THE WARBIRD'S BOOKS OF THE MONTH
I spent most of
Christmas Day supine on the couch, reading Sally's gift of this
magnificent biography of a man (the eponymous Kennan), two nations
(the Soviet Union and the United States), and an era (the run-up to
the Second World War, the uneasy wartime alliance, and the Cold War
that followed). George Kennan was bedeviled by ulcers and the cruelty
of Soviet leaders, and he devoted his life to the problem of how a
liberal democracy could stand up against a savage totalitarianism.
His biographer, John Gaddis, is the premier historian of the Cold War,
and his books were assigned to us in War in the Modern World. He has
always been puzzled by the American inability to think in strategic
terms, and he presents Mr. Kennan as one of our very few masters of
grand strategy. I am particularly entranced by how closely Kennan's
notion of countering Soviet power at selected "pressure points" tracks
the thinking of my own favorite American strategist,
John Boyd.
And yet
another fine book: Karl
Marlantes wrote the magnificent Vietnam war novel
Matterhorn. Now
he has combined his experience as a Marine platoon leader with his
new life as a best-selling author to produce a meditation on (as
the title says)
What It Is Like to Go to War. It's interesting just on the surface
level of comparing the novel to his real-life experiences in Vietnam,
which are scattered through the book. It's also a Platonic reflection
on how a nation can develop a class of warriors who can fight fiercely,
intelligently, and humanely, and thus come home without sullying the
country's reputation and without damaging their own minds and hearts. (Mr.
Marlantes is up front about his own emotional problems in civilian life.)
The book isn't intended for the warriors but for those who send them
into combat--and that includes you and me, the American voters.
Blue skies! -- Dan Ford
