Customer Reviews

The Mission: Waging War and Keeping Peace with America's Military

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Ms. Priest's book is the latest of the political/journalistic genre to hit the racks on America's military. By my count, we've had David Halberstam's War in a Time of Peace, Eliot Cohen's Supreme Command, Max Boot's Savage Wars of Peace, Wes Clark's Waging Modern War, and several others in the past 1-2 years. As one of the Washington Post's star reporters, Ms. Priest certainly holds her own as a writer against these and other authors who have tried to explain the Pentagon and American foreign policy.

The Mission tells a story from several levels which are often neglected. The author deployed to many of the places where American soldiers are involved in making foreign policy. She talked with these soldiers, their commanders, and the civilians they interact with in those places. From that vantage-point, Ms. Priest offers some salient arguments about the wisdom of using American soldiers as the vanguard of American diplomacy.

I'm not sure I agree with Ms. Priest's penultimate argument -- that America's military is best kept for warfighting and not peacemaking. Since the Bosnia mission, I have echoed Gen. George Patton's sentiment that an ounce of sweat in peacetime was worth a gallon of blood in wartime. Better to experience some problems in these missions than to have to fight an all-out war in the Balkans or elsewhere. Nonetheless, Ms. Priest tells a compelling story. Her book stands as a piece of outstanding reporting, and I highly recommend it.

I finished Dana Priest's new book The Mission late last night, fueled by a pot of Peet's coffee. Great read -- I highly recommend the book. However, I'm not sure I agree with the author's major arguments. Ms. Priest argues, among other things:

1. The U.S. military has gradually squeezed out diplomatic efforts abroad. This has occurred because military funding has remained constant while funding for diplomatic agencies (State Dept, USAID, Commerce, etc) has declined. I agree with the author's argument here, and think this is a dangerous trend. We ought to be engaging foreign governments, economies, and societies -- not just their militaries.

2. In this vacuum, military commanders (the "CinCs") have initiated a number of "military diplomacy" programs. These include the use of Special Forces to train foreign soldiers, sharing of intelligence, promotion of foreign military sales, etc. In the absence of diplomatic workers from traditional agencies like State and USAID, these soldiers have become the biggest group of American government personnel operating abroad. I agree with the author here too; the soldiers have filled a diplomatic vacuum created by tremendous funding disparities. Ironically, this occurred even in the Clinton Administration, where human rights and international engagement had a kindred spirit in the White House.

3. Soldiers are ill-trained and ill-equipped to do this job on behalf of America. Using soldiers abroad has led to a number of breakdowns in American foreign policy, such as the failure to establish a lasting and self-sustaining peace in the Balkans. Moreover, soldiers have contributed to conflict and human-rights problems in various ways, especially through the training of foreign troops. Here, I strongly disagree with Ms. Priest. U.S. soldiers have left a powerful and lasting legacy in places like Bosnia. They may remain there for some time. But the mission is a success story. 10 years ago, snipers dueled over the streets of Sarajevo, killing civilians with impunity. Today, civilians can walk through Sarajevo without fear. A similar, if not-yet-perfect, situation exists in Kosovo, where U.S. soldiers secure the future of Serbs and Albanians alike.

Bottom Line: Soldiers don't make the best diplomats in the world. They should not replace political, social and economic diplomacy, as they have done because of funding disparities between the Pentagon and other federal agencies. But soldiers do a pretty good job at policing the peace. And while the American infantry isn't automatically ready to assume such missions, it can be trained to do so. With good training and leadership, American soldiers can make and keep peace in some of the world's worst places -- just as they have done in Bosnia and Kosovo. On occasion, mistakes will be made. However, American soldiers have proven their ability to stop the killing -- a goal that thousands of diplomats could never attain in the Balkans.

