Military Misfortunes: The Anatomy of Failure in War [Hardcover]

Eliot A. Cohen (Author), John Gooch (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 1, 1990 | ISBN-10: 0029060605 | ISBN-13: 978-0029060605 | Edition: First Ediiton

Rejecting accepted theories for unexpected military disasters, the authors brilliantly analyze disasters of great magnitude. They assert that military misfortune turns not on individual or collective failure but is rooted in the nature of the complex interconnections between men, systems, and organizations.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Military failures have long been studied piecemeal, but there are few scholarly attempts to quantify and systematize them. Here, two professors of military history reduce the study of command blunders to a science. Several intellectual shortfalls, such as the failures to learn, to anticipate, to adapt, are analyzed. Each is then followed by the study of a pivotal battle or campaign which easily could have turned out differently, but for the "pathways to misfortune" which intervened. The work is painstaking, detailed, and thoughtful, marred only by a ponderous writing style. It is more mature and systematic than Charles M. Fair's From the Jaws of Victory (LJ 7/71). For informed laypersons and specialists.
- Raymond L. Puffer, U.S. Air Force History Prog., Los Angeles
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

"The general reader will find this a fascinating and informative book; those responsible for their nations' security will find in it lessons they will ignore at their own peril."

-- Major General (Res.) Aharon Yariv, former director, Israeli Military Intelligence

"Cohen and Gooch have done their job well. They have mastered their sources, used considerable imagination...the book is well-written and sound in judgment."

-- Caspar Weinberger, The Wall Street Journal --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 296 pages
• Publisher: Free Press; First Ediiton edition (January 1, 1990)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0029060605
• ISBN-13: 978-0029060605
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.3 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #370,508 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

I am an academic who has been fortunate in many ways - teaching at Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies, the country's leading school of international relations; serving in government, most recently as Counselor of the Department of State from 2007 to 2009; and having the freedom to move from political science, my original discipline, to history.

One friend who looked at the manuscript CONQUERED INTO LIBERTY, wrote to me -- "Aha! A love note!" and in some ways it is that. It deals with almost two centuries of battles along the Great Warpath route from Albany to Montreal, and it does, I hope, show some of my affection for this part of the country. A good part of the fun of writing the book was tramping around all the sites that I describe in it. But its purpose is serious: to show how the American way of war emerged from our conflict with an unlikely opponent: Canada. It tells the story of ten battles and shows how they reveal deeper truths about the American approach to war. The title, in fact, comes from a propaganda pamphlet strewn about Canada before the Americans invaded in 1775: "You have been conquered into liberty..." it began, and that notion is one that is still with us.

But the argument of the book, I believe, should not detract from stories that will appeal to readers. I hope that you will be as fascinated as I am not only by the events, but by characters you knew (George Washington, for example) whom I show in rather different lights than is customary, and even more so by characters you will probably meet here for the first time. A personal favorite: La Corne St. Luc, the incredibly wily French aristocrat who fought the British, sided with them, joined the Americans, rejoined the British and died one of Canada's wealthiest men after several decades of terrorizing the northern frontier. But there are others: enjoy discovering them!

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

37 of 38 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Applies analytical model to six "military failures", February 14, 2000

By 

Reader (San Antonio, Texas) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Military Misfortunes: The Anatomy of Failure in War (Paperback)

Military historians will enjoy this book. I read it as part of the Air War College curriculum. The theme of the book is that often military blunders are the result of or enhanced by institutional/organizational flaws. The first couple of chapters lay out an analytical model that is used in the remainder of the book. The model combines in-depth knowledge of the campaign with a tailored, layered critical approach for each campaign. In the remaining chapters the model is applied to the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Yom Kippur War 1973, the US anti-sub effort in 1942, the Brits' Sulva Bay enterprise at Gallipoli 1915, the US retreat from the Yalu River in Korea 1950, and the collapse of the French Army & Air Force in 1940. The six campaigns are very readable and enjoyable. The style is crisp and succint. I learned alot of interesting details about the campaigns. The Gooch & Cohen model is not a tool for prediction of the success of future campaigns - only for historical analysis. Nonetheless, once you get through the first two chapters, you'll be in for an enjoyable read. Try it.

