Nuclear bodies: the global Hibakusha

but being good at politics is a different thing.And it should be embraced.In the case of General Clark, his problems did not arise so much from his similarities with Massengale, but rather from his failing to be good at politics.Most other individuals in Freedman's book, from US General Douglas MacArthur in Korea to Donald Rumsfeld, US Secretary of Defense at the time of the Iraq War, to Che Guevara's guerrilla efforts in Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo) and to Russian Colonel Igor Girkin's time in Ukraine, suffered from similar faults, while operating in unique ways and under varied circumstances.These and other empirical cases are discussed in detail in 15 chronologically organized chapters, which were selected to cover the diversity of contemporary conflict.Accordingly, Freedman includes superpowers and small states; intelligence services, insurgencies and separatist movements; democracies and autocracies; and voices from the global North and the global South (although China remains mostly absent until the conclusion).Freeman's knowledge of these cases is encyclopaedic, but the chapter on Ukraine is already out of date, having been written well before the Yevgeny Prigozhin-led Wagner uprising of June 2023.Nonetheless, Freedman anticipated this, cautioning his readers that it was 'an unavoidably incomplete analysis' (p.361).Of all the personalities in the book, another former US Secretary of Defense, Jim Mattis, seems to be the most aware of the importance of politics.In 2001, Mattis was in command of a Marine task force in Afghanistan that he believed could have made a difference in capturing or killing Osama bin Laden and the rest of the remnants of Al-Qaeda.However, he was held back by his superiors in the chain of command, extending up to the White House.Instead of blaming them, Mattis listed his own shortcomings: 'looking at myself, perhaps I hadn't invested the time to build understanding up the chain of command … I should have paid more attention and gotten on the same wavelength as my higher headquarters if I wanted them to be my advocates ' (p.423).Indeed, every other personality in the book and everyone in command today would do well to learn from Freedman's analysis of these individual experiences and the book's overall lessons.Overall, and in partnership with the other titles referred to here, this is essential reading for professional military education, from service academies to war colleges.Civilian policy-makers and other interested parties in the international community would do well to read it, too.It is an absorbing, insightful book on contemporary military history.