Military History Recommended for Summer Reading
U.S. Rep. Ike Skelton, R-Mo., released his summer reading list for officers
in the armed forces, members of Congress and anyone else interested in national
security issues.
“The 50 publications I have chosen cover topics of leadership, character
and military art,” Skelton said.
The list ranges from ancient to modern warfare with a large number of the books
covering the Civil War and World War II.
Along with the list, Skelton also has offered a synopsis of each of the books. Although he acknowledges some books are missing from the list, it is still
comprehensive and covers each branch of the military, Skelton said.
And by no means does Skelton expect anyone to spend the summer reading every
book on his list. “If one undertakes to read the entire list, I expect
it would be about a 10-year project,” he said.
The top 10 publications on the list are: The Constitution of the United States;
“The Art of War,” by Sun Tzu; “On War,” by Carl Von
Clausewitz; “Masters of War: Classical Strategic Thought,” by Michael
Handel; “The Book of War,” edited by John Keegan; “Fifteen
Decisive Battles of the World: From Marathon to Waterloo,” by Edward Shepherd
Creasy; “Alexander the Great,” by Peter Bamm; “Hannibal,”
by Sir Gavin De Beer; “The Face of Battle” by John Keegan; “Crucible
of War: The Seven Years War and the Fate of Empire in British North America,
1754 - 1766,” by Fred Anderson.
Nukes Proliferation Not Deterred by U.S. Actions
The decision by countries, such as Iran and North Korea, to pursue nuclear
weapons is not a decision that is heavily influenced by the actions of United
States, according to Ambassador Linton Brooks, the head of the National Nuclear
Security Administration.
“Countries do this for their own reasons,” Brooks said at a breakfast
meeting with reporters. “We encourage or discourage it in subtle ways,
and, in my view, we discourage it by making it clear that even if they try to
go there, that is not an attractive attitude.”
North Korea, he said, is a “wonderful example of where rhetoric has overtaken
reality.”
“The North Korean rhetoric about why they are pursuing their nuclear
program, and how it is all the fault of this [Bush] administration, is just
nonsense,” Brooks said. “That is illustrative of the fact that the
Syrias, the Irans, the Iraqs, the North Koreas of the world make decisions for
whatever reasons they make them.”
These countries, however, should not make the assumptions that the United States
is going to depend on nuclear weapons for routine operations.
“But from what we are doing, they should also not suggest that if they
move in a direction for which our existing [conventional] arsenal is not suited,
that we are not going to be capable of responding,” he added. “One
thing we know, our existing arsenal, was built in a time when thought that the
way you deterred people was to inflict wide-scale devastation.”
Brooks said the NNSA is preserving an option that “if a future president
decides we need some new capability to deter,” in terms of nuclear weapons,
“I’ll have the technical wherewithal to do it.”
U.S. Needs to Preserve Nuclear Expertise
Air Force Brig. Gen. Robert L. Smolen said that if the United States is going
to maintain its strategic preeminence, it needs to maintain its technical expertise
in nuclear weapons.
Smolen, the director of nuclear and counter-proliferation office of the deputy
chief of staff for air and space operations, told a gathering of military and
industry representatives on Capitol Hill that, after decades of downsizing,
the nuclear scientific community has lost much of its talent. “People
no longer see [it] as a viable career move,” he said.
Part of the problem maybe that the field has become too small and too specialized,
he said. There are not a lot of places for people to go, Smolen said, referring
to the decline in the number of nuclear bases.
To try to preserve the strategic expertise, Smolen said, the Nuclear Technology
Fellowship Program—a 21-month Air Force program at Sandia National Laboratory—is
giving younger officers a “fairly significant amount of nuclear experience
working with some of the gray beards ... the fathers of the nuclear business
in the U.S. ... those who have done underground testing,” Smolen said.
Graduates of the program are placed in critical nuclear positions in the military
and other agencies.
“We do scientific experiments on the space shuttle that costs us a lot
of money that have no apparent useful purpose. We have the national labs doing
science across the country achieving uncertain and perhaps no results,”
Smolen said. “But if we are going to cure cancer ... do those kind of
things that we want to do to make science progress ... then we have to invest
in science. We may not always know what the end game will be.”
U.S.-Saudi Arabia Rift Will Widen in Near Future
The relationship between the United States and Saudi Arabia will shatter in
the near future, according to Ralph Peters, a retired Army intelligence officer
and a New York Times best selling author.
“We already know about more misdeeds [in Saudi Arabia] that the government
admits,” he told National Defense at a recent armaments conference.
The United States and Saudi Arabia used to see their relationship as mutually
beneficial, “but there has been a change, and now we see it as mutually
expedient...and the feeling is on both sides,” Peters said.
The Saudi regime is one of the worst abusers of human rights, and “it
is a disgrace to be allied with them,” he said.
However, the relationship between the United States and Saudi Arabia is complex,
and “nobody can predict [what is going to happen], but we will see major
changes in 10 years,” Peters said.
The United States will not fully turn its back to the kingdom, but there will
be “an escalation of non-cooperation,” he said. “It is unlikely
to be a sudden break, more a fracture that keeps on breaking.”
On the whole, the Middle East will look somewhat better in 10 years, Peter
asserted. “You have to have real expectations. The Middle East will still
be the Middle East, but if it a somewhat better one, it is an achievement.”