Keeping the Edge: Managing Defense for the Future

This is not a book for the average reader. Unless you are involved or very interested in the national defense structure this is not a book that will appeal to you. Keeping the Edge is an anthology of defense analysts deliberately attempting to influence the opinion of the then-incoming administration of President Bush at the beginning of 2001. The authors and editors are very up front about this, seeing the beginning of the Bush presidency as the optimum time to effect their recommended changes in policy, structure and management of the defense structure. This is a book about the "Big Picture." When logistics are discussed here it is not the variations, trials and tribulations of projecting logistic support to Marines from Over The Horizon support ships, it is the very methods of procurement at the national level, used by the Department of Defense. When intelligence is the topic they are not discussing templated enemy positions and the "most dangerous" course of action of an enemy regiment, they are talking about reform of intelligence collection procedures and organizations at the CIA/NSA/DIA level. For most readers, for that matter for most anyone outside of the Washington, D.C. beltway this may be interesting, but difficult to follow. If, however, national defense issues and structural reform at the national level is your cup of tea then this book is for you. Inhabitants of the various military-focused think-tanks in the Washington, D.C. area will certainly want a copy. The majority of the recommendations, even when they are not earth-shattering, do appear well reasoned and rational. If the Marine Corps and the Rapid Deployment Forces of the Army are the "tip of the spear" then this is a book about what makes that spear lethal. After all, a spear without a long pole attached is merely a knife. It takes the weight of that spear shaft to impart the energy to allow the spear tip to penetrate and kill. The authors are trying to make that shaft better, something not often addressed.

Here's a cold dose of reality that will shock moribound, parochial, tortoise-like bureaucrats in the military, intelligence community and within the ranks of civil service. Carter has assembled a host of brilliant, experienced and innovative thinkers, backed by their successful personal resumes, and has created a useful guide for necessary change within government. The author and other contributors resoundly articulate what the innovative, aggressive, forward looking and frustrated military and civilian memebers of the defense, executive and intelligence communities have been advocating since the fall of the Berlin Wall. Hopefully, several of the contributors will be confirmed for administration positions, and despite gravity, complacency and down-right bureaucratic fear, actually begin the inertia of needed change within the defense, intelligence and civil service bureacracies.