Rating: 
Summary: 5 for Scholarship, 3 for Missing the Point, 4 on Balance
Review:
I feel so strongly about the misdirection of this book, its eminent author not-withstanding, that I actually did a press release responding to the early publicity. I hope you find it interesting, because we will lose many more lives and pay much migher costs in damages if we fail to reform national, military, and law enforcement intelligence at the strategic, operational, tactical, and technical levels. Send me an email if you would like to have a list of 20 really great books on intelligence.
FORMER SPY AND NATIONAL SECURITY EXPERT RESPONDS TO SIR JOHN KEEGAN'S NEW BOOK TO THE EFFECT THAT INTELLIGENCE DOES NOT WIN WARS Washington, D.C., October 23/PRNEWSWIRE/ -- Robert David Steele, a former spy and founder of the Marine Corps Intelligence Command, applauds Sir John Keegan's commentary "Forget about James Bond -intelligence never wins wars" as filed on 22/10/2003. However, Steele says, "As a long-time admirer of Sir John's prowess in understanding warfare, I must respectfully say that in this instance, he stands with the American Colonel who plaintively observed to the North Vietnamese Colonel that America won all the battles in Viet-Nam-to which the man replied, as recounted by Harry Summers, with (and I paraphrase), 'So what? That is irrelevant to the outcome.'" Steele goes on, "Where Sir John misses the point is with respect to the distinct role of intelligence at the strategic level. As Sun Tsu (and perhaps even Colin Gray) would no doubt observe to Sir John, 'If you've gotten yourself into a war at all, then you have failed to win by other means, and it is this that is the larger intelligence failure.'" Steele concludes, "It is my own experience that 80% of the American national security budget is wastefully expended on a heavy metal military that is useless 90% of the time. Indeed, of the $500 billion a year we spend today, we should reduce the amount spent on conventional and nuclear forces by half, while re-directing the savings toward special operations, gendarme, peace, and homeland security intelligence and counterintelligence. America has begun a hundred-year war on six different fronts precisely because the President lacked intelligence in every sense of the word, and because he and his ideologically-motivated handlers also lacked the kind of long-term diverse strategy for securing a sustainable long-term peace that can only come from a full understanding of diverse threats and circumstances. Yes, soldiers win wars. Intelligence professionals prevent wars by being prescient, clever, and covertly effective." Mr. Steele is the author of ON INTELLIGENCE: Spies and Secrecy in an Open World (2001); THE NEW CRAFT OF INTELLIGENCE: Personal, Public, & Political (2002); and a contributing editor of PEACEKEEPING INTELLIGENCE: Emerging Concepts for the Future (2003). All can be purchased at Amazon.
Rating: 
Summary: Good, but not Keegan's Best
Review: As someone completely unfamiliar with the world of intelligence gathering, but keenly interested in world politics and history, I found this work to be a fantastic primer on the subject. As such, its content may be too famliar for those who already know a lot about military affairs and/or the world of intelligence. If anything, this work suffers from the high expectations that come with being a Keegan book. The man can write. Reading one of his books is like slipping into a champagne jacuzzi -- I've read all of his other books, and they were all a treat, true literature. In this instance, Keegan seems to have lost some of the sparkle that made works like "The Face of Battle" so remarkable. Definitely a good read, but not his best.
Rating:
Summary: Eloquently -written history making an unnecessary point.
Review: As usual John Keegan provides a highly readable, well-detailed and thought-out study in military history. Unfortunately, the overarching point of the book is that intelligence alone can be used well or used poorly, but, in the end, can't win a battle or war by itself. This theme is unfortunate because no professional intelligence or military historian has ever claimed otherwise. Only a few hard-core Tom Clancy or Ian Flemming fans would suggest intelligence can determine a battle's outcome ahead of time. This book is still recommended for its analysis of military history and is worth having on one's bookshelf. Too bad someone of Keegan's stature demeaned himself by hammering home such an easy, obvious point. I half expect his next book to (oh my god!) claim that someone who brings a knife to a gunfight will be at a disadvantage!!!
