Other People's Wars: The US Military and the Challenge of Learning from Foreign Conflicts

by Brent L. Sterling

Overview

Other People’s Wars explores key US efforts involving direct observation missions and post-conflict investigations throughout its history. Sterling shows how initiatives to learn from other nations’ wars can yield significant benefits, emphasisizing comprehensive qualitative learning to foster better military preparedness and adaptability.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781647120597
Publisher:	Georgetown University Press
Publication date:	03/01/2021
Pages:	344
Sales rank:	710,766
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.88(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Brent L. Sterling is an adjunct professor at the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. He is the author of Do Good Fences Make Good Neighbors? What History Teaches Us about Strategic Barriers and International Security (Georgetown University Press, 2009). He has spent the past thirty years as a defense analyst, including positions at the Central Intelligence Agency and consulting firms that support the US Department of Defense.

Table of Contents

List of Maps

Acknowledgments

List of Abbreviations

Introduction

1. The Crimean War: Partial but Precedent-Setting Probe 2. The Russo-Japanese War: Enthusiastic but Encumbered Exploration

3. The Spanish Civil War: Desired but Disputed Data

4. The Yom Kippur War: Ferocious and Fortuitous Fight

Conclusion

Selected Bibliography

Index

About the Author

What People are Saying About This

Brian McAllister Linn

An impressive and detailed historical overview for both the general and professional reader. Sterling assimilates an extensive primary and secondary literature into a readable, coherent, and well-argued synthesis of the lessons the US military learned (and ignored) observing the conflicts outside its borders.

Michael O’Hanlon

Sterling’s use of military history is specific, conceptually clear, and purposeful. And quite well done. He shows where, at key moments like the lead-in to the American Civil War, lessons from earlier battles in faraway lands were used to inform new weaponry, tactics, and operational concepts for those preparing for future wars. Alas, much of the story here is also how many lessons often go unlearned–with tragic results in ensuing conflicts.

Michael O’Hanlon

Sterling’s use of military history is specific, conceptually clear, and purposeful. And quite well done. He shows where, at key moments like the lead-in to the American Civil War, lessons from earlier battles in faraway lands were used to inform new weaponry, tactics, and operational concepts for those preparing for future wars. Alas, much of the story here is also how many lessons often go unlearned–with tragic results in ensuing conflicts.

Editorial Reviews

Military professionals – and, for that matter, interested amateurs – who seek to explore the issue of how the Yom Kippur War, particularly the issue of how the experience of the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) during that war, moulded the armed forces of the United States are enthusiastically encouraged to consult Sterling’s book, as are those professionals and amateurs concerned more broadly with the impact of foreign wars on these forces.

Israel Affairs

Other People's Wars: The US Military and the Challenge of Learning from Foreign Conflicts is an extraordinary contribution to community, college and university library Military Strategy and National/International Security collections and supplemental studies curriculums.

Midwest Book Review