Max Boot

A fascinating history of guerrilla warfare from, well, ancient times to the present. With that kind of scope, the book is shallow in places in spite of being massive (567 pages, not including appendices, index, and bibliography.) It's also bound to be controversial, if only because there is so much controversy over insurgency and counterinsurgency generally. Not that Boot hasn't expressed some strong opinions that will doubtless fuel the fire.

In the spirit of "bass ackwards" that governs so show more much of what I do any more, I'm going to start with Boot's "Implications" from the very end of the book:

Guerrilla warfare has been ubiquitous and important throughout history.
Guerrilla warfare is not an "Easter Way of War"; it is the universal war of the weak.
Guerrilla warfare has been both underestimated and overestimated.
Insugencies have been getting more successful since 1945 but still lost most of the time.
The most important development in guerrilla warfare in the last two hundred years has been the rise of public opinion.
Conventional tactics don't work against an unconventional threat.
Few counterinsurgents have ever succeeded in by inflicting mass terror -- at least in foreign lands.
Population-centric counterinsurgency is often successful, but it's not as touchy-feely as commonly supposed.
Establishing legitimacy is vital for any successful insurgency or counterinsurgency -- and, in modern times, that is hard to achieve for a foreign group or government.
Most insurgencies are long-lasting; attempts to win a quick victory backfire.
Guerrillas are most effective when able to operate with outside support -- especially with conventional army units.
Technology has been less important in guerrilla war than in conventional war -- but that may be changing.

Gonna go over a couple of these in a minute, but first a couple of general observations about the book. I had to go to the Internet to see if I was correctly judging where Boot was coming from, and I'm still not sure I'm sure. There's a lot of "raving Fascist right-wing neocon Jew-loving" type fulmination against Boot, which I find curious, given that he does not seem to think much of George Bush, talks a lot about Jewish terrorism, and is rather critical of some Israeli policies. I'm guessing the reasoning is that Boot is very much of the realpolitik school; Kissinger was also a political science of the realpolitik school; ergo, Boot must be right-wing and pro-Israel.

The writing style is quite good, and the organization (into books divided into a substantial number of bite-sized small chapters) makes reading something this lengthy much more palatable. I learned a lot I didn't know about the most ancient guerrillas and the most modern guerrillas. The book was a bit light on the American Civil War, but there was a chapter on John Brown, who Boot evaluates as a rotten guerrilla leader but a highly successful terrorist. The book on the world wars had sections on T.E. Lawrence and Wingate that invite comparisons between the men; except T.E. Lawrence was mostly successful and Wingate was mostly not.T.E. Lawrence was decidedly eccentric; Wingate was bat feces crazy. There is also quite a bit on Mao; Boot rejects the more extreme claims of Chang and Halliday, but is no fan of Mao, except in the sense that he admires his stunning success as a guerrilla leader.

The modern stuff includes just about every significant insurgency you can think of. Malaya, First and Second Indochina Wars, Mau Mau, Cuba, Ireland, and sundry others less well known. Boot holds up Malaya as the model counterinsurgency; well, so does just about everyone else.I already knew Johnston micromanaged Vietnam and Westmoreland was utterly incompetent; Boot corrected this slightly by pointing out that Johnston only really micromanaged the air war, leaving Westmoreland to make a mess of the land campaign all by himself. Boot points out that some winning strategies were in place, had anyone been willing to listen to the unconventional Landsdale, but Westmoreland always regarded them as a distracting sideshow when they ought to have been the main event. Nevertheless, Boot does not claim Vietnam was "winnable"; the guerrillas had substantial outside support and a lot of legitimacy, which would have made Vietnam a hard slog even had it been done "right."

The things most likely to draw controversy are Boot's views on very ancient warfare and on Iraq. The former involves a claim that guerrilla warfare is essentially the modern descendent of early tribal warfare, which he portrays as internecine surprise raids in which quarter was neither given nor taken. He quotes estimates that tribal societies lost 0.5% of their population in combat every year. I suspect he may be right, at least about many early human tribes, but I also suspect this is so contrary to the "noble savage" view that it's going to give a lot of people kittens.

