First published 2013
Fred Kaplan chronicles how General David Petraeus and a network of soldier-scholars transformed the US military from within. These ambitious officers, many connected through West Point's Social Science Department, recognized that America needed a new approach to warfare in the post-Cold War world. Instead of massive conventional battles, future conflicts would unfold in cities and villages against insurgents and terrorists, requiring nation building alongside combat operations. Kaplan draws on secret documents, private emails, and interviews with over one hundred participants to reveal how this group maneuvered their ideas through military bureaucracy during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. The author shows how Petraeus, John Nagl, H.R. McMaster, and others formed what some called a cabal to overhaul Army culture and doctrine. While they successfully made the military more adaptive to modern conflicts, Kaplan warns that their reforms also made it easier for political leaders to enter wars better left unfought. The book examines how creative military thinking can calcify into rigid doctrine.
Genres: biography, history, 20th-century, non-fiction, 21st-century, military-history, academic, american-history
Vibes: intimate, suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: based-on-true-events, institutional-change
Setting: Iraq, Afghanistan, United States
Period: Post-Cold War, Iraq War, Afghanistan War
418 pages · Hardcover · Simon & Schuster, Inc.