New Book Discusses Fighting Terrorism With Airpower

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Divining Victory: Airpower in the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah War

MAXWELL AIR FORCE BASE, Ala. Nov. 14, 2007 (AFPN) -- Airpower is a valuable weapon in the fight against terrorism but only if it is applied with discrimination and care, according to a new study of the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah War published by Air University officials.

Widespread criticism of Israel for relying on its air force to attack Hezbollah terrorists in neighboring Lebanon and free Israeli soldiers captured by the militant group is misguided, said William M. Arkin, the author of the study.

"The 'failure' of airpower in the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah War was not that it promised too much or that it did not deliver," wrote Mr. Arkin, an independent journalist, author and longtime NBC News military analyst. "It was instead a grand strategic failure in the application of force against terrorism."

Israel took a far too conventional approach to combating a non-state terrorist organization hiding within a sovereign nation, applying traditional military methods at the expense of its strategic goals, he wrote.

By not explaining its military actions to the international community and focusing on destruction rather than effects, Mr. Arkin argued that Israel inadvertently bolstered support for Hezbollah and strengthened the terrorist group.

"Israeli leaders argue that they are fighting a 'new' and different kind of enemy ... yet when the time for action came in 2006, the (Israeli defense force) designed the most conventional of wars," Mr. Arkin wrote.

Instead of only aiming to deter future terrorism, Mr. Arkin argued that Israel should have made building support for its right to defend itself an equally important objective. It could have done so by using airpower's precision and flexibility to limit attacks to Hezbollah targets better, and by openly communicating about its operations to the world.

The book, "Divining Victory: Airpower in the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah War," is the latest product of Air University's effort to push out timely ideas on airpower and national security. The Airpower Research Institute at AU commissioned Mr. Arkin to write the study.

"We're trying to disseminate timely analysis and strong ideas that can help strategic thinking in the Air Force today," said Dr. Dan Mortensen, the institute's chief of research. "We think it's a great benefit to have someone outside our service look at something so relevant to our own Air Force operations fighting terrorism."

Dr. Mortensen said the new book is part of an effort to have outside scholars comment on strategic Air Force concerns and help develop strategic thinkers in the service, a priority noted by Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. T. Michael Moseley during congressional testimony in October.

General Moseley told the House Armed Services Committee that Air Force Secretary Michael Wynne and he have charged Air University with ensuring its education, training and outreach programs are relevant to today's fight against terrorism and encourage Airmen to consider the future.

"I ... want to be able to stress on future officers the ability to see the horizon better," General Moseley said. "I want bigger thinkers. I want broader thinkers."

(Story by by Maj. Sam Highley, Airpower Research Institute.)

NOTE: "Divining Victory" is available for download in electronic format and to order in hard-copy through the Air University Press; please e-mail thetension@gmail.com for the Web address.

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The American Era: Power and Strategy for the 21st Century by Robert J. Lieber

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The American Era: Power and Strategy for the 21st Century by Robert J. Lieber
(From the Publisher) -- The American Era makes a provocative argument about America's world role. It establishes the rationale for a grand strategy that recognizes American preponderance as necessary and desirable for coping with the perils of the post-9/11 world. First, militant Islamic terrorism plus weapons of mass destruction pose a threat of an entirely new magnitude and require us to alter the way we think about the preemptive and even preventive use of force. Second, the UN and other international bodies are habitually incapable of acting on the most urgent and deadly problems. Third, in an international system with no true central authority, other countries will inevitably look for leadership to the U.S. If America, as the world's foremost power, does not take the lead in confronting the most dangerous threats, no one else is likely to have the ability or the will to do so. Thus, at a time when threats from terrorism and weapons of mass destruction are a reality, and when such values as human rights, liberty and stability cannot be reliably assured by institutions such as the UN and the European Union, active intervention on those issues that matter most becomes a necessity, not an option. Robert J. Lieber is currently Professor of Government and International Affairs at Georgetown University. He is an expert on American foreign policy and U.S. relations with the Middle East and Europe. He received his undergraduate education at the University of Wisconsin and his Ph.D. at Harvard and has held fellowships from the Guggenheim, Rockefeller and Ford Foundations, the Council on Foreign Relations, and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. Lieber has taught at Harvard, Oxford and the University of California, Davis, and has been Visiting Fellow at St. Antony's College Oxford, the Harvard Center for International Affairs, the Atlantic Institute in Paris, the Brooking Institution in Washington, and Fudan University in Shanghai.

