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February 25, 2006

Imperial Grunts: Book Report

You Really Just Don't Think About All The Places That The U.S. Has A Military Presence

After promises to make them a semi-regular feature, it's been a while since I posted a book report. It's not that I haven't been reading; more that I haven't read anything particularly inspiring, or at least inspiring enough to convince me to stop and write about it before I started the next book.

Luckily, over the past few weeks (helped in no small part by a not insignificant amount of time spent on airplanes), I've done a lot of reading. And so the semi-regular feature returns! Perhaps I'll even fill in some of the gaps with other recent reads.

Anyhoo, here we go.

Title:Imperial Grunts

Author: Robert D. Kaplan

Tags: United States Military, U.S. Army, U.S. Marine Corps, Special Forces, Iraq, Afghanistan, Colombia, Yemen, Ethiopia, Eritrea, the Philippines, Fort Leavenworth, Empire, United States Military Empire, Injun Country, my don't we have a military presence in every corner of the globe, Evangelical Christianity, NCOs, REMFs, MREs, Ali Baba.

If someone asked you to make a slide called "Key Takeaways," it would contain the following information: the U.S. military has troops on the ground in more places than you realize, and it's semi-preposterous not to refer to the United States as an empire. The U.S. military of the 21st century is returning to its nineteenth century roots as tamers of undesirables in the regions that hadn't/ haven't yet been brought onto the grid of (then industrial, now global) capitalism. What makes our military work is that it boasts a very talented middle class -- one that mirrors the larger American middle class. Also, our Army is (for the most part) very Christian these days.

If I Could Meet Any Of The Featured Players: Very tough call. Lots of interesting dudes in here, though (and I don't think this is an accident) many of the characters start to blend after a while. Still, I like the thought of the Marines in the aloha shirts posted in East Africa. They seemed pretty amusing.

The Super-Interesting Passages That I'm Looking Forward To Dropping On People In Casual Conversation That I Imagine Will Make Me Sound Smart: one of the big themes in this book is that the U.S. military is most effective in the situations where responsibilities and judgment are pushed down to the lower levels of command. It's like a bunch of consultants got a hold of the military and talked them into disaggregating responsibility and decision-making (only this practice actually hearkens more to the way that the U.S. military ran in the nineteenth century). The reason this works so well in our armed forces is that our armed forces contains an extremely competent and professional middle class of NCOs and career soldiers. These guys are the glue that makes the whole thing go. And you don't get a strong middle class in the military without having a larger middle class in your society from which to draw. I thought that was all very interesting.

What I Still Want To Know: So while I genuinely enjoyed this book and will recommend it to pretty much anyone I speak with over the next couple weeks (sorry folks -- get ready for some lectures on this one), I can't say I completely agree with it. That is, does this guy (Robert Kaplan) actually expect us to wax nostalgic along with him about our military's success in civilizing Native Americans in the nineteenth century? And by "civilizing" I mean "committing a genocide." Seriously. I thought that was in really poor taste, as was his repeated use of the term "Injun Country" to describe the more unruly parts of the world. I just don't think that we should be so proud of a genocide, even if it did demonstrate the military's ability to simultaneously wage multiple small wars in multiple places.

Are They Going To Make a Movie?: naw. It ain't like that. Though I was making a movie about the post-9/11 U.S. military, I would consider this book to be required reading.

So I Should I Read It? Abolutely. Despite my objections to the "Injun Country" vocabulary, this book changed the way I thought about both the U.S. military and the larger world in 2006. I think the best way to think about Imperial Grunts is as the flip side of The World Is Flat. That is, The World Is Flat is all about how global capitalism has brought people and places all over the world into the same competitive global economy. Imperial Grunts is about the rest of the world -- all the places that haven't yet gotten their act together and joined the Dell supply chain. Turns out a lot of those places are more rough than we citizens of global capitalism realize. And if we want our global capitalism to keep pumping out cool sneakers and fancy web sites, we need some to keep an eye on those other places.

To our military men serving in Tall Afar, Iraq, many thanks for the recommendation. Tip of the cap -- we owe you one.

Posted by thatkid at February 25, 2006 2:26 PM under Book Report , Stuff To Buy

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