This book disappoints. After several people told me how great it was, I forked over the cash for the hardcover. The book was a quick read, but I was left with little of substance. Ms. Priest makes her whole argument in the first chapter, and the rest is just disconnected anecdotes, with little analysis of the various stories. For example, the book starts off talking about the proconsular role of the US Combatant Commanders (formerly known as CINCs until Rummie outlawed the term for everyone except George W.) but then inexplicably switches to various lengthy accounts of soldiers on the ground all around the world, culminating in an extensive -- but superficial -- depiction of the peacekeeping mission in the Balkans (and a long discussion of Frank Ronghi's rape of a young Albanian girl). Ms. Priest seems to alternately praise and blame the military for the current emphasis on the use of military force over diplomacy in US foreign policy, but neglects the issue of how this situation came about (why doesn't the State Department get the funding that DOD gets? why do civilians trust the military to solve all of their problems, and not their fellow civilian leaders & foreign service personnel?). Ms. Priest also spends an inordinate amount of time commenting on what various highranking military officers are wearing and the trappings of their office (Wesley Clark wears Burberry blazers, but Anthony Zinni likes Hawaiian shirts) as if this provides some deep insight into their psyches, and then glosses over substantive issues such as the apparent willingness of military officials to circumvent the law as they try to accomplish their missions. The book ends abruptly without a real conclusion. Ms. Priest also needed a better editor -- the book is full of typographical errors. I suspect this book was rushed into print. If you must read it, borrow it from the library.

I did not buy this book at first, having read and thoroughly enjoyed the many long articles the author contributed through The Washington Post, all of which comprise the middle two thirds of the book. However, at the recommendation of a retired Army Special Forces Colonel, I finally did buy it, and I am glad I did.

Unlike the articles, which focused on the questionable use of Special Forces to train forces within repressive regimes around the world, from Colombia to Indonesia to Central Asia, the book more properly focuses on the complete lack of a US inter-agency planning process, the complete lack of a US means of coordinating actions and spending by all US agencies, and consequently, the complete lack of a US national security and global engagement strategy that is so vital to protecting America from attack and protecting American interests in a coherent and sensible fashion.

While many critics read the book as if it were a glorification of the theater Commanders-in-Chief (CINC), and complain about the militarization of US foreign policy, a proper reading of this book clearly documents that the militarization occurs by default, as a consequence of the abject failure of the White House and the Department of State, neither of which, under either Clinton or Bush, are serious about global engagement.

The military *works* (when it's not being frittered away by elective wars and occupations). What I see in this superb book is a solid foundation for thinking about three essential reforms to American national security: 1) the creation of a Presidential level inter-agency strategic planning and operational coordination process--no, the National Security Council is *not* capable of doing that; 2) the redirection of theater commands and staffs to become truly inter-agency, with men of the caliber of Bob Oakley and Mark Palmer serving as Peace CINCs with military four-star deputies; and 3) the doubling of the Special Operations Forces through the creation of a "white hat" "armed peace corps" that can deliver sewing machines, water purification, and the myriad of other things, including law enforcement under combat conditions.

The book also does for Marine Corps General Tony Zinni what Ron Suskind's book "The Price of Loyalty" does for Secretary of the Treasury Paul O'Neil--it gives us some deep insights into Tony Zinni as one of the most extraordinary men to ever serve the American people, and a man who is clearly well-qualified to be one of the top five to ten people in any future Administration. Although I am a former Marine and know Zinni's reputation among Marines as both a warrior's warrior and a thinking general (there are very few of those, even in the Marine Corps), I had not realized the depth and breadth of his brilliance until I read this book. In particular I was moved by his intuitive demand for tribal-level intelligence, his focus on nuances and context at all times, and his insistence that a major aspect of US national security policy must be on the delivery of water, electricity, and the kinds of basics that can rescue failed states, legitimize governments, and create future democracies.

