LOSING MILITARY SUPREMACY: The Myopia of American Strategic Planning.

• Author: Steadman, Hugh

LOSING MILITARY SUPREMACY: The Myopia of American Strategic Planning

Author: Andrei Martyanov

Published by: Clarity Press, Atlanta, 2018, 249pp, US$20.

THE (REAL) REVOLUTION IN MILITARY AFFAIRS

Author: Andrei Martyanov

Published by: Clarity Press, Atlanta, 2019, 219pp, US$18.

These two books, forming a continuum of thought, are both published by the Clarity Press Inc of Atlanta, Georgia. The significance of noting this is that Clarity Press specialises in revisionist works and critical commentary that departs from the mainstream: or, to quote directly from its website, 'Clarity titles ride the cutting edge of global issues ... critiquing and countering the often fraudulent mainstream narrative with deep insights and documented analysis.'

Andrei Martyanov is Russian by birth and a graduate of the Soviet Union's prestigious Kirov Naval Academy. In the mid-1990s, he migrated to the United States, where he now works as director of a commercial aerospace laboratory. He is a frequent contributor to the US Naval Institute blog. It appears that he is on a mission to alert his adopted country to the deficiencies in its defence planning and, to judge by the trenchant language he employs, is frustrated by his lack of success in persuading the powers that be to listen to a message they do not want to hear.

Losing Military Supremacy is more concerned with sociological and psychological factors, whereas The (Real) Revolution in Military Affairs concentrates more on the technicalities of procurement and the capabilities and deployment of weapon-systems. Together the two books provide a well-argued commentary on the changing global balance of power. Losing Military Supremacy contains chapters entitled 'The birth of modern American military mythology', 'The threat of a massive American military miscalculation' and an epilogue entitled 'Putin's game-changer: peace through strength', which all give the reader an idea of the author's critical perspective.

Martyanov's basic premise is that having never experienced the reality of warfare fought in its homeland, the American public and the military leaders and think-tank commentators it produces live largely in a make-believe world of Hollywood heroes and Tom Clancy novels. Martyanov argues that America's glamourised and unrealistic view of conventional war is based on such triumphs as the 1991 Operation Desert Storm, a turkey-shoot against a technically backward and demoralised Iraqi military, and on General...