Category Archives: Book Review

Reviews of recent and upcoming foreign policy and maritime books of merit.

God and The Great Naval Theorist

November 9, 2015 Guest Author 3 Comments

God and Seapower: The Influence of Religion on Alfred Thayer Mahan by Suzanne Geissler. USNI Press, October 15, 2015. 280pp. $39.95.

For many of us, Alfred Thayer Mahan is certainly no stranger. His theories and writings have been talked about and analyzed for years. They have been savored by everyone from the President of the United States, the lowly Naval War College graduate, and many others around the world. Thus, it is always refreshing to read something new and interesting about this well-known and often talked about historical figure. Suzanne Geissler has done just that. Professor Geissler has delivered some fresh insights and probably stirred some debate with her new book, God and Seapower. The book is a fascinating look into Mahan’s life by focusing on his religious beliefs. At 280 pages this book is a nice size; something that can be read in a week and yet she still manages to cover ATM’s life, from childhood to wise naval theorist, quite nicely. Recently I had the opportunity to interview Professor Geissler about her new book. What follows is the transcript of our interview which was conducted over e-mail.

Why Mahan and Religion? Why did you want to write this book?

My specialty is American religious history, but I have always been interested in military and naval history, more as a hobby than a professional specialization. Many years ago – I don’t remember why or in what context – I read that Mahan was an Episcopalian. I’m an Episcopalian, too, so I just filed that away as an interesting factoid, but didn’t think much more about it. Then some years later I read Robert Seager II’s biography of Mahan and came away disappointed in the book, but intrigued further about Mahan’s religious involvement. I did a little digging and discovered that he wrote extensively about religion and church issues. There was tons of stuff out there that no one had ever looked at in a serious way. I thought there had to be a significant story here.

The book, in part, is a counter argument to one of Mahan’s most well-known biographers, Robert Seager II. Readers will quickly realize that you disagree with many of Seager’s opinions. Who was Seager and why do you disagree with him so strongly?

Seager was a former merchant mariner who had become an academic historian. A few years prior to his biography coming out he, along with Doris Maguire, had co-edited Mahan’s papers. He used that as the raw material for his biography of him. The problem with the book, as I think is readily apparent after only reading a few pages, is that Seager thoroughly disliked Mahan. Now I’m not saying that a biographer has to like his subject, but there needs to be at least an attempt to be fair and look at the sources in an impartial manner. But Seager so disliked Mahan – as though he knew him personally and couldn’t stand the guy – that it colored the entire book. Everything Mahan did throughout his whole life, from the trivial to the monumental, is presented in the worst possible light. Also, the whole book is written in a sarcastic tone – what today we would call snarky – that becomes really tiresome after a while. My biggest beef with Seager is that he loathes – and I don’t think that’s too strong a word – Mahan’s religious devotion and piety and thinks it is the root of all that makes Mahan so – and these are Seager’s words – arrogant, egotistical, racist, to name a few. Seager is entitled to his own opinion, of course, but the more I got into the sources, Mahan’s own letters and writings, the more I saw that Seager had no interest in being fair or even attempting to understand Mahan in the context of his own time. My other complaint about Seager is that on numerous occasions he either disregarded what a source clearly said or twisted it out of context in order to present Mahan in a bad light.

On what points do you agree with Seager on Mahan?

The only thing I agree with Seager on is his statement that Mahan wrote the most influential book by an American in the nineteenth century.

You mention Mahan’s father and uncle were two of the biggest religious influences in his life. How so?

Mahan’s father, Dennis Hart Mahan, was a former Army officer and professor of engineering at West Point for almost fifty years. He was a monumental figure at West Point and in the Army officer corps. In those days the field of military engineering included strategy, tactics, and military history. So Alfred had a role model of exceptional brilliance whom Army officers – including people such as Grant and Sherman – held in awe. Alfred got his introduction to military history through his father. But Dennis was also a devout Christian and Episcopalian who modeled those attributes to his son. Dennis epitomized the 19^th– century ideal of a “Christian gentleman” but in a way that was genuine, not superficial. Milo Mahan, Dennis’s younger half-brother, was an Episcopal priest and professor of church history at General Theological Seminary, the Episcopal seminary in New York City. Alfred lived with him for two years (when Alfred was fourteen – fifteen and attending Columbia University), a period which imbued him with Milo’s High Church piety. For the next fourteen years or so, Milo was Alfred’s main theological mentor. They had an extensive correspondence and Milo provided Alfred with reading lists of theological works which Alfred read on long sea voyages. As Alfred told his fiancée, Milo was the man he went to with any biblical or theological questions. All that reading, under Milo’s guidance, in effect gave Alfred the equivalent of a seminary education.

Mahan’s father, I didn’t realize, was well-known in political and military circles in the 19th century. When did Mahan step out of his father’s shadow?

One of my favorite anecdotes occurs in the waning days of the Civil War. Alfred is on Admiral Dahlgren’s staff stationed off Savannah when the victorious General William Tecumseh Sherman arrives in the city. Alfred goes ashore to see Sherman bearing a congratulatory telegram from his father. Sherman greets him by saying “What, the son of old Dennis?” Certainly, for more than half of his active duty career Alfred was best known for being Dennis’s son. He doesn’t really emerge from his father’s shadow until the publication of his first book The Gulf and Inland Waters in 1883 when he’s forty-three. This book leads to his appointment at the Naval War College which in turn leads to the publication of his lectures as The Influence of Sea Power Upon History.

Mahan loved his dog, Jomini. And as you quote, Mahan believed his dog would go to heaven when he died. Was this belief, that a dog’s soul goes to heaven, abnormal for an Episcopalian at this time?

Mahan never expounds on the reasons that he believes his dogs, Jomini and Rovie, went to heaven, so I have to extrapolate based on what I know about this issue and Mahan’s own beliefs.

Alfred Thayer Mahan's dog, Jomini. Courtesy of USNI Press. — Alfred Thayer Mahan’s dog, Jomini. Courtesy of USNI Press.

As I understand it, the Roman Catholic Church teaches that animals don’t go to heaven because they don’t have souls. Most Protestants, though, considered the “soul” issue irrelevant and based their view – that we will see our beloved pets in heaven – on the fact that animals clearly are part of creation and God has promised that all creation will be redeemed (Romans 8:21). Mahan knew his Bible thoroughly so I’m willing to bet that he would have based his view on this scripture rather than abstract speculation on whether animals have souls or not.

One of your more, shall we say, contentious statements, is that Mahan’s The Influence of Sea Power Upon History was inspired by God. Could you expand on this?

Well, I don’t claim that, but Mahan certainly did. In his autobiography, From Sail to Steam, he made reference to his “special call” to be a naval historian, or, more specifically, to be the expositor of the importance of sea power on the course of history. He never claimed that he discovered the concept. He was always generous in crediting previous historians whose thought influenced his. But he claimed that “in the fullness of time” – a biblical expression — the call was given to him to be the one who explained it and drew the correct implications from it.

What did Mahan think of Catholics? Other Christians? Other religions?

I’m simplifying a lot here, but, basically, Mahan had a kind of layered view of religious categories. Christianity was better than other, i.e. non-Christian, religions (though Judaism was in a special category as Christianity’s older brother, so to speak). Within Christianity, Protestantism was best, and within Protestantism, Anglicanism was best. Having said that, I should point out that the groupings within Christianity related mainly to polity (types of church governance), liturgy (forms of worship), and history. Mahan clearly had his preferences, but he never claimed that, for example, there was only one true church. For him the most important thing was to be a Christian. If you loved Jesus and accepted him as Lord and Savior, it did not matter what denomination you belonged to. In a similar vein, Mahan once stated that he would cooperate with any Christian group in evangelistic or missions work as long as such a group did not include Unitarians. He did not consider them Christians since they did not recognize the divinity of Jesus. One of the things that makes Mahan so fascinating to me is that he’s not easily pigeon-holed into conventional religious categories. On the one hand he’s very much a High Church Episcopalian, but he’s also very much a born-again evangelical.

Was Mahan able to separate his writing? That is, did he keep naval theory separate from his religious writing? It seems like he was able to live in two different worlds on the page, yet his religious life infused everything he did.

Mahan was actually quite sophisticated in his historical methodology. He understood that history and theology were two different fields, each with its own ways of interpreting events. As a Christian he believed that God was the sovereign creator and ruler of the universe and God’s decrees always came to pass. However, he understood that God operated through what theologians called “secondary causes,” that is the choices made by human beings and their resultant actions. A historian deals with secondary causes. It was extremely rare for Mahan to speculate on God’s purposes in his naval history writings.

US Naval Academy Chapel circa 1850s. Courtesy of USNI Press.

For those readers that wish to read a book on Mahan after they read your book, what do you recommend?

I recommend Jon T. Sumida’s Inventing Grand Strategy and Teaching Command: The Classic Works of Alfred Thayer Mahan Reconsidered. This is a fascinating book full of original insights on Mahan.

Are there other historians working today that do not have a theology background, yet pay serious consideration to their subject’s religious belief? Specifically, military biographies?

This is difficult for me to answer since I don’t really know who is working on what topics, especially in military biography. But the two naval historians who were most helpful and encouraging to me when I undertook this project, Jon Sumida and John Hattendorf, are both very interested in religion and the role it plays in people’s lives. And they both have a positive view of it rather than a negative one. Hattendorf, particularly, is very knowledgeable about the Episcopal Church. In his editing of the writings of Admiral Stephen B. Luce he does incorporate a discussion of Luce’s piety.

Why do you think religion so often takes a back seat when we discuss historical figures — past or present? Or does it?

As I mentioned, my field is religious history, so for most of the people I read and study about, by definition, religion is important. However, you’re right, in other historical sub-fields religion is usually ignored or misunderstood. For example, Martin Luther King, Jr. comes to mind. Even in a case such as that, where you would think the religious angle would be obvious – his being a clergyman and pastor — there are some writers who have downplayed that and made his story one of “social justice” and politics, completely ignoring the biblical roots of his thought, not to mention his dramatic conversion experience. I don’t like to generalize about historians, but in order to answer your question, I’ll do it anyway! Most present day historians are either indifferent or hostile to religion, especially the notion of an individual having a personal encounter with God, or believing that God has called that person to a specific task in life. Some writers see this sort of thing as just an eccentricity, not necessarily bad, but of no real significance. Others take a more negative view and see religious faith as a personality defect that could have pernicious consequences. One thinks of all the historians who have blamed the defects of the Versailles Treaty on Woodrow Wilson’s Presbyterian piety.

Suzanne Geissler received her Ph.D. in history from Syracuse University’s Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs. She also holds a Master of Theological Studies degree in church history from Drew University. She is professor of history at William Paterson University in Wayne, NJ. Her previous books include Jonathan Edwards to Aaron Burr Jr., Lutheranism and Anglicanism in Colonial New Jersey, and “A Widening Sphere of Usefulness”: Newark Academy 1774-1993.

Lieutenant Commander Christopher Nelson is a US naval intelligence officer and recent graduate of the US Naval War College and the Maritime Advanced Warfighting School in Newport, Rhode Island. The opinions above do not necessarily reflect those of the US Department of Defense or the US Navy.

Asia-Pacific, Book Review

Book Review: James Bradley’s ‘The China Mirage’

September 21, 2015 Guest Author 2 Comments

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James Bradley. The China Mirage: the Hidden History of American Disaster in Asia. Little, Brown and Company. 417pp. $35.00.

The United States has a troubled relationship with China. The confrontations over military budgets and the South China Sea are profound but they are not the first flash-points to develop in the relationship. The details of American involvement in China’s so-called “Century of Humiliation” are not widely known among Americans. In steps James Bradley, author of Flags of our Fathers, with his newest offering: The China Mirage. Bradley offers in the introduction to examine “the American perception of Asia and the gap between perception and reality.” While the book’s direction and intent are admirable, The China Mirage lapses into a mirage of its own, in which every American action in China is driven by economic exploitation, abject naivety, or criminal gullibility.

The China Mirage is organized chronologically and examines American involvement and missteps in East Asia. It begins with detailed treatment of the life of Warren Delano, the grandfather of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who made the family’s fortune by opium smuggling and conveniently described his activities as “the China trade.” It continues in a grand historical arc covering both Roosevelt presidencies, both Sino-Japanese Wars (from 1894-1895 and 1937-1945), the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, Chiang Kai-Shek, Mao Zedong, the outbreak of World War II, the Chinese Civil War, the “who lost China” debate in the United States, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War. This feat is a tall order for any author and Bradley manages to keep the pace moving throughout his 400-page tome with vignettes from lives of Great People.

While the book is nominally about China, it spends a large portion examining the United States’ relationship with Japan. The long treatment of characters such as Theodore Roosevelt (TR) and Baron Kaneko, Japan’s

A photo of Kitaro Kaneko at his Harvard Graduation

Harvard-educated diplomat who built a strong relationship with TR, mentions China on the periphery but the reader can clearly see the fruits of Bradley’s research in his earlier book about TR’s presidency, The Imperial Cruise, shining through in this newest text. While the United States’ treatment of Japan was somewhat connected to China, the amount included in The China Mirage was excessive and distracting. At times, the narrative style is frenetic, moving back and forth between China and Japan fast enough to induce whiplash.
Bradley’s style is, at its core, polemic and his words drip with venom. He uses vivid portraits to weave a narrative about the various decision-makers on both sides of the Pacific who drove the hundred-year drama. Lurid details and shortcomings are front-and-center with the author’s voice providing commentary. The Republic of China is referred to as “The Soong-Chiang Syndicate”; American missionaries are called Chiang Kai-Shek’s “favorite sycophants”; Baron Kaneko’s interactions with TR are described as “canoodling.” China’s population is referred to as “Noble Chinese Peasants” to reflect American incorrect assumptions that the Chinese were ignorant and eager to adopt America’s Christian culture. The style is certainly not boring but, as the narrative progresses, it became more of a burden than a boon. The sarcastic use of terms such as “Southern Methodist Chiang” or “foreign devils” became distracting as they were used repeated throughout the entire book, implying that they were not just rhetorical flourishes but an opportunity for the author to express his disdain for many of the players involved.

In an ironic twist, The China Mirage ends up crafting caricatures which cleve as much to a fantasy as the American vision of the Noble Chinese Peasant which Bradley derides throughout the entire book. Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt appear as bumbling fools who were taken in respectively by the Japanese or Chiang Kai-Shek. The reader is treated to vivid, often unnecessary, digressions into the men’s Harvard connections and material opulence. FDR is essentially a

FDR sits between Chiang Kei Shek and Winston Churchill at the Cairo Conference.

tottering fool who lives large off opium money while being seduced by bureaucratic charlatans and bamboozled by colorful maps. These analyses both ignore the savviness of both of these men in their Presidential roles as well as the fact that one person, even a President, is unable to successfully implement policy without buy-in from others in the policy-making world. The book’s implied belief that these men’s personal failings single-handedly lead to policy-blunders is overstated.

On the other hand, Bradley lionizes Mao Zedong as a people’s champion who was a better choice than Chiang Kai-Shek to lead China. Mao is portrayed as the key character in anti-Japanese resistance during the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945), exhorting the corrupt Chiang to “show some spine.” The problem with this assertion is that, unlike Bradley claims, Mao’s forces were barely ever involved in fighting against the Japanese. A vivid portrait is painted of Mao’s seemingly saintly activities in his Yan’an enclave in the 1930s without any mention of the thousands of Communists who were purged during those years to cement his hold on power. One could assume that this omission was mere oversight were not for the fact that, in a preceding chapter, Chiang Kai-Shek’s execution of a few journalists was given top-billing in the narrative. The reader gets the impression that the book has a purposeful slant and bias.

There are other conclusions which might cause some arched eyebrows. The decades-long recognition of Taiwan as the seat of the Chinese government is portrayed as a singular act of American arrogance and ignorance, yet non-recognition was the exactly same policy used by the United States with the German annexation of Austria in 1938 and the Soviet annexation of the Baltic States in 1940. A condemnation of the FDR Administration’s Lend-Lease policy, derided as an “attractive fiction that, after their wars were over, England, Russia, and China would return the materials the U.S. lent to them,” misses the fact that many of those materials were returned, even by the Soviet Union during the early stages of the Cold War. These attacks indicate that the objective of the narrative is to find any and every way to undermine the people whom the author does not like rather than focusing on the book’s main purpose: analyzing the United States’ relationship with China.

While the style and content might at times be suspect, Bradley does a valuable service by introducing historical issues which are not in the American mainstream: the sad legacy of the Exclusion Act and anti-Chinese violence in mid-19th century America; the lingering distrust in China of outsiders who preach a noble message but are perceived to act in their self-interest; the role the United States oil embargo played in the outbreak of war with Japan; the opportunity, though overstated and oversimplified, for the United States to broker an agreement with Mao before the Chinese Civil War formally began; the abominable treatment of people with China experience in the State Department during the early days of McCarthyism. These are important topics that should be more widely known so that the average American can have a more nuanced understanding how the Chinese people, rather than just the Chinese government, will react to American policy.
American policymakers will need to get the US-China relationship right if they want to successfully navigate a turbulent 21st Century. To achieve this, they will need to shelve preconceived notions of what China is and view on-the-ground facts rather than projecting their own culture and worldview. The China Mirage can be a jumping-off point for the uninitiated but recognize that, just like other historical narratives about China, it has its own shortcomings.

Matthew Merighi is CIMSEC’s Directors of Publications. He is also a Master of Arts candidate at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy studying Pacific Asia and International Security.

Book Review, Europe, History

Some Corner of a Foreign Field that is Forever Anzac: A Book Review of Peter Fitzsimons’ Gallipoli

September 9, 2015 Guest Author 2 Comments

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The following book review is by guest author Shane Halton.

Peter Fitzsimons. Gallipoli. Random House Australia, Feb 01, 2015. Hardcover. 800 pages. $45.00.

When writing about World War I, it can be difficult to strike the correct philosophical balance. Make the story too bleak or nihilistic and you risk misunderstanding the very real patriotic enthusiasm that characterized the first months of the War. Conversely, one can’t make the story too romantic and heroic at the risk of ignoring the fact that most of World War I was a brutal slog with moments of individual gallantry, often overwhelmed by pointless slaughter exacerbated by terrible generalship.

World War I had so many different facets that it can be hard to meld the stories of political scheming in London, Berlin, and Constantinople with the existential drama of soldiers clinging to their lives in trenches under constant enemy fire while waiting for the order to ‘fix bayonets’ and go over the top. Simply put, most stories of World War I don’t scale well: they work best as individual stories (depending on your temperament I recommend either Storm of Steel or the equally classic All Quiet on the Western Front) or sweeping grand histories (my favorite one volume is the comparably slim The World Undone or Robert Massie’s Dreadnaught and Castles of Steel combination for the nautically inclined). Rarely does a history come along that can fuse the two genres. That’s why Peter Fitzsimons’ masterful new volume Gallipoli is such a treat.

The task of the Allies at Gallipoli was truly Sisyphean. They held the low ground: thin trenches carved into the sides of steep cliffs, downhill from the Turkish trenches, exposed to artillery fire. A few times a month they were

directed to fix bayonets and, often in the cover of darkness and always over terrain with minimal cover, take the hill and break the Turkish lines. It was an impossible task. After over a year of grinding attrition from disease and enemy fire, the Allied troops were withdrawn in secret, in good order and with no casualties. The Gallipoli peninsula was ceded to the Turks.

How did it all go so wrong? Despite opting to spend most of the book with the ANZAC (Australian and New Zealand Army Corps) troops in the trenches, Fitzsimons does an admirable job decoding the mix of over-optimism, managerial muddle, and lack of appreciation for local conditions that combined to make an Allied amphibious landing in Gallipoli seem like such a good idea… at least to those sitting in London. A young and manic Winston Churchill, then First Lord of the Admiralty, speed walks through Whitehall, obsessed with finding a way to use the Royal Navy to end the grinding stalemate on the Western Front. His genius brainwave? Send a flotilla of minesweepers and battleships up the Dardanelles and onward to Constantinople to scare the Turks into surrender. Had that plan worked it would have stood as history’s grandest example of gunboat diplomacy.

But the plan didn’t work. The Ottomans and their German advisors mustered just enough of a defensive effort, using a combination of minefields and artillery, to drive back the minesweepers and batter the fleet. Churchill was forced back to the drawing board, eventually convincing the Army to support the Naval force with an amphibious landing on the Gallipoli peninsula. The previously all-Navy operation thus

An Australian Sniper peers over a trench in 1915.

became a joint Army-Navy invasion. Until the following year’s Allied withdrawal from the peninsula, the Army was to take the brunt of the punishment, with the Navy providing mainly logistical support and transport with the occasional desultory gunfire support to ground operations.

What redeems the story of this quagmire is the piss, vinegar, and rude good humor of the ANZAC soldier as he departs home for the first time, trains for combat in Egypt under the nose of the Sphynx, disembarks on the coast of the Peninsula during the cold predawn hours, and scrambles up the hill again and again as Allied fortunes slowly dwindle and the bodies of his friends pile up around him. Though the story has many individual heroes on both sides (Fitzsimons has a deep respect for the tenacious Turks, enduring stoically in conditions at least as poor as those of the Allies), it is the archetype of the ANZAC soldier that shines through most brightly.

The first third of book covers the transportation and training of the ANZACs and culminates in the shock of their initial (opposed) landings. It reads like a nineteenth century boy’s adventure novel. Everything is bustle and forward motion; the world outside Australia is crammed with dangerous and seductive wonders. The reader is invited to stand among the troops and stare in awe as their transport ships glide quietly up the Suez Canal at night. Later, as the ANZACs train and assemble for the invasion in Alexandria, the story briefly becomes a cautionary tale about the dangers of allowing relatively well paid young soldiers unfettered access to Egypt’s renowned brothels. Letting the reader get to know and love the jovial ANZACs before hurling them on the beaches of Gallipoli is a painful and effective way of keeping one glued in through the rest of the often grueling narrative.

One of the reasons that Fitzsimons succeeds in capturing the huge scale of the landings and subsequent battles while never losing sight of the plight of the common soldier is that Gallipoli itself is just the right size. Most important locations are a single hill, valley, or inlet. The enemy is always very close, the sounds of shrapnel and thud of artillery create a hellish sonic micro-climate, and the freshly dug cemeteries are never far off. The scenes feel both intimate and comprehensive, in a way that histories of Somme or Verdun can never be.

This text is recommended for readers who want to understand why such a massive undertaking seemed so poorly thought through and how victory was almost snatched from the jaws of defeat by the unyielding heroism of the average ANZAC. Read it to renew your appreciation for the military genius and iron willpower of the Ottoman commander, Mustafa Kemal – a figure whose obvious talent and ambition mark him out for even greater deeds after the War. Read it because it’s a crackling good yarn and a minor masterpiece of the genre.

Lieutenant Junior Grade Halton is assigned to the Joint Improvised Threat Defeat Agency. He served as an enlisted intelligence specialist before commissioning as an Intelligence Officer through the STA-21 program. He has written about cyber security and the effects of big data on intelligence analysis for Proceedings magazine. The views above are the authors and do not represent those of the US Navy or the US Department of Defense.

Book Review

Base Nation

July 30, 2015 Guest Author 1 Comment

Base Nation: How U.S. Military Bases Abroad Harm America and the World. David Vine. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2015. 406pp. $35.

Review by Vic Allen

The concept of a distributed network of forward bases as the centerpiece of a strategy is not new — with the advent of steam-powered ships, the United States worked to rapidly expand their network of coaling stations, enabling forward presence both on the base and in the surrounding areas.

Indeed, such a concept is being revisited through the recent “pivot to the Pacific,”concepts like Air-Sea Battle/JAM-GC, and in the new idea of Distributed Lethality.

Inspired by his work researching the history of the indigenous peoples of Diego Garcia, as outlined in his first book Island of Shame: The Secret History of the U.S. Military Base on Diego Garcia, David Vine looks at the network of far-flung U.S. military bases throughout the world with an eye toward illustrating their scope and cost. Vine seeks to examine both tangible costs such as treasure and materiel, and also the impact that such bases have on the surrounding population along with the men and women who operate from the bases.

The book is part of a larger collection known as “The American Empire Project,” and as such inherits a great deal of its culture.

Started in 2004 by historians Tom Engelhardt and Steven Fraser, the project aims to examine recent trends that point to increasing imperial and exceptionalist tendencies in conduct and constitution of United States foreign policy. Accordingly, Vine’s tone throughout the book is one of skepticism — skepticism of the fiscal numbers that the Department of Defense sends him, of the good stewardship of the money that is spent on bases by DOD, and is most strongly skeptical of the benefits of a policy that has resulted in the establishment of over 680 bases worldwide, at an annual cost of at least $70 billion — not counting bases in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Opening with an overview of the historical background of global basing, Vine methodically lays out an exhaustively researched case that the current base network is wasteful at best, and at worst makes the United States less secure. Some of the most effective passages detail the deleterious effects of bases on local populations is they examine sex workers in Korea, displaced groups in Diego Garcia and Japan, and the embrace of dictators in Central and South America.

The Pentagon position that rebalancing towards Asia will not result in new U.S. bases is anticipated and refuted by Vine’s exploration of the Joint Task Force Bravo’s base of operations in Soto Cano, Honduras. Similar arrangements are detailed throughout the book, as are the consistent efforts to classify them as anything but a United States base. The book makes a strong argument that, regardless of their size, scope, and location, “little Americas” located entirely within other countries reduces U.S. prestige and soft power. In light of China’s increasing use of soft power to increase its sphere of influence, any degradation of U.S. soft power is cause for concern.

The mushy language in Vine’s assessment of the number of bases and their operating costs is found throughout the book, echoed in sections where he reaches to make associations. One section, titled “Militarized Masculinity,” could just as well be found in a book about life in the United States or its military as a whole, as could “In Bed With The Mob” or “We’re Profiteers.” While these sections aren’t without merit, their lack of distinct applicability as problems raised by basing strategies distracts the reader from the otherwise strong case made in other sections.

Throughout Base Nation, Vine seeks to move past the bureaucratic accounting of numbers surrounding the United States’ bases, instead using plain-language definitions and consistent methods to provide a striking picture of the money and manpower expended to maintain forward presence. In developing and using unique metrics, the arguments are occasionally misguided, yet the overall effect of the book is strong, presenting a rhetorical framework for reducing the U.S. footprint around the world.

LT Vic Allen is a helicopter pilot, Action Officer at Naval History and Heritage Command, and Treasurer of the Center for International Maritime Security (CIMSEC). He is a graduate of Norwich University and the Georgia Institute of Technology, and the University of Southern California’s Center for Public Diplomacy.

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Fostering the Discussion on Securing the Seas.