Commenting on events in the Middle East as they transpire is risky, given that a day’s events can cause drastic change. On a lot of levels, though, especially in the use of air power and proficient public relations, Israel seems to have learned the lessons of the Second Lebanon War, aka the war against Hezb’Allah, as I write in this column.
Some North Americans are aware that the mess in Iran is a generation in the making, but the popular perception is that Iran really became a problem when American and Israeli ambitions put the Persian nose out of joint. In fact, Israel and the USA once considered Iran a key ally, and the evolution of this relationship is well documented in Ronen Bergman’s The Secret War with Iran, which I review here. Bergman has a doctorate in politics from Oxford, and has been a respected analyst within Israel for years. This is his first book to be published in English, and it’s well worth the read.
One of the challenges facing military thinkers in the 21st century has been how to adapt the model of warfighting that has been developed over the past four centuries to a world in which the biggest threats come from groups that aren’t armies, don’t control a specific territory, and owe allegiance to no nation or government. John Robb, a blogger, ex Special Forces soldier, and businessman, has written a thought-provoking book on this subject, which I review for Canadian webzine C2C here.
Introduction:
The diabolical genius of the 9/11 attacks was the way in which a small and loosely organized group of terrorists slipped around the behemoth of the US military and security apparatus, rather than attempting to directly engage it. The greatest threat to American domestic security and the American military abroad turned out to be not another nation or its armed forces, but a determined consortium using only tools that can be cheaply and easily purchased, such as cell phones and box cutters.John Robb, a technology consultant with an engineering degree from the Air Force Academy, a business degree from Yale, and years of experience in counterterrorism as a special forces operative, sees a parallel here with the decline of Microsoft. For years, that company was the unquestioned leader in computer software, with competitors such as Novell, Corel and Netscape, which quickly lost out whenever they tried to compete with Microsoft head-on. Instead, the most serious challenger to Windows comes from Linux, an open source operating system which is freely distributed, and improved upon by its users. Robb believes that the future of organized violence will be similar: the age of the colossus is past, while agile, adaptable and only loosely hierarchical organizations will dominate from now on.
Summer is not conducive to voluminous writing. Here are reviews of some thought-provoking books. Fareed Zakaria, whom I reviewed here in the Winnipeg Free Press, is always worth a read. Although his Post-American World isn’t 100% on the mark - he still subscribes to the “Iraq as eternal quagmire” meme, despite a rather dramatic turnaround in 2008 - it’s well worth reading. Save the Males, also reviewed in the WFP, is a bit disappointing, since the topic is a rich one, and the writer is talented; all in all I expected better, although her treatment of the Jessica Lynch affair is provocative and thoughtful. Much better, on the gender wars front, is Dr. Meg Meeker’s Boys Should be Boys, which I discussed here for the Institute of Marriage and Family, Canada. Meeker’s earlier book on the medical perils of teen promiscuity was very valuable, and her thoughts on parenting boys are a useful addition to the burgeoning parenting section of the bookstore.