The New Face of War : Weapons of Mass Destruction & the Revitalization of America’s Transoceanic Military Strategy

Product Description

Rogue regimes and other countries hostile toward the United States are up- gunning their military arsenals with biological and chemical weapons a few with nuclear capabilities advanced conventional weapons and technologies, and ballistic and cruise missiles. These deadly weapons offer weaker non-Western countries new military options for keeping America’s superior conventional military forces at bay or striking them with great ferocity when they are within range.
Robert Chandler, a twenty-seven-year Air Force veteran, explains how the dizzying pace of weapons proliferation is changing the face of war and placing America’s Cold War-derived military strategy increasingly into jeopardy. Explaining how America’s transoceanic power projection strategy is under attack, he recommends a dramatic shift in military strategy and forces to neutralize the growing threat of weapons of mass destruction (WMD).
America’s response to the Iraqi seizure of Kuwait in 1990 demonstrated the reach and superiority of U.S. military forces, and a dramatic military victory was won with far fewer casualties than expected. At the same time, however, glaring vulnerabilities in the American global strategy were exposed. Two of the most severe weaknesses were the overwhelming dependence of the U.S. transoceanic power projection strategy on time, and lots of it, to deploy military forces overseas, and, secondly, the presumption of always having available ready and unhindered access to regional seaports, airfields, and other facilities. With America’s time and access dependencies exposed, contemporary WMD proliferators are working feverishly to exploit these vulnerabilities.
Robert Chandler takes the reader step-by-step through the logic of how WMD proliferation, advanced conventional weapons, and state-sponsored terrorism will make execution of the current U.S. military strategy highly risky and perhaps even unworkable early in the twenty-first century. He recommends that the United States reshape its military strategy to “mass firepower, not forces” through the creation of a Global Reconnaissance-Strike Complex built from existing military resources, ranging from intelligence and communications assets to air forces and distributed ground combat cells. Launching from bases beyond the reach of deadly WMD-tipped missiles, a balanced long-range precision strike force would immunize U.S. strategy against the effects of weapons of mass destruction.

Review

“This is a most comprehensive, complete, and extensive collection of everything that has been written, rumored, said, and seen concerning the proliferation of chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons. Robert Chandler takes the reader through a very detailed presentation of a U.S. global strategy made ineffective by rogue states and terrorists with access to weapons of mass destruction…. More than a lesson, the book is an education in the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.” —
Captain Stuart D. Landersman, U.S. Navy [Retired] in Proceedings [a publication of the U.S. Naval Institute], November 1999

Desert Storm turned out to be the first war against proliferation of weapons of mass destruction…. Now we broadly proclaim the proliferation of these weapons is the “gravest” threat to our security that emerged from the Cold War.
Well that is dead wrong! The gravest threat to our national security is our government and its armed services’ collective unwillingness to acknowledge this threat and reshape the American military…to meet the challenge posed by these weapons in the wrong hands…. Change is required if we are to create the reforms aimed at invigorating how and with what America fights its wars….The one thing the authors forcefully prove is that the current policy of “no change” must not be an option. The New Face of War… provides solutions that could spell the diference between victory or defeat during the next major world crisis. — Review by General Charles