8/2/2023 0 Comments Strategic war bookscitizens? What should be the threshold of proof for a state to act preemptively? How can U.S. Should the United States follow international law in a fight against a nonstate actor, or just some parts of international law? Should new law be written, or does that aggrandize these scourges upon the world? Should drone strikes continue to violate the sovereignty of states with whom we supposedly are not at war, or take out U.S. civilian and military leaders are good people, which Brooks believes, she does not trust the rest of the world, which makes the precedents we are setting troubling indeed. Brooks takes on such subjects as warriors (and societies) cleansing themselves before and after war the laws of war (whatever “war” is), which are meant to put war “in a box” and state sovereignty issues, from wars in the state-making enterprise to intervention in failing states.īrooks finally tackles the costs for these skewed lines in the third section. Here the author employs more of her legal and NGO background to show how the briar patch containing national security thorns catching us today was planted long ago. With the next section, Brooks jumps to history. Brooks also discusses technology, such as the ubiquity of drones, international law not keeping up with current challenges, and ambiguity over traditional roles and missions. He commented that other than historic bigwigs such as Adolf Hitler and the like, he could not recall an entire Corps’ intelligence shop focused on finding specific individuals, as was the case in Operation Iraqi Freedom. When she discusses the “individualization of war,” I recalled a conversation with a Marine Corps–level intelligence officer more than 10 years ago. Brooks covers a lot of ground, but a few themes stand out. The first section covers her views on the vast changes in the operational environment that have led to a new American way of war. She organizes the book into three sections: the new American way of war, how we got here, and counting the cost. Part memoir, part sounding an alarm on the military’s ubiquitous role in national security, Brooks deftly weaves together research on warfare trends and Pentagon “there I was” policy fights. A well-respected commentator on national security, Brooks is uniquely positioned to trasnform what could be another tedious national security book into a page turner given her journalism background and other experience. She also traversed the worlds of the State Department and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). The book is especially timely given calls for increased military spending while simultaneously drastically cutting State Department and foreign aid funding.īrooks, currently a professor at Georgetown Law School and a Senior Fellow at New America, served in the Barack Obama administration. national security is in peril as a result. Rosa Brooks argues that warfare is changing, the military is taking on way too much, and U.S. The reader of How Everything Became War and the Military Became Everything: Tales from the Pentagon will cheer, groan, and have core beliefs reinforced and challenged-everything a good book should do.
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