On Iraq, Boot argues that Rumsfeld and Co. were so anxious to avoid another Vietnam that they completely missed the true lessons of Vietnam. The nature of the conflict itself is rather different from what I've always seen in the media: The insurgency began with Sunni terrorists cynically sponsored by Shiite Iraq who sought to provoke such a response from Iraq's Shiite majority that the Sunni minority would rise up and (improbably) overthrow them. The Sunni leader, al-Zarqawi, absolutely hated and loathed Shiites, who he regarded as worse than infidels. Sure enough, the Shiites began organizing militias to defend themselves, since Rumsfeld was determined to keep the American footprint to a minimum and the Iraqi security forces just weren't up to the job. Things really were going to hell in a handbasket until the surge and Petraeus. The tipping point was when large numbers of Sunni, convinced the government would protect their rights, defected to the government side. (That could still tip back if Obama screws up. I.e., I expect it to tip back eventually.)

Boot is an unabashed admirer of Petraeus. It's hard to avoid becoming an equally unabashed admirer of Petraeus after reading Boot's chapters on Iraq. I already thought that the Obama administration was breathtakingly cynical in its treatment of Petraeus, but now I'm sure of it.

Boot wrote before the Boston Massacre. He ends on a cautiously optimistic note that al Quaeda is violating so many principles of successful guerrilla warfare that we ought to be able to defeat it, if we stick to sound principles of counterinsurgency. Myself, I agree that if we succumb to the Islamists, it will be because of our own weakness. Hence, I expect us to eventually succumb.

Getting back to the "Implications:" Some, such as the observation that guerrilla war has always been with us, seem obvious. The observation that terrorism doesn't work all that well is new, but Boot makes a good case. The observation that trying for a quick victory is almost certain to backfire applies equally to insurgents and counterinsurgents.

On balance, very thought-provoking and to be recommended. show less

Savage Wars of Peace is a decent, if unsystematic study of American military interventions prior to 1941, wedded to an ideology that has aged like a burn-pit outside Bagram Air Base.

I'll tackle the first bit. America has a long history of deploying force overseas, in gunboat diplomacy and putative expeditions stretching back to the wars against the Barbary Corsairs: "...to the shores of Tripoli", as the Marine corps hymn goes. As Toll's magisterial Six Frigates discusses, these early wars show more were at the pivot of a debate about the power of the Federal government and America's role in the world. The 18th century was marked by constant, if limited use of the Navy and Marines to open Japan, Korea, and China to American trade, and to punish various groups in Malaysia and the Caribbean who had decided that plundering American merchants was better than trading with them.

The Spanish-American War marked a distinct change in American policy, with the Philippines and Puerto Rico now directly ruled colonies, Cuba a protectorate, and a newly more assertive posture worldwide. A combination of Teddy Roosevelt's imperialism, and Woodrow Wilson's moralism, summed up in the statement that 'America should teach Latin Americans to elect good men', resulted in repeated interventions in Haiti and Nicaragua, as well as a protracted counter-insurgency in the Philippines, Pershing's putative expedition against Pancho Villa, which nearly resulted in an actual shooting war with Mexico, and the gunboat operations of the China patrol. Generally, small groups of American Marines outfought their local opponents with superior training and armaments. Boot takes a universally uncritical view of the American role in all these operations, arguing that American intervention was broadly popular because Americans provided hygiene and displaced local corrupt strongmen. I'm sure a historian who bothered to read what the locals involved thought would consider otherwise.

The final chapter is a brief skip through the latter half of the 20th century. Boot's take is that Vietnam was lost because Westmoreland's war of attrition destroyed American morale at home, and that the COIN side of the Combined Action Patrol (see Bing West's The Village) and Phoenix Program (Herrington's Stalking The Vietcong) showed that the war could be won. If America had the will to intervene as decisively in 1975 as it did in 1972, there'd still be a South Vietnam. This is a conclusion that I'm skeptical of. I think America would have had to intervene again in 1978, 81, etc. There's a brief skip through Desert Storm and Clinton's operations of the 90s.

