|
Why do some soldiers flee quickly from battle while others endure until the bitter end? How can some perform
the most challenging missions while others cannot keep themselves organized in peacetime? Why do some soldiers wilt in combat
but revel in violence against non-combatants?
A new book, by policy scientist
Bruce Newsome Ph.D., explains why some soldiers are better than others.
Careful management is required if soldiers are to accumulate desired attributes, such as self-discipline,
without accumulating undesired attributes, such as indiscriminate aggression.
Soldiers, like most professionals, are made more than born. To assume otherwise leads, at best, to wasted
effort or unnescessary discrimination, and, at worst, retarded combat performance or illegal violence.
The
lessons are as relevant to civilian as military organizations.
Order it!
Endorsements
The defense planning community has tended to overemphasize material contributors to combat effectiveness, with potentially
serious consequences. Bruce Newsome helps to correct this tendency with a wide ranging tour d'horizon of one of the most important
nonmaterial contributors: the performance of the individual soldiers that comprise the military organization.
--- Dr. Stephen Biddle, Senior Fellow, Council for Foreign Relations
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
An impressively comprehensive and trenchant investigation of one of the most important but understudied issues in military
effectiveness.
--- Professor Richard K. Betts, Director, Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies, Columbia University
Newsome zeroes in on a subject that analysts often ignore--how good are a country's soldiers?
When studying warfare, we tend to focus on weaponry and wealth, on generals and statesmen, on battle plans and grand strategies.
Yet soldiers matter as much as all the above. At a time when our policies from Iraq and Afghanistan to Congo and
Colombia depend on helping other countries develop strong, effective, dependable militaries--which are only attainable if
they have good soldiers to fill them out--Newsome's approach could hardly be more timely.
|
|
|