I recommend that this book be read together with Kissinger's book on "Does America Need a Foreign Policy", Boren's edited book on "Preparing American Foreign Policy for the 21st Century", and Halperin's 1980's but still relevant book on "Bureaucratic Politics & Foreign Policy." Bob Oakley's edited work on "Policing the New World Disorder" and Mark Palmer's recent book on "Breaking the Real Axis of Evil" (44 dictators), and Joe Nye's two most recent books, will round out any intelligent person's feel for what needs to be done. This is a very high quality book, fully meriting five stars, because it explains both the harsh world we must engage, and the failure of our national policy process--regardless of who is President--in this regard.

Dana Priest is news reporter, and I know from first hand experience the impact her articles had on the U.S. military's ability to conduct training with some of our less than stellar allies. This book appears to be compilation of her various articles, and though it provides the reader with a number of entertaining and insightful war stories, her underlining theme that the U.S. military is not trained, thus not suited, to conduct peace keeping operations is not well supported. The truth is that the U.S. military does have a body of knowledge to support peacekeeping operations, and is very proficient at establishing a secure environment, which is what we would prefer to limit our tasks to. Our weakness is in the conduct of nation building (e.g. Iraq and Afghanistan), but again no one else is stepping up to the plate. The bottom line is that there is no other organization beyond the U.S. military (especially the U.S. army) that can effectively conduct peacekeeping . It almost seemed that Dana reached that conclusion herself as she writes about how inept the UN is, and how the French refused to get their hands dirty when people were being killed in the sector they were responsible for protecting. In both cases (and in others) she explains how the U.S. Army came to the rescue. I was hoping she would have interviewed a number of senior level policy members to get their perspectives and recommended solutions to the policy issues she identifies, but that didn't happen. So a book that could have been influential in shaping policy fell short. Nonetheless this book spins a few good tales, and will expose the reader to the challenges our military faces on a daily basis around the world.

--The reviewer is a peace operations analyst in Washington DC-

As others have noted, this book contends that the U.S. military has become far too large a player in the creation and execution of U.S. foreign policy. This has happened for many reasons, and the book will tell you about them. This is the first important message, and it is true.

The next important message is that U.S. soldiers do not in fact make good peacekeepers. That is not a criticism of the U.S. military, which is the best in the world at many things, and has proven it. In terms of fighting a war, which is what U.S. soldiers are trained to do, and want to do, they are the best. I think that Priest actually gives a good sense of that, in a very personal way that may not be too common in such books. Particularly so for the Special Operations soldiers that conduct so much of this execution of foreign policy.

But U.S. soldiers are bad peacekeepers. Facts are facts, and historical fact is on my side here. The inability of the U.S. military to excel at peacekeeping has been proved in nearly every single military intervention conducted by the U.S. military during the past twenty years. We do post-conflict badly because U.S. soldiers are not trained for it, but since we have no other capacity for it, they must do it. We don't have a national police force, or paramilitary police, like France, Spain, Italy and others. We don't train our soldiers in the full spectrum of activity, from war-fighting to peacekeeping and policing, the way the Brits and others do, so we don't have special elements of the military to call upon either.

Not only that, but the aftermath of conflict is much more messy than conflict itself. Nation building, stability operations, peace operations - whatever you want to call it, it is messy. Priest also gives, I think, a good picture of this. Unfortunately, the picture is a bit messy itself. It comes out jumpily throughout the book, rather than as a smooth flow. I think this will confuse rather than educate most people.

This is a shame, because the message is important, critically so. The U.S. must start to build a better capacity to conduct operations in post-conflict scenarios. The U.S. military, if forced to continue to plug the gap, will do so only imperfectly. And that includes the sort of atrocious behavior that Priest took some time to discuss in later chapters. The point here, missed I think by some reviewers, is that this is a common problem. And it is created, in part, by forcing people to do something they didn't sign up for and don't really want to do.

This is a great book. We must do better at post-conflict. This book tells you why.

