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Title: The Next War by Caspar Weinberger, Peter Schweizer ISBN: 0-89526-447-1 Publisher: Natl Book Network Pub. Date: 01 October, 1996 Format: Hardcover List Price(USD): $27.50 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.1 (20 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Casper is a thinking man!
Comment: Do you think that we could win a war in the event one ever broke out? Are our current manpower levels enough to thwart off attacks from third world dictators? Can we suppress outbreaks of violence in the world?
In this 450 plus page book, which may house hypothetical situations, you'll read what could happen. You find yourself asking questions about our military leadership and you will even start to look at the world in a different light.
Weinberger's knowledge of military tactics, strategy and defense planning our unmatched and unparalleled. He was Secretary of Defense for over seven years. His knowledge of world politics is with a doubt superb.
Most impressive is the ability to show the complexity of the situations and show how the United States armed forces are matched against the world. Weinberger's works is nothing short of a miraculous - excellent reading!
Rating: 4
Summary: Gripping description of various war scenarios.
Comment: Former Defense Secretary Cap Weinberger and his Hoover Institution co-author Peter Schweizer play out five different hypothetical "war game" scenarios between the United States and various potential adversaries. The book's strength is in the technical details of war which is also one source of the book's weakness. Weinberger and his scholarly co-author write confidently about troop strength and the fighting capabilities of various force sizes when matched against the military forces of various "enemy" powers. To keep the book interesting and prevent it from becoming too dry, the authors have elected to employ a "Tom Clancy-style" of narrative with various fictional characters reacting to events in each of the hypothetical war scenarios. Some have criticized this approach but I found that it worked for me as a reader and did not detract from the central points the authors wished to make.
My criticism of the book arises from a wholly different quarter. In sum, I thought the authors never answered the central question posed by the title of their book. Based on the title alone, (which is a real teaser, I might add) I thought our former Defense Secretary would give us his wisdom on likely threats to our national security in the 21st century and why. Instead, what I received was (overall) a rather passionless statistical and analytical analysis (much like a RAND report) of the force strength necessary to fight any of several possible wars, none of which was viewed by the authors as any more likely than another. (I think we had a right to expect more from such a highly esteemed, well-traveled former Defense Secretary. Which scenario does Cap Weinberger feel is most likely of the five? Which potential adversary is he most worried and concerned about and why? He never answers or explores any of these issues.) Far from "ranking" or "speculating" on which adversaries pose the greatest threat and why, the authors wholly abjure making such educated predictions.
What will be the "Next War"? The authors never answer that central question. For that information, I had to turn to a book by a less famous author released at roughly the same time as Weinberger's book. Anthony J. Dennis, in his slender (160-some pages), spell-binding, tightly reasoned book "The Rise of the Islamic Empire and the Threat to the West," (Wyndham Hall Press) gives the reader a fascinating explanation of why he believes the next war will involve the U.S. (and perhaps other Western powers) and the fundamentalist Muslim world (with Iran, Turkey, Sudan and various Muslim Central Asian nations as its axis).
I heard Dennis on a syndicated talk radio show in March where he was a guest for two hours about one week after I had heard Cap Weinberger as a guest on the same talk show. Dennis was articulate, highly engaging as a guest and extremely knowledgeable and certain of his facts. As a result, the host - Roger Fredinburg, kept him on the program for two full hours. Weinberger was articulate as a guest on the same show but the conversation never "caught fire" as it did with Dennis on the line.
Unlike the venerable former Defense Secretary, Anthony Dennis clearly describes in compelling detail what he believes the next national security threat will be in the early 21st century. Having read both books at this point (I happen to work for a "think tank" and so have a real, abiding interest in these issues), I would recommend both books be read together - one for the technical details of war (always important); the other for its creative and visionary thinking about the shape of potential conflicts to come and the reasons why such conflicts are perhaps likely.
Rating: 1
Summary: A literary train wreck
Comment: This book was written as a series of five short stories, written in a style reminiscent of Tom Clancy, attempting to warn the public "Cut the military budget, we will lose wars." However, this book fails miserably in its goal. I read this book with the same morbid amusement that I derive from watching movies like "Battlefield: Earth."
After reading this book, I would not believe that any real policy maker had anything to do with this book. One might read this book and expect to be presented with well thought out, believable scenarios. However, one instead is presented with what seem more like "reruns"; each of the five scenarios read nothing more like rehashes of wars that the United States previously fought, with no insights greater than one could derive from watching The History Channel (to be fair, the Korea scenario is believable, simply because a resumed Korean war would resemble the old. But this does not hold for the other four.)
Additionally, this book is peppered with outright errors, or issues raised that seem like they were intended to raise every trigger in the alarmist's mind without regard for veracity. My favorite examples included "Japanese cyberstrikes", and China's population growth rate of seventeen billion (which to be fair, may be a typo, but even then, an explanation of why China's population control efforts failed would be in order.)
So in a nutshell, buy this book if you want a good laugh.
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Title: An End to Evil: How to Win the War on Terror by David Frum, Richard Perle ISBN: 1400061946 Publisher: Random House Pub. Date: 30 December, 2003 List Price(USD): $25.95 |
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Title: Victory: The Reagan Administration's Secret Strategy That Hastened the Collapse of the Soviet Union by Peter Schweizer ISBN: 0871136333 Publisher: Atlantic Monthly Press Pub. Date: 01 May, 1996 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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Title: Fighting for Peace: Seven Critical Years in the Pentagon by Caspar W. Weinberger ISBN: 0446514810 Publisher: Replica Books Pub. Date: 01 April, 1990 List Price(USD): $35.00 |
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Title: The Conservative Mind: From Burke to Eliot by Russell Kirk ISBN: 0895261715 Publisher: Regnery Publishing Pub. Date: 01 October, 2001 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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Title: Letters to a Young Conservative by Dinesh D'Souza ISBN: 0465017339 Publisher: Basic Books Pub. Date: 01 October, 2002 List Price(USD): $22.00 |
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