About the Author
Robert J. Lieber is a professor of government and international affairs at Georgetown University. He is an expert on American foreign policy and US relations with the Middle East and Europe and the author or editor of thirteen books on international relations and US foreign policy. He has held fellowships from the Guggenheim, Rockefeller and Ford Foundations, the Council on Foreign Relations, and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. His most recently published book is an edited volume, Eagle Rules? Foreign Policy and American Primacy in the 21st Century (Prentice-Hall and the Wilson Center, 2002). His numerous authored works include No Common Power: Understanding International Relations (4th edition, Prentice-Hall, 2001) and The Oil Decade (1986). His articles have appeared in scholarly and policy journals including International Security, American Political Science Review, Foreign Policy, Washington Quarterly, The Chronicle of Higher Education, Commentary, Orbis, The International Journal of Politics, Culture and Society, British Journal of Political Science, International Affairs (London), Politique Etrangere (Paris), and Internationale Politik (Berlin), among others.

Reviews
"This may be the best book on American foreign policy written since Sept. 11. Robert Lieber is a scholar with deep insight, broad knowledge, and, what is lacking in most discussions of world affairs today, common sense. Anyone thinking seriously global affairs today and in the coming years should begin with this smart and sober work."
--Robert Kagan, author, Of Paradise and Power: America and Europe in the New World Order

"Robert Lieber has written a first-rate book...A work of scholarship, yet accessible to a wider readership, a work of judgment, yet anchored in the data and the objective world...a book of quality by a scholar of genuine depth and authority."
--Fouad Ajami, Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University

"A powerful book with truly global scope. Lieber is not only a specialist on U.S. foreign policy, he has deep knowledge of Europe, the Middle East, global energy, and security affairs...Lieber recognizes the costs and limits of military force, but he argues, without apologies, for the prudent use of American military power to safeguard the U.S. and, indeed, the world."
--Charles Lipson, University of Chicago

"With its powerful thesis and compelling arguments, Robert Lieber's The American Era is destined to become a key text in the global debate about American foreign policy."
Michael Mandelbaum, author of The Ideas That Conquered the World: Peace, Democracy and ---Free Markets in the Twenty-First Century

"[The American Era is ] a wonderful, elegant and compelling analysis in every respect... It will become compulsory reading on my Masters US Foreign Policy course next year and, I believe, should be read - and hopefully understood! - by anyone interested in American foreign policy. It really represents a magnificent achievement and is a work of exemplary scholarship. I hope and trust it receives the positive impact, reviews and sales that it thoroughly deserves."
--Robert Singh, Birbeck College, University of London

"Distracted by the red-hot partisan debate over Iraq, one can easily lose sight of the underlying strategic imperative that now guides American foreign policy. Robert Lieber's The American Era: Power and Strategy for the 21st Century serves as an invaluable primer on the nature of that imperative, outlining in a comprehensive but accessible fashion the continuing need for American global leadership."
--Gary Schmitt, The Weekly Standard

"Lieber has produced an elegantly written and readable book. It is a welcome and, in many respects, authoritative addition to the growing literature on recent American foreign policy."
--International Affairs

"Mr. Lieber's book gives a comprehensive and in-depth explanation of the foundations for the strategy and actions of the administration, of interest to its supporters. At the same time, the book will compel critics to consider the best arguments that can be made for the administration's international policies."
--The Washington Times

"Robert Lieber's The American Era: Power and Strategy for the 21st Century is a brief but compelling review of American foreign policy over the last five years, and pretty much demolishes the idea that we are roundly hated or that we are culpable for various alleged sins. A sober and very readable account by a Georgetown University scholar whose intellectual integrity and knowledge shine through on every page."
--Victor Davis Hanson, senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. His latest book is A War Like No Other. How the Athenians and Spartans Fought the Peloponnesian War.