The Mission, a book penned by Dana Priest, focuses on a few different, yet somehow intertwined, ideas involving the military and foreign policy. Priest is trying to enlighten the readers on how the military has gained power in the execution of foreign policy, how these powers exceed the scope of the military training, and how the CinC's (Commanders in Chief) have seemingly grown as powerful as most any political figure remaining in the United States.
The first of these components is the idea that the military has been brought into situations that exceed the scope of their training. The issue at hand has been addressed several times throughout the book. One example of such a situation was the peacekeeping mission in Kosovo. Soldiers were sent into the Balkans with specific rules of engagement that prevented them from doing the very task they were trained to do, fight. In the end, the mission backfired and the people they were trying to aid, turned into the people they should be trying to stop. The cause of the failed mission was a lack of training and experience in unconventional military duties. Different examples of this misuse of the military are more extreme. There are situations when special forces have been used for nation building in Afghanistan and Iraq, and to help distribute humanitarian aid in countries such as Nigeria and Somalia. Forces were even expanded as far out to include the war on drugs in Colombia.
The second portion of the review covers the idea that the Commanders in Chief, along with the military as a whole, have become more powerful than imagined in the execution of foreign policy. The power instilled in these CinC's came through trust, dependencies and their overwhelming budgets. This idea, not unlike the other, is displayed in several situations throughout the book. The majestic powers of the CinC's began with Priest's discussion of General Anthony Zinni of U.S. Central Command, who was in control of all military affairs in much of the Middle East and through parts of Africa. There, Zinni was not only in charge of the military operations, his duties entailed most diplomatic missions as well. This book follows the career of Zinni through the flexing of his controlling muscle in the Persian Gulf and up into central Asia with Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, and others. Other CinC's that Priest addresses include: Admiral Dennis Blair, CinC of Pacific Command, General Wesley Clark, CinC of European Command, and General Charles Wilhelm, CinC of Latin America. After September 11, 2001, the CinC's gained much power with the approval of their sworn enemy, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. He even added an extra CinC to the mix; the U.S. Northern Command, which was to reign over Canada, Mexico, and the United States.
Priest composed this book with great talent and thirst for knowledge. The interviews she gained access to during the creation of this book are of highest quality. The data gives such thorough insight into the roles that the military played during various missions to a point that a reader would be pressed to find a flaw in her research. The main quarrel that any reader would have with Priest is that one has to weed through all of the brush to find the ideas that she is trying to highlight. The information is all very important, however, it seems to fulfill more of the entertainment factor of the book instead of keeping her eye on the ball. The various anecdotes that are scattered throughout the book make it hard to focus on what the military was actually doing. For instance, Priest tries to bring the reader into the text by not only introducing new characters, but telling a large sum of their history. However entertaining it is, the reader does not need to know that General Wilhelm was born in North Carolina or that his father was a lawyer. On the same note, it is not vital to the book that the reader knows every adventure that General Zinni embarked on during his time in Vietnam. So, while the information is very thorough, there is far too much filler added for entertainment.

I was intrigued by the subtitle: "Waging War and Keeping Peace with America's Military" after trying to think of how many countries (dozens) the United States has committed its military forces to over the past couple decades, and why. Dana Priest had top-level access to various military personnel, visited a number of the countries she discusses, and from this creates an informative document around a major issue confronting our military/civilian leadership; namely, what is "The Mission"? She is mostly uncritical (contrary to the impression of previous reviewers who sound offended by the subject matter, as though the military were too holy a subject for any civilian to tackle) and highly complimentary, and informative about our soldiers, and CINc's (Commanders in Chief/theatre command generals). I think the book would've benefited from a more personal, opinionated account after having done all this research, however, like Mark Bowden ("Black Hawk Down", "Killing Pablo") she's a reporter at heart and keeps it pretty straight-forward.