This pure history isn't a bad one, per se, as a military history of forgotten American interventions. My problems are twofold, first Boot agrees completely with Kipling's 'white man's burden' thesis of history, without managing to capture any of the actual zeitgest of period, what I consider to be the highest aim of history. Second, this book includes nothing on the US Army and the Indian Wars, certainly the most protracted and decisive of American Small Wars. The relationship between the genocide of American Indians, the Federal government, and historiography is a complex one, but to write an entire book on Small Wars without discussing Custer or Geronimo is a curious choice-perhaps because it's impossible to fit genocide into Boot's theoretical framework that imperialism is both authentically American and generally good for all concerned.

And that theoretical framework is where this book stinks. The book was written in that halcyon 'End of History' prior to 9/11, and published immediately afterwards, before the true nature of the quagmire of Afghanistan and the fiasco of Iraq had sunk in to public perception. Assessing the total cost of the War of Terror and its children is foolhardy, but the total cost cannot be considered anything less than high. Around $45 billion per year, as the Afghanistan War becomes old enough vote, according to the Pentagon's numbers. Perhaps $5.9 TRILLION, according to the Crawford Report.

If these are Small Wars, I shudder to think of what a big one would look like. And that doesn't even include the human costs to American soldiers, and to especially the Afghans, Iraqis, and Yemeni (among many others) on the receiving end of "American liberty".

Since publishing this book, Boot has gone on to a successful career as a chickenhawk Washington Post columnist and perpetually owned twitter figure. He lacks the truly sublime idiocy of a Thomas Friedman or David Brooks, but he's still out there, saying America should bomb some more people, and getting wrecked on Twitter. I picked this book up for a dollar at a used book sale, I almost decided to toss it away unread when I saw Boot's name on. And I persisted in reading just so I could write a very sarcastic review. show less

I remember reading with relish, now some years ago, Boot’s “War Made New,” long before I was aware of the “neocon” label, much less those thinkers who bore it. I remember admiring Boot’s grasp of military history, his ability to discern the important developments (and their crystallizing moment/s), and above all his ability to make such information both clear and important to a general audience. Perhaps that is the long way around to simply saying that I enjoyed the book.

Knowing show more Boot, then, as primarily a military historian, left me a bit ill-prepared for the content of this work. Part memoir, part political commentary, part lament, Boot’s work, I think, will speak both to and for many members of the post-Trump conservative movement in America. However, I’m disappointed to say that I don’t feel that it really spoke to and for ME.

There were parts of the book I really enjoyed, particularly the opening section on Boot’s immigration to America and his introduction to the conservative movement through the likes of William F. Buckley, Jr and Irving Kristol. Here, the book is straightforward and heartfelt, recapturing well for the reader his youthful enthusiasm for those ideas, ideas that still persist as core to his thinking.

However, for me, when Boot then turned his attention to CONTEMPORARY conservatism, the book began to lose its luster. For one thing, I did not appreciate the “‘conservative’ equals ‘Republican’” equation that was the core of this book. In fact, the book would have been much more aptly titled “The Corrosion of the Republican Party.” I feel like I’ve read a good number of opinion pieces and have a good number of friends that fall well within the definition of “conservatism” (perhaps even “far right” in instances) that deeply lament Trump’s election as a sign of the folly and perhaps even madness that is our current political climate. Like Boot, I am appalled at much of the almost “messianic” language I hear coming from key Evangelical leaders. Yes, as an OT scholar, I am well aware that YHWH used the Persian king Cyrus to accomplish His plan to return the children of Israel to their homeland; but those who cite such a “biblical” example tend to forget that Cyrus was ever in Scripture in PAGAN EVIL TYRANT. He was USED not CONVERTED. That’s a big difference.

