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Information and Security: Where Truth Lies?

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Generals fight the last war. In the last war they were lower ranking officers in charge of troops actually doing the fighting. This gives them a lesson in how wars are fought. Most United States troops are skilled in the fighting of conventional wars. They well understand what the M-1 tanks did in Gulf War I, they understand about air power, logistics, all kinds of things that enable a heavily mechanized army to fight. They proved this well when a much smaller force quickly overcame the much larger Iraqi army in Gulf War II.

Unfortunately winning on the battlefield in Iraq and in Afghanistan didn't mean the end of the war. Instead, as we all know, the real battle was just beginning, and we haven't done very well with it.

Dr. Rothstein, a West Point graduate and a thirty year career Special Forces officer uses this book to explain how unconventional warfare has not received the attention it should in the modern military. He uses the experience in Afghanistan to illustrate the points he is describing and makes several recommendations as to how the unconventional forces of the US need to be improved, mostly at the command level.

Afghanistan And The Troubled Future Of Unconventional Warfare by Hy S. Rothstein (Department of Defense Analysis at the Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, California) is an analytical study of conventional and unconventional uses of tactics in the "War on Terrorism" as it is currently being waged in the mountains and valleys of Afghanistan. Arguing that although the operation in Afghanistan was presented as unconventional the Bush administration, but was in actuality, a case of America's military power being employed in a segmented and quite conventional manner, Afghanistan And The Troubled Future Of Unconventional Warfare provides an in-depth overview of the Afghan war and why certain situational intricacies may imply, but not require, unconventional or irregular tactics. An important and seminal contribution to Military Studies reference collections and reading lists, Afghanistan And The Troubled Future Of Unconventional Warfare is very strongly recommended work of impeccable scholarship.

In this book, the author first asserts that after the initial success of a conventional war in Afghanistan, the US has failed to prosecute a successful unconventional war as is required. Then, through a brief introduction of organization theory, he describes the problem as symptomatic of the organizational mindset of conventional forces. He makes the point, and well I believe, that the conventional warfare thinking continues to take over and attempt to shape all forces under its structure to the conventional model. This does seem often to be the case and it is a valid point. The author's recommendations for remedying the problem are, in effect, a new separate branch of the military that is more attuned to the CIA unconventional model than the DoD conventional model. Unfortunately, this seems to still leave open the probability that the regular military will slowly take over this new force and attempt to mold it also in its own image. It seems a bandaid solution to a problem requiring more than bandaids to this reviewer. I think a better solution would be something along the lines that the late Col. Hackworth proposed - a new military altogether. Still, this is an important work about how organizational structure can affect the ability of the military to perform in unconventional warfare settings. It is not specifically regarding Afghanistan as it might seem, rather, the experience in Afghanistan is only the latest symptom of a long standing disease that needs drastic treatment. A very helpful book to raise some more thoughtful ideas for the healing.

I've only read three case histories of bureaucratic failure which are essential works for all thoughtful people. Andrew Gordon's Rules of the Game, a study of the Royal Navy from Trafalgar to Jutland, showed how minor changes in such things as promotion policy and communications altered the entire character of the organization. Peter Rodman's Presidential Command, a study of the State Department under each President from Nixon through Bush 43, showed how a bureaucracy can undermine its Constitutional leadership.

Finally, Colonel Rothstein's study of special operations forces during the War in Afghanistan (with a brief history of special forces since World War II) shows how, even when an organization develops an exquisite tool, it will misuse that tool when it doesn't fit into the general preconceptions of the bureaucracy at large. Of the three studies, Colonel Rothstein's is perhaps the most useful to the general reader since it ties his study most clearly to organizational theory (the chapter summarizing the various studies of organizational theory is alone worth the price of the book).

Afghanistan is the perfect case study since it has served as a model of the "new kind of war." Americans love the image of a handful of Green Berets on horseback with laptops winning a war. It is not so much that the image is wrong, just imcomplete. As Colonel Rothstein clearly demonstrates, special operations forces have always been used as commandos in conventional warfare instead of the leading edge in unconventional war.

The concept of elite troops has always been with us. From Roger's Rangers and Berdan's Sharpshooters to the Green Beret and Navy SEALs, elite troops have always been respected as a weapon of war, but the theory and stategy of unconventional warfare, their natural milieu, is not well understood. In fact, one gets the impression that the military bureaucracy does not want to understand unconventional warfare, so we are not facing the situation the world faced in World War One, when a plethora of new weapons altered the nature of conventional warfare, requiring years for tactics to evolve to deal with them. There really IS a "new kind of war" that the US now has to face and current bureaucracies, neither military nor civilian, public nor private, can deal with it.