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent and highly recommended, August 29, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Military Misfortunes: The Anatomy of Failure in War (Paperback)

If you enjoy this type "failure" analysis (such as the book "Normal Accidents"), I think you'll find this to be an excellent read. My interest is primarily in business strategy and related issues (not in military history and strategy per se), but the authors present material which I found to be very useful across many different professions. My complements to the authors for good cases, good analysis and good writing. I really had great fun reading this book. It could have used better proof reading, but the errors enountered in no way hindered the presentation in any material way.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The heterogeneity of failure, November 8, 2007

By 

T. Graczewski "tgraczewski" (Burlingame, CA United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Military Misfortunes: The Anatomy of Failure in War (Paperback)

Why do competent, well-led armies facing reasonable odds sometimes suffer spectacular defeat? That is the nettlesome question two young (at the time) professors of strategy at the US Naval War College sought to address with "Military Misfortunes."

The book is a curious and engaging mix of political science, military history and organizational theory with a dash of management consulting-style charts and decision matrices. It succeeds on a variety of levels, but most notably in its cogent critique on why previous attempts to explain military defeat have been woefully inadequate and its levelheaded view on the prospects for preventing major failure in the future. In short, this is an academic treatise on why failures occur in military organizations, not an attempt to devine formulas for preventing future failure; the authors concede that such a goal, while worthy, is essentially impossible.

To begin with, the authors highlight and dismiss the standard explanations for military failure that have most often been suggested by historians. Cohen and Gooch note that these stock explanations are nearly always homogenous in nature; that is, the cause of failure can be explained by one factor alone. Examples of these inadequate homogenous explanations are that failure is caused by the actions (or lack thereof) of an individual commander (what they call the "man-in-the-dock theory"); the inherent mental inflexibility and dullness of the typical professional military officer (the "man-on-the-couch"), the rigid conservativeness of military institutions, and ethnological defects or innate weaknesses of entire peoples and nations.

Cohen and Gooch see three very different and basic types of military failure, which can be committed at a variety of levels of command: failure to learn, failure to anticipate and failure to adapt. The combination of any two leads to what the authors call "aggregate failure" and the combination of all three lead to "catastrophic failure." To highlight each type of failure and combinations thereof, the authors' pursue a case study methodology, examining some of the most well-known military failures of the past century (the fall of France in 1940, Gallipoli in 1915, and the rout of the US VIII Army in 1950), as well as some lesser known examples (US anti-submarine warfare in 1942 and the Yom Kippur War in 1973). Each case study is briskly paced and follows the same general outline of first defining precisely what the failure under consideration was, citing the key events at each level of command that led to disaster, and then creating a matrix of actions and failures that reveal a "pathway to misfortune."

The authors concede that there are no easy remedies to curing military failure, just as there are no easy explanations for why it happens. However, they clearly see organizational dynamics as often playing a leading role on the road to misfortune. "It is the deficiency of particular organizations confronted with particular tasks that the embryo of military misfortune develops."

While there are no panaceas for preventing failures, the authors do review some ways to improve across the three general dimensions of failure: 1) learning - emphasize the importance of intellectual training and outlook combined with relentless empiricism in military education at all levels; 2) anticipation - think just as hard and realistically about the politico-military conditions under which future war could occur as about the tactics and/or weapons the other side may employ; and 3) adaptation - stress and promote the role of initiative at ever level of command.

The authors' general conclusion is gloomy, yet realistic: "misfortune lurks somewhere within the bowels of every military operation. It is 'the ghost in the machine' that can be conjured up by a variety of circumstance." In the end, "Military Misfortunes" provides a compelling framework for better understanding how and why armed forces suffer major failure, but offers little to any hope for preventing those failures from occurring in the future.