Rating:
Summary: Wrong Kind Of Wars
Review: As with most military arm-chair thinking I've seen over the past decade or so, this book, too, is mired in the past. With the fall of Soviet communism in 1990, the US military emerged supreme in the world with its conventional might. At that time it was safe to assume that no comparable conventional enemy would emerge to credibly challenge the conventional high-tech US military for at least the next quarter of a century. It should also have been safe to assume at that time that potential enemies would pursure unconventional low-tech means to undermine US supremacy. While we had spent a half century building advanced technical intelligence means to keep tabs on specific large conventional forces, we did so while sacrificing our human intelligence means to keep tabs on these and other kinds of potential enemies elsewhere. The immediate future of the US military portends a preponderance of unconventional conflict, from guerrilla warfare through insurgency to international (borderless) "terrorism". In such conflict, technical intelligence means will inevitably decline in effectiveness while reliable human intelligence of all types will prove to be the critical deciding factor. Such conclusions are not to be found in American conventional warfare history, and this fact significantly reduces the value to Keegan's work to today's realities. The examples we currently have in both guerrilla warfare Afghanistan and insurgency warfare Iraq, plus international "terrorism" there and everywhere else - where the US military, including its unconventional (special ops) forces, are trying to operate without their best HUMINT eyes and ears, should be all that's needed to, belatedly, re-examine this whole area. There is simply no other way to defeat a potent, dedicated and sophisticated unconventional (or "terrorist") enemy (with a pool of two billion potential recruits) - no matter how superior are our weapons systems. While Keegan discounts the critical value of intelligence in past conventional warfare, he certainly cannot reach the same conclusions with unconventional warfare - and it is this type of warfare that will now occupy our attention for decades to come. This conclusion was reachable in 1990, but in 2003 Keegan, like so many others, was still studying the past to find lessons for the future. Sadly he, like so many others, was looking at the wrong kind of wars.
Rating:
Summary: keegan stuck on the 20th century
Review: first, there's nothing, no information about al qaeda. being a follower of keegan since 'the face of battle', I wonder how he authorised a cover like the book has.
The main body of writing centers on the 'Enigma' code breaking without adding anything new. Everything old hat. I wonder how Sir John Keegan came to the conclusion that this book was necessary. The central idea, 'war is won by acting, intelligence is (are)ideas" puts in front of us another question. In order to strike, we have to know where, as the new situation, the 21st century situation proclaims.Keegan, with much more past than future as a military historian.
Rating: 
Summary: Excellent book!
Review: I bought this book, and I must say, it is absolutely fantastic! As for Ayal Anis' review, he obviously does not know that many books are printed "rough". It's a style of printing, meant to make it look like an old book when sitting on a bookshelf. If he were to actually open the book and look, he would see that every paragraph on every page is in direct alignment with the paragraphs on the pages behind it, and that every paragraph is set to some very exacting margins. Ayal Anis is quite ignorant and needs to learn that appearance doesn't mean everything. You don't get any more shallow than him.
Rating:
Summary: Not Quite to al Qaida
Review: I found John Keegan's book well written, although the title is somewhat misleading. In my opinion, this work focuses mostly where Mr. Keegan seems to be most comfortable, in World War II. Even though some of the concepts he describes span across time, I found few take-aways for the current war on terrorism. Additionally, there appears to be more written about the military operations themselves, rather than about the intellgence influence in those ops. I appreciate the fact that Mr. Keegan defends the intelligence community, as all too often intelligence is simply a scape goat for leadership to blame when they make bad decisions. I would recommend this book to any history oriented readers interested in wars during the first half of the 20th Century.
Rating:
Summary: Surprise! To Know Well and Use Well Are Not The Same Thing!
Review: I give this book 3 stars because although it is well-written, it seems to state the obvious with the heavy weight of scholarship. In essence, Keegan's point seems to be this: the best intelligence isn't enough to win a battle. There are a lot of other factors involved. Isn't that kind of obvious to anyone who reads the newspaper?
I just don't need a whole book to explicate by example that bad battle decisions in response to good intelligence can squander any edge gained by insight into the enemy's plans. Recent history is full of examples of that. You don't have to go back to Pearl Harbor for a good look. How about Somalia? 9/11? Iraq? Perhaps this book is useful to hard-core military historians or warriors who want to dissect where the too-human screw-ups occured, kind of like a collection of business case studies. For me, I'll pass on dissecting the obvious bottom-line lessons. I'll wait for another book that describes how how to prevent these messes from occuring by enhancing operations doctrine and political decision making that often drives it.
Rating: 
Summary: A disappointment
Review: I saw the author on Cspans booknotes and was enthralled by the discussion. I went out and bought the book immediately. I can't believe the writer of the book and the man on Booknotes was the same person. Without going into specifics as other reviewers have, let me just say that I found this book extremely tedious and repetitive. I thought I would never finish it. (I always finish books I start, I'm a type A personality that way!) I recommend a pass on this one
Rating:
Summary: Superficial
Review: I struggled through this book. I have to be honest to say it's a disappointment, in relation to other books of John Keegan I have read. The casestudies carry on and on about certain historical manouevres and the effects of intelligence (or combat information) on these manouevres. The cases are primarily centered on the distribution of information, thus on communication. This is very vital, but what about collection, collation, et cetera? Communication can be intersepted, but what about the relevance (and timeliness) of the communicated information? What about the developments in analyses and evaluation, about organizing intelligence? Almost nothing. Iff you are interested in intelligence, there are better, more in-depth (and shorter) books available. For "firsttimers" I can recommend 'Spies and Spymasters' (old, still available?), a clear, concise and sometimes funny explanation of intelligence through the ages. Excuse my English writing.
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