Although Colonel Rothstein's book is five years old, it holds up remarkably well and is, in fact, prescient in his forecasts of the future of Afghanistan. There are only two minor points which could be updated. At one point, he suggests that the Taliban had halted opium production, but when I was in Afghanistan with the State Department in 2005, it was becoming clear that the Taliban had created a sophisticated form of narco-state, warehousing the opium production each year to create shortages worldwide, so that they could sell their supply at the highest prices. Colonel Rothstein also doesn't discuss special operations in The Philippines, where reports seem to suggest that the forces there are able to perform truly unconventional warfare. It would be useful to know whether this is just more "men on horseback with laptops" wishful thinking or reality.

My only objection, but for a slightly different reason than the previous reviewer, is Seymour Hersh's preface. Seymour Hersh is an intelligent man some of whose books can be read profitably by people of all political stripes, but he has a political mind without an ability to transcend politics. A political mind tends to shoehorn the facts to meet its prejudices and to find a person to blame instead of a system to fix. And, indeed, Hersh does not disappoint here: he spends the bulk of his essay attacking aspects of the war that have nothing to do with the author's thesis and then ends his piece by blaming the Bush Administration when Colonel Rothstein has clearly shown that the entire military establishment is incapable of understanding unconventional war and never has. This is not a reflection on Hersh: we are all political animals and few of us can completely transcend our prejudices and an even smaller fraction of the population has the strength of intellect and character to write a book like this.

Interestingly, Peter Rodman's Presidential Command makes the same mistake. Even though the book is quite harsh on Henry Kissinger, Kissinger's introduction provided an excuse for the decisionmakers on the Left to ignore Rodman's book and as a result, President Obama's foreign policy borders on the incoherent. If the decisionmakers on the Right make the same mistake with Colonel Rothstein's book, the 21st century will be even nastier than it is shaping up to be.

Colonel Rothstein's recommendations are the crucial first step towards meeting the challenges we will be facing.

This book should the handbook to the powers that be, military and civilian, on why they should consider UW as the first option when conducting future wars. Reading this book you will also truly understand why UW and possibly Special Forces is in trouble, period. And ultimately why we as a military are F'd up in Afghanistan.

I would HIGHLY recommend this book to all Special Forces soldiers and believers in UW. Having read this book in lieu with Major Jim Gant's "One Tribe At A Time" the UW mission makes even more sense for Afghanistan. These 2 readings complement each other very well. I was a student of Major Gant's during Robin Sage a few years ago. He even said it himself: Special Forces as we know it will not be the same in 4 or 5 years. This book also explains why.

I would also recommend, in lieu of this book, read " The Only Thing Worth Dying For". Excellent book. You will get first hand insight to the ignorance placed on UW as an option in the initial war plan for Afghanistan.

Hy Rothstein has written one of the great books on modern warfare. It is a well written and thoroughly researched evaluation of the US Military's ability to wage unconventional warfare in the modern age, through the lens of the Afghan campaign in Operation Enduring Freedom.

What began as a stunning example of modern unconventional warfare using special forces partnering with local forces and precision air power was replaced with conventional troops conducting major "cordon and sweep" operations. The result can be seen in the news every day, as a resurgent Taliban has swept back in from the Pakistani tribal areas to wreak havoc on Afghanistan.

This book is a critical read for modern policy makers, military professionals, and anyone looking to understand warfare in the modern world.

As a former counterinsurgent who understands the issue from firsthand experience at both the grassroots and strategic levels, I cannot recommend this book highly enough. Professor Rothstein intimately understands both COIN and the situation in Afghanistan. The paradigm shift required by our government, military, and citizens in general to successfully understand and deal with COIN is dramatic. If we as a nation decide that the threat requires us to be proficient in this type of warfare, then this book is required reading. The US has the preeminent conventional military force on the planet--the result of our need to mitigate the soviet threat of the past. Today, no force in its right mind would stand toe-to-toe with the US military, so the geostrategic threats we are likely to face will come from unconventional and terrorist action. Professor Rothstein's book explains how to address these changes and even offers relatively quick and cost efficient changes that our military could implement. I have sent copies of this book to various US senators and congressmen, and even a couple of influential university presidents in the hope that they would understand this issue and start taking the right kinds of action. This is a must read.

First, a reader has to hold his nose past the stench of association with Seymour Hersh. (What an awful marketing decision to link the New Yorker reporter with a serious work.) Then, one has to wade through lead-footed prose and a narrative style that appears directed to about the eleventh grade level of high school. But, despite these difficulties, there are significant kernals of wisdom about the issues we face. In the background, there is the haunting leitmotif found as well in other books devoted to our current military, especially the army: Packer, Kaplan, Hammes,Naylor, Krepinevich, Gordon & Trainor, et al. There is something seriously wrong with the United States Army's training, selection and promotion of its flag officers. It's placed America and its people at deadly risk in the current war with the Islamofascists. Anyone concerned about current events should buy this book despite its shortcomings. The items listed initially are the only reason it doesn't get five stars.