books reviewed by Dan Donovan
”We Have Met the Enemy and He is Us” by Brett Boudreau 415 pages • ISBN: 978-9934-8582-2-2
Donald Trump has yet to be sworn in as President, yet his unscripted comments about NATO and other alliances have many panicking. Russian troops are at war in the Ukraine, and they are rattling their sabre at Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia. Canada currently has a large contingent of troops on NATO operations in both the Ukraine and Latvia. In Latvia, the Canadians form the nucleus of the battle group, at the Adazi military base. Most analysts believe that NATO is as relevant today as it was when it was formed in 1949. Brett Boudreau, is a former Canadian senior military officer who served in the top echelons at NATO. His important, impressive and timely book “We Have Met the Enemy and He is Us”, examines the strategic communications used by NATO powers during the 2003-2014 Afghanistan campaign. The book is a must read for defence and foreign affairs experts, analysts and academics who can get a thorough and complete study of the communications side of a modern day military campaign. Boudreau is candid that at NATO there are discussions and policy choices made every day during military operations, and that military people often disagree. He examines the process and interaction that happens with strategic communications at the policy option stage and policy choice stage. He reviews the operational execution and the strategic communications that were important components of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) campaign. Large parts of his narrative are dedicated,
in some detail, to the strategic communications at NATO Headquarters, and chronicle the ISAF mission command by command with an accuracy that can often only be found in the discipline of a military organization. The most refreshing and insightful parts of the book are when Boudreau describes the conflicting views between NATO members and other nations about whether strategic communications is a process, mindset, capability – or a combination of the three – the answer to which, he says affects doctrine, structure and resources. Boudreau’s willingness to cite the successes, the inadequacies, and at times, the failures in NATO’s strategic communications is refreshing and gives this book special credibility. There are also important lessons here for the NATO officials, foreign service officers, military officers and others who are dealing today, with the crisis in the Ukraine, and Latvia. Boudreau’s work validates the argument that a solid and reasoned communications policy, with structure and objectives, goes a long way in shaping opinions n Read the full book at http://www.stratcomcoe.org/we-have-metenemy-and-he-us-analysis-nato-strategic-communications-internationalsecurity-assistance
Hostage to History by Elie Mikhael Nasrallah 157 pages • ISBN: 978-1-4602-8277-9
In Hostage to History, Elie Nasrallah asks questions that many in North America and Europe wonder: what happened to Arab culture and its peoples? and what is going on in the Arab world? Nasrallah is of Lebanese heritage and has become one of the Arab world’s greatest critics. The problem, his problem, is that it seems that most in the Arab world today are not self-reflective or even see a need to ask these questions, let alone answer them. The theme of this book (and answer) is: it’s the culture. Nasrallah takes the reader into the abyss of contemporary Arab cultural conditions and looks at its political tension. He postulates that an outdated educational system, illiteracy, political tyranny, the lack of freedom, women’s oppression, sexual repression, the mixing of religion and politics, and the bonanza of oil wealth that is controlled by a small and 8 OTTAWALIFE FEBRUARY 2017
elitist group of wealthy Arab people, have all conversed and are contributing to the cataclysmic disruption of the Arab state-system. Nasrallah promotes a 12-point plan for getting the Arab world to rejoin modernity and participate with other regions in becoming a modern, right-based entity. He addresses many of the key flashpoints that are at the heart of expression of religion in modern society. His book and reasoning remind me in many ways of Christopher Hitchens 2007 book, God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, where Hitchens makes a case against organized religion by postulating that organized religion is “violent, irrational, intolerant, allied to racism, tribalism, and bigotry, invested in ignorance and hostile to free inquiry, contemptuous of women and coercive toward children” and sectarian, and that accordingly it “ought to have a great deal on its conscience.” I dare say Nasrallah makes similar arguments. But he is braver because he is from the Arab world, and thus his book is a far greater threat to those from that world, some of whom may not cherish freedom n