Reading list: Understanding revolution

By Mike Few

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As we embark on the second decade of the 21^st century, we face the possibility of spending another decade embattled in small wars. Prior to attempting to fix our military organization, reconfigure foreign policy and military strategy, and solving others’ wicked problems; we should begin by gaining a better understanding of revolution.

In the philosophical sense, most conflict today is competition from the haves and the have-nots, the crisis of the nation-state, and the dilemma of political power given scarce resources. In order to seek solutions, we must first seek to understand both ourselves and others. We have to learn how to see the world as it is and not how we wished it to be.

As we are better able to see the problems before us, then we may find better understanding and alternative solutions. In the Judeo-Christian tradition, this is called learning to walk in another man’s shoes.

Below is a reading list that can help us along the journey to understanding. This list reflects my own journey towards understanding after fighting in the wars of the last decade. Specifically, it reflects my own frustration that we were not able to force the desired outcome in either Iraq or Afghanistan.

It Happened on the Way to War: A Marine’s Path to Peace by Rye Barcott

Father of Money: Buying Peace in Baghdad by Jason Whiteley

The Human Face of War by Jim Starr. Military needs smaller staffs, innovation, and focus on empowering people. Book review here.

American Force: Dangers, Delusions, and Dilemmas in National Security by Richard K. Betts. Post-Cold War foreign policy has misused military power trying to turn a spoon into a knife.

Protestant Ethic by Max Weber. Father of Sociology describes why Americans and the Western World are do-ers and why we feel that we must fix other societies.

The Motorcycle Diaries: Notes on a Latin American Journey. Che’s early years when he was traveling and feeling empathy for the bottom 99 percent. Of course, after he got power, he was corrupted. Same issue we’re seeing today with the Shiia in Iraq. They want revenge and payback instead of focusing on healing, forgiveness, and moving the state forward.

Sandinista: Carlos Fonseca and the Nicaraguan Revolution by Matilde Zimmermann. Biography of Carlos Fonseca Amador, the legendary leader of the Sandinista National Liberation Front of Nicaragua (the FSLN) and the most important and influential figure of the post-1959 revolutionary generation in Latin America. Fonseca, killed in battle in 1976, was the undisputed intellectual and strategic leader of the FSLN. In a groundbreaking and fast-paced narrative that draws on a rich archive of previously unpublished Fonseca writings, Matilde Zimmermann sheds new light on central themes in his ideology as well as on internal disputes, ideological shifts, and personalities of the FSLN.

Blood Done Signed My Name by Tim Tyson. Civil Right Movement goes violent in Oxford, NC after black paratrooper is killed by a group of white men, and the system acquits.

Rules for Radicals by Saul Alinski. How the movement in Chicago forced the power structure to provide essential services to the ghettos. Why should the suburbs have their trash collected and good schools but the inner city does not?

Preface to Maynard Smith’s Evolution and the Theory of Games. Nobel Laureate describes how difficult it is to model human beings competing over limited resources.

Wicked Problems And Network Approaches To Resolution by Nancy Roberts. My mentor describes her frustration in trying to negotiate peace and modernization with the Taliban in 1997 at the conclusion of the last Civil War.

And of course, Fight Club –– understanding the anarchists who reject the state.

Michael Few is a retired Army officer and former editor of Small Wars Journal.