Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/News/September 2021/Book reviews


 * By Hawkeye7

I highly recommend this book. Although each chapter is written by a different author, it is far more than just a collection of essays. Together, they form a solid account of Australia's wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (nowadays known collectively as the "Long War"). Each of the writers was involved personally in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and has strong opinions. It should be on the Chief of Staff's reading list, and best of all, you can download it for free!

The opening chapter is deceptively weak. To get a politician's account, they turned to Robert Hill. Theoretically, this was a sound choice; Hill was Defence Minister from November 2001 until January 2006. However, his ambition (unrealised) was to become the Minister for Foreign Affairs, and he was never comfortable in the role of Defence Minister, and never got on top of the portfolio. And by "never", I mean still not understanding it now.

Once past the Policy and Strategy section, the book picks up pace, with good chapters on air and maritime operations, and a scathing acidic piece on ground operations by Major General Anthony Rawlins. There are also fine accounts of civil affairs, the contribution of the Australian Federal Police, AusAid and an excellent piece on the gender dimension. I wasn't expecting much on the chapter on media relations, but Karen Middleton, who did three tours of Afghanistan as a journalist, has plenty to say. "The ADF should not strive to be described as beyond reproach... it should strive to operate in ways that make reproach unnecessary. And we in the media should do the same. (p. 211)"

Lieutenant General Peter Leahy is characteristically blunt:"The Australian Defence Force and the Australian Army were not ready for the war in Afghanistan, and consequently there were severe limitations on what could be done in both deployments. The ADF arrived at this situation because of decades of errant strategic guidance and an underinvestment in defence capabilities, especially the Australian Army, in the last quarter of the 20th century. (p. 295)"

Australia was only a bit player in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The mission was to curry favour with the United States. Even with so risible an objective, Prime Minister John Howard sometimes acted contrary to it, mainly because the war in Iraq never had much public support. Efforts to limit political fallout at home with arbitrary troop limits, niggardly financial restraints and stringent rules of engagement hamstrung the forces operating overseas, resulting in derision from Allies and an undermining of the mission. Moreover, as Major General Daniel McDaniel notes:"[T]he Australian military needs to work at understanding the alliance with the United States and not take it for granted. Despite the many activities and interactions with the United States at many levels, the initial problem we had with securing basing, sponsorship and entry to Afghanistan taught us that we were not as "tight" with the Americans as we thought. Despite shared history over many of the world's major conflicts in the last century, it was apparent at the tactical level that at that time the United States really did not know us, understand us or necessarily trust us. (p. 73)"

Lest it be thought that the book is purely for Australian readers, there is much here for the foreign reader. Writing in 2020, William Maley predicted how a Taliban victory in Afghanistan might occur:"It is highly unlikely that the Taliban could overthrow the Afghan Government by a grinding military campaign of the kind that Soviet forces mounted from 12 January 1945 to seize Berlin. That has never been the main danger that the Afghan Government faces, and it is not in general the way that regimes in Afghanistan change. The danger for the Afghan Government is more insidious. It is that simultaneous threats to a number of towns such as Kunduz and others of similar significance could trigger a "cascade", in which actors who did not like the Taliban might nonetheless calculate that the Taliban were well on their way back to power and that it would be opportune to switch sides. It was cascades of this kind that brought about the collapse of the communist regime in late April 1992 and the fall of the Taliban in November 2001. This is where a continuing foreign presence could be psychologically critical. As long as international actors affirm a commitment to the survival of the post-2001 political order and retain forces on the ground that make such a commitment seem credible, a cascade is unlikely on the whole to eventuate. (p. 282)"

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 * By Hawkeye7

I picked this book up on a whim. It is by a former British Army officer turned journalist. I don't usually like books by journalists, and the sheer bulk of this one is likely to put off those who do. In trying to cover the whole of two different wars over two decades, the book unavoidably falls well short. Nor is it quite certain what the author is trying to accomplish. However, given the lack of introspection and aversion to public critique (which delayed publication of the book), this sort of work is likely to be all we will have for some time to come.

In the main, the book is about the British Army's culture, and the slow rate of change. Unfortunately, this theme is not as well-developed as it could have been. There's also some questionable claims. The dust jacket claims that Britain has changed immensely over the first two decades of the 21st century. I visited the kingdom four times, in 1995, 1998, 2007 and 2012 and I can't say I noticed the great changes referred to.

There's a claim that the British Army is undergoing reform. How widespread that it and how far-reaching is hard to say; the book talks about the amalgamation of regiments and the ever-shrinking size of the British Army, but it's far from certain how far-reaching even that is in practice. The book recounts unselfconsciously how this has occurred before with little impact. The same could be said about two world wars, so the immediate prospect is not bright.

There's also the repeated claim that Iraq was Britain's greatest defeat since the Fall of Singapore. I think this shows poor memory; what about the Fall of Tobruk in 1942, the ignominious departures from Palestine in 1948 and Aden in 1967 and the Suez Crisis of 1956? Yet the book also has a good point: the British Army is a conservative organisation, slow to change and adapt. This is amply demonstrated. There are many parts of the book that could have just as well referred to 1914 or 1939. It begs the question though of how different that makes it from British society at large. There's a running tone deafness about how Britain is perceived outside the UK. "The British Army here commits that bafflingly common twenty-first-century failing: it despises, and exudes superiority towards, an exterior entity, then feels genuine surprise when that mean-spiritedness does not generate admiration and fellow feeling in return. (p. 259)"

This goes well beyond the relationship with the United States, and well beyond the British Army. But if a major objective of the exercise is to bolster the alliance with the United States, then it is highly counter-productive. It is true that the British Army played only a minor part in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but it is too easy to blame the Americans. For the rest of the coalition, it was also a war of choice, and the politicians have to accept responsibility for the ill-fated venture. That doesn't get the British Army off the hook: there were too many failures for that. The point is repeatedly made that a soldier who lost a rifle faced a greater penalty than a general who lost a war.

There are many points made that other armies should take notice of and learn from. Just in Time logistics is one. (Our article on the subject is called Lean manufacturing, which covers it fairly well, but completely lacks awareness of the process outside the manufacturing context. As COVID has demonstrated, the idea that you can buy whatever is necessary in a crisis doesn't work too well in a real crisis.) There's also the common problem of constructing and equipping an army to fight high impact operations and then using it for low impact ones.

This book is an interesting, but unsatisfying read. A more focused approach would have worked much better. Publishing details: