SOCPAC
Special Operations Command, Pacific

The incredible World War II narrative of the hero whose spy network and secret diplomacy changed the course of history.

A superb and charismatic Signal Corps officer and innovative air tactician in WWI, Mitchell faced an internal conflict: should he be loyal to his superior officers, whom he regarded as almost treasonably incompetent, or to what he saw as his country's best interests, which included a vastly larger, united and independent air arm? The result was a famous court-martial, which Time magazine correspondent Waller makes extremely comprehensible and gripping to readers more than 75 years on.

Dahlby begins his journalistic account of his pre- and post-9/11 travels there with a study of religious conflict in the Moluccas in 1999. A reluctant interisland passenger along with several hundred Islamic jihadis, he meets a Moluccan elder statesman and his savvy daughter. On a later trip, he finds the country suffering from the aftereffects of 9/11 and American pressure to deal with what is inaccurately perceived as a monolithic jihadist movement—Indonesia's Islam, and its militant factions, are no more monolithic than any other aspect of the country.

Blink is about the first two seconds of looking--the decisive glance that knows in an instant. Gladwell campaigns for snap judgments and mind reading with a gift for translating research into splendid storytelling. Building his case with scenes from a marriage, heart attack triage, speed dating, choking on the golf course, selling cars, and military maneuvers, he persuades readers to think small and focus on the meaning of "thin slices" of behavior.

China is rightly considered an emerging power in world affairs as Chinese leaders, backed by growing economic and military strength, engage in innovative diplomatic approaches that pave the way for China's international role. But this is only part of the story of China's rise. As Robert G. Sutter meticulously shows in this thoroughly updated and balanced assessment, the record of twists and turns in Chinese foreign relations since the end of the Cold War highlights a very different perspective. Domestic problems, nationalism, and security concerns continue to preoccupy Beijing, complicating China's influence and innovations in foreign affairs. On the international front, the actions of other powerful nations and growing dependence on the world economy complicate as well as enhance China's advance to international prominence.

Providing a comprehensive introduction to Chinese foreign relations, Sutter shows Chinese leaders exerting growing influence in world affairs but remaining far from dominant. Facing numerous contradictions and tradeoffs, they move cautiously to avoid major confrontations, costly commitments, or mistakes that could undermine their one-party rule as they deal with an international environment posing numerous challenges as well as opportunities for Chinese interests.

 

Confrontation over Taiwan: Nineteenth Century China and the Powers is a full and detailed account of international relations of Taiwan during the nineteenth century and specifically, the period between 1840 and 1895. During this time the western powers and Japan were engaged in imperialist designs seeking commercial and strategic gain in the South China Sea, which ultimately led to the Japanese colonization of Taiwan. Leonard Gordon, a diplomatic historian of East Asia, closely examines the foreign policies of China, Great Britain, the United States, France, and Japan. Also taking account of historic events on Taiwan and the mainland, Gordon has researched, in addition to the extensive published national records, unpublished archival materials in Taiwan, Japan, the United States, and Great Britain. Providing a context for understanding the current situation in Taiwan, the thorough research and historical analysis of Confrontation over Taiwan make this an essential book for students of East Asian History and International Affairs.

 

Do Armies really learn from their experiences, or does military bureaucracy reign supreme? As citizens, we should fervently hope the former is the real case; but, alas, as John Nagl shows in this brilliant analysis, foreign armies can on occasion learn more rapidly and thoroughly on their own. As now it attempts a massive transformation, the future of America's Army rests significantly on its ability to absorb and act on the rich insights of its younger generation of leaders, one of whom produced this incisive analysis.

Whether at work or at home, we all have to deal with people we can't stand to be around. Our challenge is to develop creative ways to handle these difficult people. Brinkman and Kirschner, both doctors of naturopathic medicine and professional speakers, have just made our job easier with this lively guidebook, in which they identify and explore the psychological roots of ten specific behavior patterns that represent normal people at their worst.

David Gergen is probably the only person to have served at high levels in both the Reagan and Clinton White Houses--not to mention his posts in the Nixon and Ford administrations. He's a consummate Washington insider, a man who appears regularly as a centrist political commentator on PBS's NewsHour with Jim Lehrer and works as editor at large for U.S. News & World Report. Eyewitness to Power, his first book, draws upon this unique experience.

This book examines India as a rising global power by reevaluating its foreign policy and relations from the Nehru period to the present through an analytical framework constructed from Indian foreign policy and the processes of globalization and regionalization. Global Power describes the economic, scientific, technological, and nuclear gains that have been made by India, reaffirming its status as a major actor on the international scene.

The book presents a fundamental reappraisal of the ever-changing relationship between India and other major and regional powers, paying special attention to its relationships with China and Pakistan. It seeks to shed light on Indian foreign policy's goals as they relate to both national and international interests, all the while keeping within the context of India's multiethnic, mulitcultural, multilingual society.

If you read one book to understand al-Qaeda’s fury...to us within the Muslim world, it should be this -- R. James Woolsey, former director of the CIA   In the global search for culprits and causes in the rise of terrorism, former Israeli ambassador to the United Nations Dore Gold shines a spotlight on a nation many think of as a close ally of the United States: Saudi Arabia. As he explains in Hatred’s Kingdom: How Saudi Arabia Supports the New Global Terrorism, Gold believes that the Saudi government is greatly influenced by the Islamist sect known as Wahhabism and, he explains, that influence has lead to Saudi support of terrorism in the Middle East, Europe, the United States and around the world.

Based on the work of cognitive and social psychologists, it discusses examples of disastrous reasoning and traces to errors in interference. This book helps you understand how you understand and how you can make fewer mistakes in analysis…applicable to work and personal life.

Philippine history is often described as 300 years in a (Spanish) convent and 50 years in Hollywood. Karnow, who worked for 30 years as a journalist in Asia, narrates the careers of several individuals who influenced the Philippines. His treatment of the indecisiveness of President McKinley over the issue of empire and of the egotistical General MacArthur make the work a definite purchase for libraries. Weaker in treatment is the post-independence period, where Karnow concentrates upon Marcos and Aquino, both of whom he knows.

If one were to read a single book about India in a lifetime, this should be it. India is a grand, sweeping synthesis of Indian civilization embracing its geography, religions, history, and arts and sciences. Using the Ganges River as a thematic symbol for India's timeless civilization, Wolpert threads his way from the Indus Valley to British rule, through the interplay of Muslim, Hindu, and Sikh faiths, to the governments of Nehru and Indira Gandhi.

If you're like most business leaders, innovation now tops your corporate agenda. But despite all the talk and excitement about the importance of innovation, managers have so far found scant help for innovating in a systematic way that fuels consistent growth and sustained success.  In Innovation to the Core, Strategos CEO Peter Skarzynski and business strategist Rowan Gibson change all that. They share the accumulated wisdom from Strategos--the consulting firm Skarzynski co-founded with Gary Hamel that helps clients instill innovation into their very core. Drawing on a wealth of stories and examples, the book shows how companies of every stripe have overcome the barriers to successful, profitable innovation.

One of the particular pleasures of reading Kim is the full range of emotion, knowledge, and experience that Rudyard Kipling gives his complex hero. Kim O'Hara, the orphaned son of an Irish soldier stationed in India, is neither innocent nor victimized. Raised by an opium-addicted half-caste woman since his equally dissolute father's death, the boy has grown up in the streets of Lahore.

A non-fictional account of SEAL Team 10 told by its only survivor. Book covers Special Operations in Afghanistan. Luttrell led a four-man team of Navy SEALs into the mountains of Afghanistan on a mission to kill a Taliban leader thought to be allied with Osama bin Laden. On foot, the team encountered two adult men and a teenage boy. A debate broke out as to whether the SEALs should summarily execute the trio to keep them from alerting the Taliban.

In this first ground-level account of the Muslim separatist rebellion in the Philippines, Thomas McKenna challenges prevailing anthropological analyses of nationalism as well as their underlying assumptions about the interplay of culture and power. He examines Muslim separatism against a background of more than four hundred years of political relations among indigenous Muslim rulers, their subjects, and external powers seeking the subjugation of Philippine Muslims. He also explores the motivations of the ordinary men and women who fight in armed separatist struggles and investigates the formation of nationalist identities.

Theories of terrorism, specifically the cause of terrorism. This new book brings together leading terrorism scholars and defense professionals to discuss the impact of networks on conflict and war. Post-modern terrorism and topics of global insurgency are also comprehensively covered.

America's fighting men have turned to Once an Eagle as a sourcebook for the military's core values since its publication at the height of the Vietnam War. The novel, following the careers of virtuous Sam Damon and opportunistic Courtney Massengale, is required reading for all members of the United States Marine Corps and frequently taught in leadership courses at West Point.

Is the extraordinary story of North Vietnam’s most successful spy who worked for Time Magazine during the Viet Nam War.  During the Vietnam War, Time reporter Pham Xuan An befriended everyone who was anyone in Saigon, including American journalists such as David Halberstam and Neil Sheehan, the CIA's William Colby, and the legendary Colonel Edward Lansdale not to mention the most influential members of the South Vietnamese government and army. None of them ever guessed that he was also providing strategic intelligence to Hanoi, smuggling invisible ink messages to the jungle inside egg rolls. His early reports were so accurate that General Giap joked, "We are now in the U.S. war room." For more than twenty years, An lived a dangerous lie and no one knew it because he was a master of both his jobs. After the war, An was named a "Hero of the People's Army" and promoted to general - one of only two intelligence officers to ever achieve that rank.

Realpolitik Ideology presents path-breaking research on the Indonesian military (TNI) going beyond traditional scholarship on the TNI's dual function or dwifungsi which has been one of the dominating fields of analysis in Indonesian studies since the 1970s. Addressed to political scientists, sociologists, historians, anthropologists and defence practitioners, this book interprets security policy in terms of its social roots asserting that the realpolitik behaviour of the TNI has strong "socio-cultural" undertones, which in turn shape the development of military doctrine. The argument made in the book is that only through a better understanding of the doctrines that reinforced the military's significant presence in Indonesian affairs and their subsequent restructuring can Indonesia's policy-makers attempt meaningful reform of the TNI.

An integrated, holistic approach to solving personal and professional problems by becoming “principle-centered.” This is a revolutionary guidebook to achieving peace of mind within and building trust without by seeking the roots of human behavior in character and by learning principles rather than merely practices.

The primary purpose of this publication is to provide SOF commanders with a brief summary of the legal issues that may arise when planning and undertaking SOF missions. This Handbook is not intended to be final authority for every situation that may arise. It is intended to give SOF commanders a “heads-up” to situations that may require review by the supporting judge advocate (JAG).

Originally published in 1961, before the United States escalated its involvement in South Vietnam, Street without Joy offered a clear warning about what American forces would face in the jungles of Southeast Asia: a costly and protracted revolutionary war fought without fronts against a mobile enemy. In harrowing detail, Fall describes the brutality and frustrations of the Indochina War, the savage eight-year conflict-ending in 1954 after the fall of Dien Bien Phu-in which French forces suffered a staggering defeat at the hands of Communist-led Vietnamese nationalists. With its frontline perspective, vivid reporting, and careful analysis, Street without Joy was required reading for policymakers in Washington and GIs in the field and is now considered a classic.

Berman puts his leftist credentials (he's a member of the editorial board of Dissent) on the line by critiquing the left while presenting a liberal rationale for the war on terror, joining a discourse that has been dominated by conservatives.

(Pages 74-81) Welcome to the tropical Philippine island of Jolo, where life is like a Corona ad—coconut trees, white-sand beaches, bathtub-warm seas. Except those guys in the water are U.S. Green Berets, and those kids on dirt bikes are jihadists known for kidnapping Western tourists. Even stranger? On this front, at least, America seems to be winning.

As Newt Gingrich and Nancy Desmond point out, reform is a small word... and transformation an enormous one. The compelling evidence they muster here makes it clear that wholesale institutional transformation alone will ensure the continued vitality, perhaps even survival, of our nation. The battle-tested authors boldly offer an original yet pragmatic process to guide us, policy maker and practitioner alike, to transformation.

Designed for the first course in interpersonal communication, the Sixth Edition retains the features that have contributed to its long-standing success: a clear, conversational writing style; and the self-contained Lab Manual that includes case studies, exercises, and examples which link principles and practices in an experiential environment.

The value of Meredith's towering history of modern Africa rests not so much in its incisive analysis, or its original insights; it is the sheer readability of the project, combined with a notable lack of pedantry, that makes it one of the decade's most important works on Africa. Spanning the entire continent, and covering the major upheavals more or less chronologically—from the promising era of independence to the most recent spate of infamies (Rwanda, Darfur, Zimbabwe, Liberia, Sierra Leone)—Meredith (In the Name of Apartheid) brings us on a journey that is as illuminating as it is grueling.

Democracy is not inherently good, Zakaria tells us in his thought-provoking book. It works in some situations and not others, and needs strong limits to function properly. The editor of Newsweek International and former managing editor of Foreign Affairs takes us on a tour of democracy's deficiencies, beginning with the reminder that in 1933 Germans elected the Nazis.

This novel reveals more about the Battle of Gettysburg than any piece of learned nonfiction on the same subject. Michael Shaara's account of the three most important days of the Civil War features deft characterizations of all of the main actors, including Lee, Longstreet, Pickett, Buford, and Hancock. The most inspiring figure in the book, however, is Col. Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, whose 20th Maine regiment of volunteers held the Union's left flank on the second day of the battle.

Discusses so called “small” wars and their importance in American international affairs versus the more widely studied “large” wars. Boot has a reputation as a fire-breathing polemicist and unabashed imperialist. This book addresses America's "small wars" in chronological order, dividing the action from 1801 to the present into three sections to argue that "small war missions are militarily doable" and are now in fact a necessity.

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This thoughtful and deeply informed book assesses the background, status, and outlook of U.S. relations with the Asia-Pacific. Noted expert Robert G. Sutter takes issue with the "declinist" school of thought that he sees as overstating U.S. weaknesses while at the same time underplaying its strengths in the region. He provides a balanced inventory of the major strengths and weaknesses in American relations with Asia and weighs the significant points of agreement and disagreement between the United States and the governments and peoples of the region at the end of the George W. Bush administration.

Sutter carefully considers widely held views of the United States in decline, with its leadership role in regional affairs threatened by a range of political, economic, and security problems. The author finds that recent U.S. difficulties have not fundamentally undermined the main foundations of the leadership, power, and influence that America has exerted in the region for many years. Instead, he convincingly argues for U.S. policy options that will help to remedy prevailing difficulties while sustaining U.S. interests and leading role in Asian and Pacific affairs.

As violence in Iraq reaches unnerving levels in 2006, a second front in the war rages at the highest levels of the Bush administration. In his fourth book on President George W. Bush, Bob Woodward takes readers deep inside the tensions, secret debates, unofficial backchannels, distrust and determination within the White House, the Pentagon, the State Department, the intelligence agencies and the U.S. military headquarters in Iraq. With unparalleled intimacy and detail, this gripping account of a president at war describes a period of distress and uncertainty within the U.S. government from 2006 through mid-2008. The War Within provides an exhaustive account of the struggles of General David Petraeus, who takes over in Iraq during one of the bleakest and most violent periods of the war.

"The author has chosen to alternate the broad view of events on the Korean and international scene with narratives of the contemporaneous experiences of individual soldiers at the front and in rear echelons," said LJ's reviewer (LJ 1/15/63). Fehrenbach's assessment is frank and often unflattering to America's abilities and the motivation of the common soldier.

This thoroughly researched and richly informative history of the Vietnam War examines first the war's central characters and countries in the years leading up to 1954. Moyar contends that South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem, who has been incessantly depicted as an obtuse, tyrannical reactionary by some historians, was in reality a very wise and effective leader.

Understanding Islam is a model in the genre. It will surely be of the greatest help not only for students of religious studies but for the general reader interested in grasping what the faith and way of life of Muslims are essentially about, far away from the caricatures too often privileged in our time.

Noted Middle East expert William R. Polk here illuminates the role played by guerrilla warriors in several conflicts throughout world history, including the American Revolution, and struggles in Ireland, Algeria, and Spain. He eventually moves through Vietnam and into the present day, where the lessons of this history are needed more than ever as we grapple with the ongoing campaign for peace in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Since September 11, 2001 much has been written about "Islamist terrorism," arguing that it is a perversion that has "hijacked Islam" in the service of social, political and economic grievances. However, such accounts cannot explain why other people that can lay claim to similar or more serious grievances have not developed such devastating religious terrorist ideologies. Moreover, many of the terrorists themselves have attested to their own religious motivation and their belief that they acted in accordance with the precepts of Islam.

In Warrant for Terror Shmuel Bar examines fatwas--legal opinions declaring whether a given act under Islam is obligatory, permitted, or forbidden. Fatwas serve as a major instrument by which religious leaders impel believers to engage in acts of jihad. Bar argues that fatwas, particularly those that come from the Arab world, should not be dismissed as a cynical use of religious terminology in political propaganda. Many terrorists testify that they were motivated to act by them. Indeed, this book shows that Islamic law plays a central role in determining for believers the practical meaning of the duty to jihad.

Bar examines the underlying religious, legal, and moral logic of fatwas and the depth of their influence, particularly in contrast to alternative moderate Islamic interpretations. He explores the wide scope of issues that fatwas deal with, covering almost all facets of Islamic "law of war": the justification for declaring jihad; the territory in which the jihad should be fought; whether women and children may participate in jihad; the legality of killing women, children and other non-combatants; the justification for killing hostages and mutilating their bodies; and the permissibility of diverse tactics and weapons, including suicide attacks and even nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction.

Warrant for Terror also delves into the contradictions between the radical and the mainstream narratives and the sources of the weakness of the latter in the face of the former. In the conclusion, the author raises a number of provocative questions relating to the "religious policy" of the West in the face of the threat of Islamic extremism.

This book is published in cooperation with the Hoover Institution

 

Goldsmith, an executive coach to the corporate elite, pinpoints 20 bad habits that stifle already successful careers as well as personal goals like succeeding in marriage or as a parent. Most are common behavioral problems, such as speaking when angry, which even the author is prone to do when dealing with a teenage daughter's belly ring. Though Goldsmith deals with touchy-feely material more typical of a self-help book—such as learning to listen or letting go of the past—his approach to curing self-destructive behavior is much harder-edged. For instance, he does not suggest sensitivity training for those prone to voicing morale-deflating sarcasm. His advice is to stop doing it. To stimulate behavior change, he suggests imposing fines (e.g., $10 for each infraction), asserting that monetary penalties can yield results by lunchtime.

Winning the Long War is a trenchant examination of the past seven years of the Global War on Terror, the future battlegrounds that will confront the United States in the struggle against radical Islam in the years ahead, and how America can reclaim the initiative in what has become the defining struggle of the twenty-first century. Middle East expert Ilan Berman offers new thinking on counterterrorism strategy and provides the new administration with ways to close the gaps in current American counterterrorism strategy.

While there are many books about fighting terrorism, none offer Berman's approach of integrating diplomatic, legal, economic, military, and theoretical strategies into a comprehensive national security action plan. Using cutting edge analysis of current terrorism trends, Winning the Long War identifies three central failings that triggered the West's retreat and radical Islam's simultaneous advance: the failure to properly define the enemy, the inability to dominate the battlefields, and the inability to calibrate counterterrorism strategies. Demonstrating the need for more creative thinking about the nature of the conflicts in which the West now finds itself, this book lays out the steps that must be taken to win the long war.