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Suggested reading

President-elect Barack Obama is already getting outstanding guidance on what he should do, so I will give him a break. Rather than tell him what he should do, I will suggest some books that he should read to guide him and then trust him to ask the questions to which he can develop the right answers.

These books would also make useful reading for Army leaders, strategists and anyone who wants to prepare for the wars ahead. My suggestions are based on the simple fact that that the U.S. must never again be victim to the strategic illiteracy and ignorance at the highest levels that has characterized recent administrations. This understanding of strategic issues must start at the top; the president himself must have a basic knowledge of concepts and vocabulary so at a minimum he can distinguish between those whose advice is useful to his office and those whose ideas do not merit intelligent consideration.

I have five books that I consider basic to understanding the wars of the 21st century. One hopes the president-elect will discuss them with those he nominates to policy-level positions in the national security field. Just knowing that the president has read them will give those considered for appointments in an Obama administration a standard to which they can measure themselves and show them the level of expertise they must bring to their new jobs.

Here are the books I suggest, in the general order in which they should be read:

• Anything master strategist Professor Colin S. Gray has written is worthwhile, but in “Fighting Talk: Forty Maxims on War, Peace and Strategy,” Gray provides a brilliant introduction to and summation of Sun Tzu, Thucydides, Machiavelli and Carl von Clausewitz in one short, readable volume.

• T.X. Hammes, “The Sling and the Stone: On War in the 21st Century.” This is a cogent introduction to how war has changed and is changing. Few, even in the senior military ranks, understand how the ground has shifted beneath us and how unsuited most 20th-century military concepts and institutions are for the 21st century. H.R. McMaster’s new essay, “Learning from Contemporary Conflicts to Prepare for Future War,” published by the Foreign Policy Research Institute in the fall 2008 issue of Orbis, makes interesting reading in conjunction with “The Sling and the Stone.”

• Rupert Smith, “The Utility of Force: The Art of War in the Modern World.” Smith introduces the 21st-century concept of “war amongst the people” in which states confront nonstate groups instead of conventional armies fighting other conventional armies. Smith’s book is especially timely given Israel’s actions in the Gaza Strip, which demonstrate overconfidence in the utility of kinetic force and failure even to try to learn “war amongst the people.”

• David Galula, “Counterinsurgency Warfare: Theory and Practice.” Written by a French army lieutenant colonel in 1964, this remains the classic delineation of how to wage and win unconventional warfare. The new counterinsurgency field manual FM 3-24, the principles of which Gen. David Petraeus then used to succeed in Iraq, is pure Galula. I believe that understanding classic counterinsurgency will be key to dealing with the ungoverned and weakly governed parts of the world from which attacks on the U.S. and the developed world will be generated, and like it or not, our military will be used extensively.

• Philip Bobbitt, “Terror and Consent: The Wars for the Twenty-First Century.” Bobbitt’s magisterial work pulls it all together: He treats exhaustively the political, military, legal and ethical factors that must enable us to succeed against the violence we as a nation and society will be forced to confront in the 21st century.

All are current works available through booksellers. For the welfare of the country, they will be worth many times over any money and time the president-elect invests.

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The writer, who retired from the Reserve, is a counterinsurgency expert and retired government official with experience in national security and foreign policy. He has written extensively on counterinsurgency and related subjects, and served as an adviser to counterinsurgency programs in Vietnam.