Military Review English Edition January-February 2017 | Page 134

cannot be in doubt. From meager beginnings as personnel
security detachments, PMCs augmented the conventional forces providing security in war zones. Through PMC
actions, U.S. and coalition soldiers are free to pursue the
enemy instead of being tied up guarding diplomats, international aid operations, or critical infrastructure. PMCs
conduct a wide range of missions from personal security
detachments to covert reconnaissance, snatch and grabs,
and the dark side of the business such as forced r elocation
of indigenous peoples, all of which are described in an
entertaining way. The wide variety of tasks they are called
to perform, and the emotional context that peppers the
narrative, will leave you intrigued.

Eric McGraw, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas

THE NEW NUCLEAR DISORDER

Challenges to Deterrence and Strategy

Stephen J. Cimbala, Ashgate Publishing Company,
New York, 2015, 254 pages

T

he New Nuclear Disorder: Challenges to Deterrence
and Strategy is well written and easy to read,
even if you are not familiar with the jargon or
esoteric terms of art in the fields Stephen J. Cimbala
covers. The book is a compendium of different ways the
nuclear weapons policy problem is changing during the
beginning of the twenty-first century. Cimbala examines
a specific policy issue with each chapter. Many of the
issues overlap to some degree between chapters, providing some continuity, but the issues are largely covered
independently by chapter.
Although I cannot represent all the chapters in a
short book review, I will touch on some of the more
interesting ideas Cimbala brings to light. He does a
nice job recounting the essential elements needed
during a crisis for two opposing sides (the simplest
case) to limit escalation and resolve their differences. Cimbala then points out that, essentially, all the
elements he lists for a positive crisis resolution are
targets for cyber war. In an actual crisis, the use of
information war techniques could make information
so untrustworthy that opponents would not reasonably understand one another’s positions and therefore
could not resolve the crisis without escalation or
possibly a nuclear exchange.
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The book is not based entirely in theoretical scenarios.
A significant portion is devoted to historical events that
highlight the ease with which a nuclear crisis could develop. Cimbala uses events like the Able Archer “War Scare”
in 1983, a Norwegian scientific rocket launch over Russia
in 1995, and Vladimir Putin’s operations in Ukraine in
2014 to show how fragile global peace may be.
Cimbala covers other major areas of concern for those
who must solve contemporary nuclear policy problems.
These include how geography affects deterrence, the potential for proliferation of nuclear weapons in Asia, how
to end an ongoing nuclear conflict, the likelihood of small
regional nuclear wars, culturally based misunderstandings, missile defense technology issues, and the effects of
proliferation (potentially positive or negative effects).
The underlying theme is that the way deterrence
worked during the Cold War is no longer a valid model
for contemporary policy, and new solutions must be
developed. Cimbala lays out many thought-provoking
problems but does not offer solutions.
The sole criticism I have for this book is the lack of
clear explanation for the model being used to predict the
results of a nuclear exchange. It is important to understand the assumptions used to determine the survivability
of nuclear weapons in the various scenarios he proposes.
The reader is left to accept Cimbala’s estimates without
further explanation. It is a departure from an otherwise
highly authoritative and well-documented work.
In summary, this is a very provocative and interesting book. If you have an interest in twenty-first century
changes that affect nuclear weapons policy, this book will
be very interesting for you, and it will illuminate challenges that are very difficult and are yet to be solved by
policy makers worldwide.

Harold A. Laurence, PhD,
Fort Leavenworth, Kansas

THE U.S. NAVAL INSTITUTE
ON NAVAL COMMAND

Edited by Thomas J. Cutler, Naval Institute Press,
Annapolis, Maryland, 2015, 194 pages

W

ith the vast number of books on leadership, readers could wonder what subject a
new book could cover that others have not
January-February 2017  MILITARY REVIEW