Unconventional Warfare: Rebuilding U.S. Special Operation Forces (The Rediscovering Government Series) - Softcover

Marquis, Susan

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0815754752 ISBN 13: 9780815754756

Publisher: Brookings Institution Press, 1997

Synopsis

For four decades after World War II, U.S. Special Operations Forces—including Army Special Forces, Navy SEALs, Air Force special operations aircrews and Special Tactics Group—suffered from mistrust and inadequate funding from the military services. They were nearly eliminated from the active force following the Vietnam War. But in the past fifteen years, special operations forces have risen from the ashes of the failed 1980 rescue of American hostages in Iran to become one of the most frequently deployed elements of the U.S. military. They are now adequately funded, better-equipped, and well-trained. Special operations forces are often the nation's first military response when faced with a crisis in today's uncertain and unstable international security environment.
What caused this dramatic turnaround? As this book shows, it was a long way from congressional outrage at TV images of burned bodies of U.S. servicemen in the Iranian desert to the establishment of a special operations force of nearly 45,000 active and reserve personnel. The drama of how this happened sheds light on how public policy is made and implemented. It illustrates the complex interaction between internal forces within the special operations community, as well as between the executive and legislative branches of the U.S. government. The implementation of legislation establishing a special operations capability is seen to rebuild and protect these forces to an extent never imagined by the early ""quiet professionals.""
While offering insights into how the U.S. government makes policy, Susan Marquis also offers a revealing look at the special operations community, including their storied past, extreme training, and recent operational experience that continues to forge their distinctive organizational mission and culture. She describes the decade-long struggle to rebuild special operations forces, resulting in new SOF organizations with independence that is unique among U.S. military forces, an independence approaching that of a new military service.

About this title

About the Author

Susan L. Marquis is a division director in the office of the Secretary of Defense in Program Analysis & Evaluation.

From the Back Cover

This is a splendid history of U.S. Special Operations Forces, based on thorough research in primary sources and written with a firm hand.

Reviews

This remarkable case study, based on personal interviews, congressional records, and other official documents, shows how defense policy is made and how difficult it can be to implement. The primary focus is the decade-long effort to reform the U.S. special operations forces community. After a long struggle "of dramatic highs and lows," this process culminated in legislation creating the Special Operations Command (SOCOM) in 1987. Marquis, a Defense Department employee who first wrote this as a Ph.D. dissertation at Princeton, covers the catastrophic rescue mission in Iran in 1980, Grenada, Panama, Somalia, and Iraq. There are some graphic but brief combat scenes. This amazing story deserves our attention as much as any war.?John J. Yurechko, Georgetown Univ., Washington, D.C.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Brookings Institution Press
• Publication date: 1997
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0815754752
• ISBN 13: 9780815754756
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 335