a pitifully small number of contemporary or near-contemporary sources. Therefore, at a distance of some two thousand years it is hard to understand the motives and policies of a people both so much like us yet so much unlike us.

It is my hope that 2,000 years from now Robert D. Kaplan's Imperial Grunts will survive to be one of the contemporary sources that explains why the American Empire had to exist. Future generations need to understand what we did to end the chaos and suffering forced upon humanity by petty tribalism, extremist religions and the other forces of willful stupidity that have plagued us for millennia.

Certainly, American efforts to do this are motivated by self-interest but our security is the world's security. Religious intolerance, dictatorships, ethnic hatred and all the other messy attributes of the multicultural diversity which so enraptures liberals makes the world unsafe for all peoples, not just Americans. Less mentally agile critics of Kaplan's premise will have trouble with the idea of our armed forces providing medical care, undertaking construction projects, and encouraging, sometimes forcibly, local authorities to take responsible for the welfare and security of their own citizenry. But this method of warfare does take the battle to our enemies in a far more effective way than wonder-weapons and massed formations of troops.

Having praised Kaplan's work I must turn now to comment upon some of the egregious criticisms of Imperial Grunts that have appeared.

Albert Shaw tells us: "The men and women who join the military do so because they love their country and want to defend it. NOBODY in the military wants anything to do with being the disposable troops of Kaplan's Empire." Kaplan found plenty of men and women during his travels that are convinced they are defending their country by keeping the battle far from our shores. Unless his handful of critics is prepared to prove that Kaplan is lying about the attitude of the troops he spent time with I intend to accept what he reports.

John Desmond's complaint that Kaplan cites what he says are "unsubstantiated facts" concerning the number of firearms owned in Yemen. Kaplan ESTIMATES he does not CLAIM this number. There's an important difference between the two terms that Mr. Desmond overlooks in his rush to criticize.

Charlie Brinkman states: "This Kaplan guy is another wannabe who never served but has it all figured out because he slept out on the ground and ate the meals a couple times."
Five minutes on the web would have shown Mr. Brinkman that Kaplan served in the Israeli army in the 1970s (Seach.com). It may be that Kaplan's service didn't include combat but then again that's typical of people in the armed forces. Do books about war only have to be written by warriors? It's often outsiders who are in the best position to be objective about the subject. However, in Kaplan's case he actually did experience combat (see chapter 8). If being shot at doesn't give a person the right to write about war I don't know what criteria should be used.

Brinkman further states that: "Rather than training for modern war, Kaplan wants to turn the military into a force of well-diggers settling disputes over goats in villages while they hand out candy bars."
I'm not certain what sort of "modern war" Brinkman thinks we need to prepare for. War, at least as it's fought now, does involve digging wells, settling goat disputes and handing out candy bars. We went to Vietnam ready to fight World War II and our troops suffered for our inability to win the sort of war Vietnam actually was. And this problem remains because, to quote Kaplan, our armed forces are still "burdened by a top-heavy bureaucracy, with too many layers of staff that need pampering. Thus, it was organizationally miscast for dealing with twenty-first-century insurgencies" (Page 353).

Finally, unlike Mark Williams, Albert Shaw, the easily distracted "Red State Prof" who couldn't even finish the book and the rest, I've read Imperial Grunts from cover to cover, researched the things I questioned or didn't understand and find myself in agreement with Kaplan's assessments. The world will be a safer place if we continue to encourage people to stand up to evil and stupidity. And it pleases me no end to know that I'm not alone in my support for Kaplan. The author has been a consultant to the U. S. Army's Special Forces Regiment, the U. S. Air Force, and the U. S. Marines. He's also lectured at military war colleges, the FBI, the National Security Agency, the Pentagon's Joint Staff, major universities, and the CIA. (Camdenconference.org).

Finally, I just have to say something about the incredibly sloppy way these negative reviews were written. I may not be the best or most grammatically correct writer there ever was but Red State Prof (who presumably should be capable of better), Rosenthal and the rest ruin the impact of their reviews by being unable to spell, use good grammar or argue their positions convincingly. Sloppy writing shows an utter disinterest in your readers.

It feels like a lot of people are missing this point on Imperial Grunts: the book isn't the kind of behind-the-scenes training/combat narratives that seem to pop up ever year (Generation Kill, Spare Parts, One Bullet Away, etc. etc.). Kaplan is a much more methodical writer who's looking for a bigger picture and meanders his way to it through observation and personal contact. It can be tedious at times, but he usually succeeds in painting that picture, and this book is no exception.

Where this book succeeds is mostly in description of the negative. Kaplan certainly succeeds in describing what life is generally like for troops on the ground doing the most dangerous work in the war on terror. But every anecdote is meant to reinforce Kaplan's point that the military is well behind the curve of the current war and the enemies it faces. Through conversation and combat tales, Kaplan is really sketching out a doctrinal war between grunts in the field and what he calls "Big Army," the military bureaucracy stuck in the Cold War era. Doing so proves both interesting and informative, and Kaplan generally does a great job of keeping up the action while still providing the background and hammering home the political message. Though he often wanders into tangents and can be short on subtelty, repeat Kaplan readers know that this is simply his style and, as he points out, in the course of such asides it is usually the most telling information that comes out. The fascinating section on Mongolia is perfect example of a seemingly useless cul-de-sac as a powerfully educational event.

Flaws are pretty much reserved for the stylistic. Yes, Kaplan can be pompous, as can all writers in general, and it peeks through sometimes. But read a book by, say, Thomas P.M. Barnett, and Kaplan is practically a saint by comparison. He also clearly takes liberties with paraphrasing conversations, which tends to make interviewees sound wooden. And, as always, things tend to fit a little too neatly into his view of the good grunt vs. Big Army and short-sighted diplomacy. A professor of mine once aptly critiqued Kaplan by saying this: follow his route but stop in different towns or interview different people and wildly different picture can and usually does emerge. But Kaplan is trying to create a narrative and message, and it's clear from his extensive travels that the opinions of soldier and marines he talks with represent some sort of broader consensus beyond his own book.

If that's not true, his critics should go out, replicate his journey, and report the results. Until then, Kaplan's book is the best picture of modern military life in the field and the challenges facing the armed forces in its current wars. Any followers of current affairs need to read this book.