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Deadly Connections: States that Sponsor Terrorism by Daniel Byman

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Deadly Connections: States that Sponsor Terrorism by Daniel Byman
(From the Publisher) -- Daniel Byman's hard-hitting and articulate book is the first to study countries that support terrorist groups. Focusing primarily on sponsors from the Middle East and South Asia, it examines the different types of support that states provide, their motivations, and the impact of such sponsorship. The book also considers regimes that allow terrorists to raise money and recruit without providing active support. The experiences of Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Syria, Saudi Arabia and Libya are detailed here, alongside the histories of radical groups such as al-Qaida, Hizbullah and Hamas.

About the Author
Daniel Byman is Assistant Professor in the Security Program of the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. He has published widely on issues related to terrorism, Middle East politics, and national security. He is also a non-resident Senior Fellow at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution and has served on the staff of the "9/11 Commission", among other positions. He is the author of:
The Dynamics of Coercion: American Foreign Policy and the Limits of Military Might (Rand Studies in Policy Analysis); Keeping the Peace: Lasting Solutions to Ethnic Conflicts.

Review
From The Washington Post's Book World/washingtonpost.com
From Joseph Conrad's The Secret Agent to The 9/11 Commission Report, Amazon.com advertises more than 5,500 books dealing with terrorism. What could possibly remain to be said on the subject?

Quite a bit, actually. In Deadly Connections, Daniel Byman has carved out a topic that apparently has not received a major book-length treatment: the relationship between terrorist groups and states that support them. In an age where the transnational al Qaeda network has proven deadlier than terrorist organizations sponsored by such rogue countries as Syria, Iran and Iraq, this provides an opportunity for some original analysis. It also imposes some very confining boundaries.

This is a serious book, aimed primarily at those who study terrorism or work at trying to stop it. Byman, a Georgetown professor and Brookings Institution fellow, writes in a clear, readable style, with the barest minimum of jargon. But his book has all the charm of a Rand Corp. report (which is where at least some of the ideas originated).

The great strengths of Deadly Connections are Byman's careful, systematic dissection of the phenomenon of state-supported terrorism and his sober and reflective conclusions, drawn directly from the evidence. He offers no silver bullet but outlines a range of tactics -- including air strikes, economic sanctions, political isolation and backing for a regime's domestic foes -- that can be mixed and matched as needed, noting sensibly that "it is easier to stop state support for terrorism before it starts than to halt backing after it begins." But there is no original research here -- no personal interviews with terrorists or new investigative revelations about the inner politics of, say, Hezbollah, the radical Lebanese militia backed by Iran and Syria. Instead, Deadly Connections depends entirely on secondary literature, which Byman uses judiciously and with great intelligence.

When one writes about the notoriously elusive topic of terrorism, definitions are important. Byman doesn't want to glibly conclude (as Rand's Brian Jenkins put it) that "terrorism is what the bad guys do." He adopts a definition of terrorism -- politically motivated violence by subnational groups deliberately targeting noncombatants, designed to produce far-reaching psychological effects -- that is rigorous but in some ways more interesting for what it excludes. He does not consider actions by agents of the state itself to be terrorism. Nor does he include attacks on military or government officials engaged in counterterrorism.

Of course, there are good reasons to distinguish between Hezbollah's attacks on Israeli civilians and its guerrilla strikes against Israeli military forces. But Byman has a hard time sticking to his own definition. He adopts the State Department position that Iran is today "the most active state sponsor of terrorism," above all for backing Hezbollah. Yet he offers not a single piece of evidence of a terrorist act (i.e., excluding attacks on military targets) launched by Hezbollah after 1994. Nor does he attempt to square this decade-long silence with then deputy secretary of state Richard L. Armitage's 2003 claim that Hezbollah was the "A Team" of terrorism, in some ways more capable than al Qaeda.

Similarly, Byman writes that state-sponsored terrorism, despite its changing dynamics, "has become perhaps more important" over time. But every case study in the book concludes that rogue states have found support for terrorism exorbitantly costly and reduced or terminated their sponsorship of terrorist groups. Indeed, one could write a very different book using the same material to argue that the international community has succeeded remarkably well over the past several decades in reducing state-sponsored terrorism.

