Book reviews

John Horsfield, The Art of Leadership in War. The Royal Navy From the Age of Nelson to the End of World War II. Westport, Conn. and London: Greenwood Press, 1980. Pp. 240; £14.75.

John Joseph Timothy Sweet, Iron Arm: The Mechanization of Mussolini's Army, 1920–1940. Westport, Connecticut &; London: Greenwood Press. 1980. Pp. 207; £15.50.

Peter H. Merkl, The Making of a Stormtrooper. Princeton, N.J: Princeton U.P., 1980. Pp. 328; £8.60.

Greg Herken, The Winning Weapon: The Atomic Bomb in the Cold War 1945–1950. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1980. Pp. 425; $15.00.

Geoffrey Smith and Nelson W. Polsby, British Government and its Discontents. New York: Basic Books, and London: Harper and Row, 1981. Pp. 202; £7.95.

Seweryn Bialer (ed.), The Domestic Context of Soviet Foreign Policy. Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press and London: Croom Helm, 1981. Pp. 441; £14.95.

Jerry F. Hough, Soviet Leadership in Transition. Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution and Oxford, Basil Blackwell, 1981. Pp. 175; £12.00 (hb.) and £3.95 (pb.)

Edward F. Mickolus, Transnational Terrorism: A Chronology of Events 1968–1979. London: Aldwych Press, 1980. Pp. 967; £39.95.

Barry Rubin, The Great Powers in the Middle East, 1941–47; The Road to the Cold War, London: Frank Cass, 1980. Pp. 254; £14.50;

Daniel Heradstveit, The Arab‐Israeli Conflict; Psychological Obstacles to Peace. Oslo: Universittsforlaget, 1979. Pp. 234; £11.60;

Janice Gross Stein, and Raymond Tanter, Rational Decision‐making; Israel's Security Choices 1967. Columbus. Ohio; Ohio State University Press, 1980. Pp. 399; $35.     

The Naval Intelligence Underpinnings of Reagan's Maritime Strategy

Washington's so-called Maritime Strategy, which sought to apply US naval might against Soviet vulnerabilities on its maritime flanks, came to full fruition during the 1980s. The strategy, which witnessed a major buildup of US naval forces and aggressive exercising in seas proximate to the USSR, also explicitly targeted Moscow”s strategic missile submarines with the aim of pressuring the Kremlin during crises or the early phases of global war. Relying on a variety of interviews and newly declassified documents, the authors assert that the Maritime Strategy represents one of the rare instances in history when intelligence helped lead a nation to completely revise its concept of military operations.     

Beyond Fire and Movement: Command,Control and Information in the German Blitzkrieg 1

It is common to attribute the operational difficulties faced by post-Napoleonic armies to an increase in defensive firepower. In fact, the immense ‘mass armies’ of the day also suffered from problems of command, control and information that ultimately worked to their undoing. The German achievement in the interwar period went beyond tanks and aircraft. It also involved harnessing the radio to the service of the field army. Radio made it possible to coordinate mobile masses of men and equipment and to process the huge amounts of information they generated. The smooth flow of information was key to the Wehrmacht's revival of decisive battlefield victory in 1939–40.     

IED casualties mask the real problem: it's us

Casualty figures suggest that the US/Allied Counter Improvised Explosive Device (C-IED) policy and the present allocation of national assets, resources, and intellectual capital have not been very successful. A number of explanations for why this has been the case are discussed and critiqued here.     

Unconventional warfare philosophers

The philosophies of unconventional warfare philosophers can be divided into four schools. The classicists, or early school, represented by Sun Tzu and his ‘indirect approach’, have existed for thousands of years. Marxist‐Leninist revolutionaries gave new emphasis to unconventional warfare as a vehicle for revolution. The theories of these philosophers of the middle school were opposed by those of counterrevolutionaries. With the end of the Cold War, a new strategic environment is emerging, giving rise to new school philosophers reacting to that challenge. They include both those who seek to undermine the nation‐state and those, who, like the earlier counter‐revolutionaries, seek to defend and promote its interests.