Sublime

To win a war, it helps to have three things: more troops than the enemy, intelligence about the enemy’s plans, and superior technology. Alliance-building and patron–client relations helped leaders amass more troops and often learn about the enemy’s plans—and this is true whether a society is preindustrial, industrial, or postindustrial.

Russia’s appearance of strength, however, belied significant weaknesses that cut across its economy, demographics, public health, and social services. As former U.S. secretary of state Madeleine Albright has observed, Putin’s Russia played a poor hand well.71 The United States and its allies, particularly in Europe, played a much better hand poorly

Four months later, in a speech to a luncheon given by the Association of the United States Army (AUSA), General Shinseki laid out his vision for the way forward. The Army would, he contended, explore and exploit the full range of emerging technologies, including command, control and communications technology, to find the best solutions to the probl

NEXT STEPS FOR TRANSFORMING SOF In this chapter, we have argued that emerging information age technologies reinforce rather than challenge the conclusion that independent SOF operations, and particularly indirect missions, provide greater strategic value for the United States than support to conventional forces, and especially SOF direct action sup

He mastered defense matters, read up the classics on strategy, Sun Tzu, Clausewitz, and Liddell Hart. He subscribed to military journals to know the latest in military weaponry. He sent me books and articles, sidelined and flagged, insisting that I must know enough to decide what I had to approve.

Jerry Boykin’s memoir, Never Surrender: A Soldier’s Journey to the Crossroads of Faith and Freedom, is notable because he rose higher in the Pentagon’s policy apparatus than most SOF officers and thus offers insights on the political aspects of managing SOF from Washington, DC (Boykin 2008).

Taylor was soon off the reservation, arguing that the United States should abandon massive retaliation and the New Look in favor of what he called Flexible Response. Much to Eisenhower’s consternation, Taylor argued that a future war between the United States and the Soviet Union could be fought with conventional weapons.