Obviously, states do support -- and will continue to support -- terrorist activities by one group or another, particularly if one includes passive backing by a government that looks the other way as a terrorist group uses its territory to raise money or recruit (a syndrome Byman tackles in his valuable chapter on Saudi Arabia's ties to al Qaeda, Greece's connection to the far-left Nov. 17 organization and the U.S. experience with the Provisional Irish Republican Army). So Deadly Connections, which assembles an impressive array of information on this important dimension of terrorism today, will have reason to be consulted as the most complete reference handbook on the subject.

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Grace Under Fire: Letters of Faith in Times of War by Andrew Carroll

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Grace Under Fire: Letters of Faith in Times of War by Andrew Carroll
(From the Publisher) -- The first book of its kind, Grace Under Fire is an inspiring and spiritual collection of letters and e-mails by U.S. troops and their families from the American Revolution through the War on Terrorism.

Andrew Carroll, editor of the bestselling War Letters, went through his massive archive of seventy-five-thousand previously unpublished wartime correspondence to pick out the most intimate, dramatic, historic, and insightful letters and e-mails ever written about God, religion, and spirituality. The fifty best of these are featured in this incredible book, and they emphasize how extremely important faith has been, and continues to be, in the lives of U.S. troops and their families.

What is especially remarkable about Grace Under Fire is the sheer diversity of the collection, which includes several extraordinary letters by two brothers who fought on opposing sides of the Civil War; a prophetic letter by Rabbi David Goode, one of the famed Immortal Chaplains who gave his life for his fellow soldiers; a lighthearted letter by a World War II nurse who met the Pope; and a profound and impassioned reply to the timeless question, “Where is God in wartime?” by a doctor serving in Iraq.

Warfare can reveal the worst in human nature, but it can also bring out the best, and these correspondences are a testament to the heroism, compassion, grace, intelligence, and inherent goodness of American troops and their families. And although the letters and e-mails featured in this book were written in times of armed conflict, they transcend the subject of war. They are about determination, hope, patriotism, fighting for something greater than one’s self, and, of course, the enduring value of faith. Regardless of whether we have served in the military or not, we can all find inspiration and courage in these powerful and insightful words.

Reviews
Praise for Grace Under Fire
"Andrew Carroll has done a wonderful job bringing together letters from different individuals and different time periods, linked together by one common thread: a strong belief that God is in control, regardless of the outcome. Grace Under Fire brings the importance of faith on the battlefield front and center and is an inspiring reminder that none of us is alone, even in the most dire of circumstances."
-- Sara Horn, author of A Greater Freedom: Stories of Faith from Operation Iraqi Freedom and publisher of AGreaterFreedom.com.

“Personal letters from troops on the front lines are among the most honest and intimate expressions of the human heart. Through Andrew Carroll’s passion for preserving these letters we see history unfolding, heroes struggling with irresolvable dilemmas, and glimpses of God in the face of death. Anyone living with difficult circumstances will find in these letters the strength and grace to persevere. You may discover, as I have, that Grace Under Fire is one of the most inspirational books available today.”
--Frank Selden, author of Finding Faith in the Fury

“Grace Under Fire gives us a wonderful glimpse into the hearts of people who we pray for and respect greatly. You will find yourself experiencing every conceivable human emotion as you read these real life stories amidst the challenges of war. Andrew Carroll’s work helps us appreciate the heroic people who have fought bravely on behalf of our freedom. Read it and you will treasure your heritage as an American.”
-- Jim Graff, President of Significant Church Network

“For generations a letter from or to a loved one serving in uniform has been a lifeline back to the home front. Now, thanks to Andrew Carroll, we get a few small glimpses of those ‘connections of affection’ -- the ordinary insights, the humorous anecdotes, and the philosophical and spiritual musings of soldiers today and generations past. I found myself often stopping to ponder the lives of the men and the women who wrote these letters and the tremendous sacrifices some of them record. It’s a moving -- and sobering -- experience every American should undertake.”
-- Tom Neven, Marine Corps veteran and author of On the Frontline: A Personal Guidebook for the Physical, Emotional and Spiritual Challenges of Military Life

About the Author
ANDREW CARROLL is the founder of the Legacy Project (www.WarLetters.com) and the editor of several bestselling books, including Letters of a Nation, Behind the Lines, and War Letters, which was also the inspiration for the PBS documentary of the same name. A portion of his proceeds from Grace Under Fire will be used to send free copies of the book to U.S. military chaplains around the world.

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