# Posted 11:37 PM by Ariel David Adesnik  

THE SAVAGE WARS OF PEACE, A PRESCIENT BOOK. Why review a book that came out four years ago? The answer is because all of the newspapers and other publications that rush to review a book right when it comes out can't possibly evaluate the book with even a measure of hindsight.

Although hindsight is often profoundly flawed, it nonetheless tends to result in realizations that are nothing less than startling. The invasion of Iraq went forward about a year after Max Boot published The Savage Wars of Peace. It is a book about America's "small wars", defined not so much by their size as by the absence of organized forces confronting one another on a conventional battlefield.

In small wars, soldiers fight along side guerillas, propagandists, policemen and politicians. Decisive battles are rare. Even the outcome of the war itself may not be known until well after it is over. Clearly, the occupation of Iraq belongs to the United States' 200-year old tradition of engaging in "small" or irregular conflicts.

Even in 2002, Boot's prescience was fairly self-evident. In the preface, Boot asks,

What lessons might these small of the past teach us about small wars in the future? In the late 1990s -- the decade of Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, and Kosovo -- I was intrigued by these recurring conflicts and hoped to read a book to answer that question. Not finding one, I decided to write it myself.

Before the book was published, the United States found itself in another small war in Afghanistan, except the stakes involved were anything but small. And after the book came out, there was Iraq.

In April 1914, Woodrow Wilson ordered the US Navy to occupy the Mexican port of Veracruz. Wilson did not have permission from Congress, but felt it necessary to overthrow Mexican dictator Victoriano Huerta sooner rather than later. Even though international law clearly prohibited such a policy of regime change, Wilson expected liberation to popular south of the border. Boot writes that:

Wilson had counted on a peaceful occupation; he assumed that the Mexcian people -- "the submerged 85 per cent of the people of that Republic who are now struggling toward liberty" -- would welcome American intervention to topple their dictator. This view turned out to be dangerously naive. (p.151)

The parallel to Iraq is obvious, but its significance may not be so apparent. Is the lesson here that naively idealistic presidents stumble into dangerous and bloody wars? And that this president would have known better if he had studied more history?

Or is the lesson that even a population that broadly welcomes a change of regime may have within it enough defenders of the status quo to complicate the task of the liberator? The 85% figure mentioned by Wilson is an interesting one. In Iraq, the Kurds and Shi'ites comprise about 80% of the population. And yet that has clearly not been enough to ensure a smooth occupation.

My purpose here is not to suggest that one of these interpretations is right and one of them wrong. Rather, it is to argue that the careful study of events such as the US intervention in the Mexican civil war might allow to have a much more sophisticated and practical debate about the perils of occupation.

Although Boot only devotes a few pages to the occupation of Veracruz and related events, some of the details are eerily reminiscient of events ninety years later in Iraq. For example, one of the great challenges of the occupation has been to facilitate the establishment of legitimate local governments in insurgent held areas. Ninety years ago,

An [American] messenger discovered the mayor of Veracruz cowering in his bathroom, but the mayor said he had no authority over his armed countrymen.

I think many Iraqis mayors would empathize with his plight.

One of the great challenges that America faces in terms of learning such lessons is that its small wars barely register in the national consciousness. Most adults can tell you a few things about World War II and the Civil War, or even Korea. They know World War I happened and that it happened before World War II. They probably remember the first Gulf War.

But who knows anything about US involvement in Tripoli, Tunisia, Nicaragua the Philippines or imperial China? There is one small war that every American knows about, however: Vietnam. As Boot observers (p.287), the war in Vietnam was anything but small, although its style was much more reminiscent of the conflicts in Nicaragua and the Philippines than of World War II.

Nonetheless, Boot says, the US Army tried to fight the Vietcong the same way it had fought the Wehrmacht. Drawing on the seminal work of Col. (Ret.) Andrew Krepinevich, Boot argues that the US Army brass was conceptually incapable of recognizing that not all wars are about technology and firepower.

In contrast, the Marines understood the difference thanks to their experience -- and frequent success -- in fighting small wars. But the Army lacked that experience and refused to learn either from the Marines or from British military advisers who sought to share their own experiences.

Of course, there is considerable disagreement about how America should've fought in Vietnam or if it should've fought at all. My purpose here is not to take sides in that debate, although I think my position is clear. Rather, my purpose is to point that there is latent potential for a broader understanding of small wars if the American public can overcome its visceral aversion to the tragedy of Vietnam and instead come to see it as a bloody but instructive experience.

It may take a generation before that kind of change sets in. In the short term, the issue of vital importance may be whether or not the US Army can assimilate the lessons of America's small wars in time to apply their lessons to Iraq. And there are some promising signs in that direction. For example, Lt. Col. John Nagl's book on the lessons of Vietnam has been embraced by the Army's top generals. Like Boot, Nagl draws extensively on the work of Krepinevich and shares his interpretation of the war.

The foreword to the second edition of Nagl's book was written by Gen. Peter Schoomaker, the Army Chief of Staff (it's top general). In March, the Wall Street Journal [no link] reported that the first thing US commander Gen. George Casey did after Donald Rumsfeld landed in Iraq was to give him a copy of Nagl's book.

Yet as any college professor knows, distributing material to be read is not the same as having it read. As Boot recounts (p.294), Gen. William Westmoreland, the US commander in Vietnam, had a copy on his nighttable of Mao Zedong's classic text on guerrilla warfare. However, Gen. Westmoreland was too busy fighting his war to read much of the book.

With any luck, books such as The Savage Wars of Peace will help ensure that when the United States finds itself inevitably involved in another small war, its leaders know how to win it. (6) opinions -- Add your opinion