Review: The Savage Wars of Peace

Have you ever watched the History Channel and been irritated by how much coverage World War II gets? I have, so I enjoyed reading this book about all the low-intensity foreign conflicts the U.S. have been involved in.

The book has three parts to it. The first is a review of the "small wars" the U.S. has been involved in since the 1800s: the Barbary pirates, Korea 1871, Samoa, the Caribbean occupations, the Boxer Rebellion, and the Philippine insurrection.

The second is a critique of U.S. actions in Vietnam, particularly of Westmoreland's focus on search and destroy missions, which came at the expense of counter-insurgency actions similar to those we performed in in Latin America just a generation earlier.

The third is a summary of lessons to be learned and policy prescriptions for the future -- as of 2002.

It's that third part that's most interesting given the current situation in Iraq. How might the U.S. have fared in that conflict if it had stuck more strictly to his precepts? What effect would his style of counter-insurgency have had on U.S. recruitment, retention, and morale? Does the Powell doctrine still have a viable application?

These are some of the questions I've been wondering about since finishing it....