Chapter 5 is where Boot lays out his case against Trump. This book was published in the throes of ongoing Mueller investigation (which has since concluded), so parts of this section would probably be written much differently now, but the substance of the charges I feel would remain. And I feel that, in the main, some of these charges have merit. Trump HAS used racist language (especially against immigrants) and IS a bully on social media and seemingly CANNOT fact-check statements. Trump is, by all accounts, an amoral cretin.

But—and this is where Boot’s sense of the “big picture” fails him—that is not the real issue here. As convinced as I am that Trump has little or no moral character to speak of, I’m not sure I could say much better about Hillary Clinton (as Boot does). There were about as many scandals related to inappropriate Russian ties in the Clinton campaign as in the Trump campaign, though that seems to have been largely forgotten. The issue is not Trump’s election; the issue is what is passing for “Presidential material” right now. The flaws we see in Trump is a reflection of something in our national character. The solution, then, is not to throw Trump out of office but to revive the morality and integrity of the electoral base so leaders like Trump and Clinton won’t have a chance.
In the concluding section, Boot again lays his finger on the deeper issue…and then, just as quickly, rushes on. Analyzing the rise of Bernie Sanders, he writes: “All of this suggests that the Democratic Party is drifting leftward as the Republican Party is drifting rightward.” Exactly. But why? Boot never ventures a guess, even though he acknowledges that this is “a situation that is increasingly common across the democratic world.”

I, like Boot, feel very much like a “man without a party” in the current political climate. However, when I read Boot’s rundown of his core political convictions: socially liberal (pro-LGBTQ rights/pro-choice), pro-free markets, pro-environment, pro-gun control, anti-identity politics (both minority and majority strains), I’m not sure that I can see myself in, pardon the pun, Boot’s camp. Especially when he appends to his statement on LGBTQ and pro-choice rights: “I am not religious but am respectful of those who are—as long as their beliefs do not impinge on anyone’s individual rights.” I am dying to ask, then, whether Boot would consider it “infringement” for a devoutly Christian baker to refuse to bake a cake for a same-sex wedding.

I am saddened that Boot has felt himself “forced out of” the conservative movement by the shifts happening within the Republican Party. However, I am MORE disappointed to consider that Boot’s definition of “centrist” politics as defined above might win the day. It would mean nothing different for me, a strong social conservative, than the current political climate. show less

As a liberal Democrat, I will say that this book was an unexpected pleasure to read. Boot’s analysis of the Republican Party is spot on. I have the impression that he hopes the party will eventually regain its sanity, but I feel certain that the hard right ideology of his former party is so baked in that it will take a miracle to resurrect it.
I enjoyed reading about his youth, college and graduate school years, and his love of history. Boot was not your typical right-winger, although he show more was a true believer...until he wasn’t.
Boot emigrated from the USSR to America as a child. He grew up in Southern California (a State very unlike the Deep South State of Alabama where I was raised). In a sense, California is more of a bubble than Washington, DC. It is a true laboratory of Democracy, whereas Washington is and has been a massive contradiction of competing ideologies for years. This is not to say that there aren’t extremes in California, but it is difficult to to imagine that an immigrant child growing up in Reagan’s California would not have been awestruck by the Gipper. Max Boot did not witness the hate-mongering of George Wallace, Bull Connor, Ross Barnett, and Lester Maddox and apparently was never exposed to modern Southern History as part of his studies. This is less a criticism than a recognition that his revulsion to Soviet communism may have resulted in a natural tendency to conservatism and a youthful rejection of the Democratic Party.
Boot has left the Republican Party and now considers himself to be an independent. That is a nice position that a lot of people find themselves in. I don’t especially love today’s Democratic Party and agree with Will Rogers: “I belong to no organized party. I’m a Democrat.”
Boot’s book should be on everyone’s reading list. While I disagree with some/many of his positions, his analysis of our current situation is dead on. show less