As stated in other reviews, this book is a collection of essays written by recent or current SAASS professors. SAASS (School of Advanced Air and Space Studies) is the premier school educating strategists in the USAF, if not the DoD. Reading this book gives one the flavor of the diversity covered during a student's year at SAASS before a student is faced with the required hundreds of pages of writing and nearly 200 books. The essays in this collection highlight the personalities or specialties students see in each of the writers. I will touch on a few of the essays, but know that each essay has its own benefits for budding strategists to ponder. The beauty of this text is its diversity as it provides a bevy of issues strategists must address if they are going to successfully lead and develop new leaders in the military profession.
Dr. Winton's The Imperfect Jewel discusses the importance of theory and how strategy is not filled with rules, but are suggestions to help guide strategists. He compares Grant and Patton and their differential use of theory in their successes. It's a brilliant read and I'm glad to see it in book form that might bring about a wider readership (it's also found in Journal of Strategic Studies, 2011).
Dr. Forsyth discusses how realism permeates strategic thought by showing how it arises throughout history. I love his distillation of realism in the conclusion. Sadly, I think the only people that might be won over by the article, though, are those who have little background in international relations theory, because the root issue is not addressed. It seems a philosophical worldview of optimism or realism drives people toward their view on international relations. Regardless, Dr. Forsyth's writing is a superb introduction to realism for budding strategists...or those preparing to go to SAASS.
Dr. Tucci writes a thoroughly entertaining and enlightening dialogue between four gentlemen with names from ancient Greece in a modern context using the Socratic style. How does one educate strategists? What follows is witty and hearkens back to Plato's dialogue in The Republic as Socrates and friends discuss the best government possible. The discussion is filled with many references one should aspire to read. It has a flare of several professors sitting around a bottle of Scotch or a group of students in SAASS seminar (near the end of the year).
Dr. Chiabotti avoids technological determinism as he writes about the growing importance of technology in strategic planning since Moltke. From Prussia to thermonuclear weapons to stealth, Dr. Chiabotti outlines how important technological superiority is in strategic development. This is not something with which Clausewitz or Sun Tzu had to focus on heavily in their ages, making the problem more difficult for modern strategists. The end hope is the strategist becomes Bijker's heterogeneous engineer - someone with one foot in theory and one foot in technological expertise.
Dr. Muller's offering highlights the importance of studying history to aid in developing the mind of the strategist while lamenting the lack of study by most mid-level officers until recent years. He provides a brief history of USAF education and a few sad roadblocks to the endeavor. In short, he offers four reasons why the USAF needs to study history. In essence, it's impossible to stand on the shoulders of giants if you know nothing of what those giants did.
Dr. Bailey outlines several critical problems within enveloping cyberspace into strategic theory. He begins with three technical considerations beginning with how one defines cyberspace. It's impossible to navigate the issues without this first step and despite cyberspace existing for decades, the issue remains unresolved. After this initial issue, strategists must understand how or whether to include cyberspace in strategic plans, as disagreement exists over its efficacy. Finally, in the second half of the essay, Dr. Bailey addresses the elephant in the room - social issues coupled with cyberwarfare. These issues are not resolved in his few dozen pages, but they are presented for strategists to ponder.
Dr. Wright's essay on the relationship between a planner and a strategist helps point the way toward complex planning systems either not covered or covered briefly at SAASS. He discusses things like JOPP and MDMP that serve as standard planning tools at the operational level of war. The strategist needs to understand these systems to translate their grand vision into the operational plan. His terms are precise, but sadly, doctrine provides much less rigor in delineating the positions. Moreover, with Dr. Wright's essay, readers begin to see the range of strategic thought when compared with Dr. Dolman's work. Whereas Dr. Dolman elevates a strategist to levels of national leadership, Dr. Wright shows the strategist in the trenches working at a smaller scale. Through these writings, one begins to see the need to have a wide range of thought and application as a strategist.
The last essay I'll address is the first one by Dr. Dolman. Dr. Dolman's lectures, questions and writings provoked a great deal of thought. This essay is no different. His definition of strategy became very popular with SAASS students. Simply put, strategy is the pursuit of advantage and that pursuit never ends. This divides it from tactics that are very objective-based, temporary and victory-seeking. Strategy is more cerebral, long-term and looks at victory as a step towards future advantage (sometimes). Where the essay comes off the rails is when he attempts to tie in modern philosophy to explain fog and friction in war. This is my only major critique of this book, as I think it's a dangerous concept. He suggests obliquely that the foundation of Western philosophy, the Law of Non-Contradiction (LNC), is overturned by Quantum Mechanics and its demise is also seen in the way war casualties can be estimated relatively accurately while determining which soldiers would die is not predictable. The problem here is not the observation of humanity's finite nature in determining specific war deaths. His idea on this is interesting and rightly identifies it as fog. The problem is the underlying worldview overturning the LNC. This view is based on very poor argumentation from observations in the Quantum world (not expounded by Dr. Dolman, but assumed). Contra-Thomas Kuhn, philosophers are rejecting a widely observed phenomenon (LNC's ubiquity in the macro-physical world) after seeing a single anomaly. The end result of LNC's demise is also the demise of the correspondence view of truth. The demise of the correspondence view of truth is the eradication of all education or learning because there is no way to verify anything. Hence, the method of argument is dangerous. The observations and definitions discussed in the overall essay are brilliant, but his tangent ruins the essay's pedagogical usefulness. Thus, dig out a copy of Pure Strategy by Dolman for similar thoughts without the philosophical problems.
As mentioned above, this text provides a superb overview of strategic issues. The indices of each essay provide a veritable treasure trove of future readings, as they are filled with some of the best writings on the subjects covered. I highly recommend this book.
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