Angola, Clausewitz, and the American Way of War

De: John S. McCain IV

Narrado por: Virtual Voice

For over twenty years, the South African Border War was fought to counter the influence of Marxism-Leninism and to maintain control of Namibia. The South African people relied on cultural tools and adaptive strategies to protect their own interests. John S. McCain IV isn?t interested in taking sides on this issue; instead, he analyzes the military?s tactics, operational effectiveness, and strategy.

Angola, Clausewitz, and the American Way of War explores the concept of strategy making in war within the context of the South African Border War. It describes the danger of leaning on middle-range theories over general theories and of starting the decision-making process in the middle rather than at the top.

Wars should not be forced into a type as one thing or another?and then assumed to be all the same, based on that type. Each individual war should be seen for what it is, unique, and those in charge should be prepared to make changes and reevaluate every step of the way to account for all the moving pieces and the realities on the ground.

In the same vein as The Direction of War by Hew Strachan, McCain recognizes that US wars since 9/11 have been poorly strategized. This heavily researched volume challenges traditional approaches to conflict and suggests ways they could be improved.

Red Scare drivel disguised as analysis

The author is simply regurgitating cold war brain rot with a modern twist. The author tells you in one sentence that the South African border war is misunderstood due to competing narratives and ideological connotations, and then in the next tells you that the adversaries of the Apartheid South African military were simply "Communist backed". The cognitive dissonance here is astounding. It seems audible is making books like this free and accesible in order to push the new cold war narrative, but I will not abide it. To the author: America fails to "win" because the political objectives are intentionally vague, not because of miscommunication and misunderstanding. These political objectives are intentionally vague because the actual goal is wealth extraction for the economic powers that own the politicians. America fought Ho Chi Minh for the same reason the Japanese and French did: wealth extraction from the colonized to the colonizer. Apartheid South Africa and Rhodesia were the same process, wealth extraction from brown to white. You deny input of the communists and label them as an "other" from the very beginning because they voice this. For you an Iraqi fights because he is a poor, religiously motivated criminal with nothing to lose. But he is that way because the economic powers that control your congressmen have robbed the wealth of his nation for decades. You cannot acknowledge this, for then the "terrorist" is no longer a terrorist, for his cause then has political, social, and economic justification. When these circumstances are factored in it becomes clear the US military "fails" in it's mission because the generated narrative surrounding the impotus for armed conflict is bogus from the outset. The successes of the US military are not measured in bodies counted or nations liberated, but in accumulated wealth of a handfull of economic entities.