"The Mission" raises fundamental questions about our government's ever-changing world-concept, and the role of our military in advancing goals better suited for diplomats and the UN. More specifically, she brings up the trend of using our forces for "peace-keeping" & "nation-building" missions which they're obviously not well suited for (at this time). Yes, our military is the best at what it does in most cases, but it has serious limitations when we attempt to use it for unclear post-war objectives in countries with broken infrastructure. She provides detailed accounts of Kosovo, where one Lt. Col. wanders the streets and is reminded of his experience in the 1991 debacle of Somalia. There is a brief and disturbing account of an Army soldier who raped and murdered a young Albanian girl, and details of other negative encounters between young, un-worldly American soldiers and their Serb & Albanian "protectees". One interesting chapter deals with the complex world of a female Albanian-American translator trying to fit in with her fellow American soldiers. Priest also touches on the nature of covert, Special Ops. military training and relations with various troubled countries such as Colombia, Nigeria, and Indonesia.

Fundamental questions arise throughout the book: What exactly is nation-building, and should we be engaged in it? Have we already abandoned Kosovo and Afghanistan? Do we have the funds, military resources, will-power, justification, or desire to play international policeman? Will we keep our promises to the peoples we set out to protect? The answers aren't here, but "The Mission" sets the table from which this crucial discussion will definitely continue.

Dana Priest is a well-respected journalist with the Washington Post and a frequent guest on NBC's "Meet the Press." She specializes on military and intelligence topics, so it was with great interest that I read her book "The Mission". Her thesis, that the US military is playing an ever increasing role in US foreign policy matters and that the nation is becoming dependent on the military's presence in foreign affairs, could not be more timely.

She presents her argument via a series of vignettes which cover senior military leaders as well as a broad spectrum of recent military operations. She primarily writes from the military's perspective and its impact on foreign policy. The profiles of the four, 4-star commanders provide the reader with a sense of the situation each commander faced in 1999 and how their ideals influenced not only their area of responsibility but also our foreign affairs. Priest chronicles our military activities with examples that range from major operations in Afghanistan and the Balkans, our covert drug war in South America, and the relatively unnoticed actions in Nigeria and Indonesia. Her stories capture the military's struggle to achieve success across the entire spectrum of operations.

She does a good job of stating her argument and offers varied examples of where the military is setting the foreign policy agenda. Unfortunately, the book does little more to move into an analysis of US foreign policy decision making beyond the military's impact nor does it make recommendations for changes to better the current situation. The book seemed to be more of a compilation of "reports from the field" than an analysis of foreign policy decision making and the military's role in it. I suppose the author's goals and my expectations were decidedly different but I expected more from this book.

I feel her point would have benefited from a comparison of the State Dept's and the DoD's role in US foreign policy making. She also needed to consider the contributions of non-governmental organizations to the foreign policy equation. Additionally, if the author thinks we are becoming reliant on the military to conduct foreign policy, she should include recommendations to counter that reliance. I enjoyed reading the well-written vignettes, thought this is a great introduction on the topic of political-military relations as it impacts foreign affairs, but would like to see more analysis and less story-telling.

A worthwhile read.

I first read this book in March of this year while the invasion of Iraq was taking place.Many of the points which Dana Priest made in this book have been borne out by subsequent events.The big problem that the US faces in Iraq is that not only does it want to get rid of Sadaam Hussein's regime (which it has),but it also wants to decide what government the Iraqis will have in the postwar period.As Ms Priest points out in the book American troops are not suited either by training or temperment for peace-keeping.Nor are they suited for nation-building.In the meantime while they are supposed to be doing this they also have to be on alert against possible attacks carried out against them by a hostile population.Is it any wonder then that at the moment things aren't going that well in Iraq? This is what I took to be the main point of the book:that too often politicians use the military as a bandaid solution to fix difficult problems.Got a problem with ethnic violence in Bosnia and Kosovo, send the military in to deal with the problem.Civil war in Liberia, let's send the Marines in to do the job.Can't find other countries that are willing to contribute troops to re-build Iraq, well then we'll just use the troops we already have there to do the job.And so on and so on.It's unfortunate that not enough people have read this book because it adresses some serious issues concerning America's military that the American people need to look at.