current affairs

Max Boot has written an ambitious and in my mind highly successful book, chronicling all of America's small wars from its founding days through the 1990s, a work that is both authoritative and timely.

Boot does not chronicle America's large wars - "conventional, set-piece engagements" generally against large standing armies - and writes that they are not the norm of American military history. Rather the small war, many rather small-scale engagements that often involved few or no casualties, has been far more common.

In reality there have been four types of small wars engaged in by American forces; punitive (to punish attacks made against American lives or property), protective (designed to safeguard these American lives and property), pacification (to occupy a foreign territory), and profiteering (to grab territory or trade concessions), with some operations serving more than one purpose. Boot chronicles these wars through three major periods of American history; from the late 1700s to the 1890s when the U.S. was a growing commercial though not a military power; from 1898 to 1941 when the U.S. was one of the great powers; and from 1941 when the U.S. was a superpower. Boot notes the changes in mission objectives, strategies, and results in these three eras of American military and foreign policy history.

The bulk of this work chronicles these small wars, from the Barbary Pirates war in the early 19th century through our actions in Samoa in 1899, the expedition to China during the Boxer Rebellion in 1900, the Philippine War (1899-1902), the U.S. intervention in the Russian Civil War in 1918-1920 (which made for harrowing reading), various deployments and occupations in Cuba, Panama, Nicaragua, Mexico, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic in the first half of the 20th century (including the famous expedition against Pancho Villa), the actions of the Yangtze River Patrol in China, up to the Vietnam War. This history makes for gripping reading, providing me with a history I know little or nothing about, one filled with personal stories of men who should be famous but who instead are largely forgotten today. We are introduced to such individuals as William Eaton, an "early-day Lawrence of Arabia" who was a U.S. consul to Tunis who helped organized a native and foreign army to dispose the pasha of Tripoli during the Barbary Wars. Another interesting one was Captain David Porter of the U.S. Navy, captain of the _Essex_, who while fighting the British in the Pacific in 1813 crossed 2,500 miles of ocean, put into the Marquesas Islands for repairs, and ended up becoming involved in a native war, trying to annex the islands for the U.S. One of the major stars of this work was Smedly Butler, according to some possibly the greatest Marine who ever lived, who fought in the Spanish-American War, Philippine War, Boxer Uprising, Nicaragua, at Veracruz, Haiti, and again in China in 1927, winning several Medals of Honor, though after retiring becoming an avowed pacifist and opponent of such conflicts.

I found his section on the Vietnam War enlightening, analyzing it in the context of the small wars that had occurred before. He notes some of the reasons as to why that war did not end in success; among them the South Vietnamese were trained as a miniature version of the American army, rather than as a much more effective constabulary force - part army, part police - one focused on internal defense, a type that had been highly effective for the US in the Caribbean, the Philippines, and elsewhere; the U.S. was not in direct command of locally recruited soldiers, as South Vietnamese soldiers were often picked for political rather than competence reasons, again contrary to prior U.S. experience in small wars; and one successful program, the Combined Action Program or CAP, which relied on small groups of U.S. soldiers paired with native soldiers stationed to particular villages, concentrating on knowing local villagers and patrolling the region, rather than on ambitious and ultimately frustrating and wasteful "search and destroy" missions in the Highlands and elsewhere, was not adequately supported, despite evidence both in Vietnam and in previous small wars that such programs worked and were even popular with U.S. troops and local citizens.

Boot closes the book with a highly useful section on analyzing the future of small wars in American foreign and defense policy. He notes that despite claims that the first Gulf War eliminated the Vietnam Syndrome, American military planners and presidents have been too timid in their deployments overseas, too afraid of generating casualties (particularly for humanitarian missions), believing that the only wars that will achieve any degree of support with the American people are the "sanitized, high-tech warfare" such as was attempted in Kosovo in the late 1990s. Boot writes that not only will this very policy backfire (crippling mission goals and encouraging enemies to attack American forces even more in the belief that any American casualties will force the military to leave their country, among other reasons), but that it is erroneous at its very heart. He writes that in fact the American public is often more motivated in its support of military missions abroad by such factors as the "odds of success and the stakes involved" rather than purely by body count, even if the mission is not purely one dictated by obvious goals centering on national security. He even notes that sometimes casualties can actually increase support for a mission, either for reasons of wanting revenge or notions that those who died should not have died in vain. He cautions that the Powell Doctrine not withstanding (stating that the U.S. should only get involved in wars with a clear national interest, with overwhelming force, and with a clear exit strategy), we will always face wars in which these things will be lacking and that we should prepare for this, wars that while limited in objectives and methods can achieve notable successes.

Max Boot has a very interesting and informative book here, one that I recommend to all interested in military history or public policy. In fact, it's really three books.

The subject of the first book is USAmerica's 'small wars': the minor conflicts with foreign powers, starting with the war against the Barbary Pirates, and continuing through the our Caribbean adventures in the twenties and thirties. It's well documented and excellently written. My only complaint is that it isn't longer and more detailed.

The second book is only a few chapters long. It covers Viet Nam, and Boot's thesis is that our greatest military mistake there was that we DIDN'T fight it as a small war. Had we done so, he believes we would have won, at a far smaller price than what we paid to lose.

No one can prove might have beens, but I find his argument convincing, and even those who disagree should find it intriguing and thought provoking.

Finally, there's the third book, which is policy prescription. Here I really disagree with Mr. Boot. Boot wants us to go haring around the world, civilizing the 'natives' with M-16s. We tried this in the Phillipines, in Haiti, in the Dominican Republic, and in Nicaragua. Boot recounts all these attempts to "Take up the white man's burden," and by his own account, at least three were utter failures. The only one that sort of succeeded was the Philipines, where we stayed over forty years, and ended with an ex-colony that isn't sure it likes us, tends to lapse into dictatorship, and suffers a revolt every decade or so. For this we spent four thousand lives on our side, and tens of thousands on the Phillipino side. This is success?

Mr. Boot would like us to do this again, in lots of places all over the world, because he thinks the 'natives' will be better off being conquered by us than ruling themselves. Perhaps so, but I'm a USAmerican, and I think MY country would be decidedly worse off if we undertook these imperial adventures.

I discovered Boot in the Wall Street Journal. His column is always informative and illuminating. Some reviewers don't like his pro-US world view, but it's overall thrust is very mainstream for all but the rabid left or isolationist right. The book's great benefit is as an enjoyable reference text for important American military events that the reader may be only vaguely familiar with.