The Inheritance: America's Military After Two Decades of War

Exploring how the U.S. military can move beyond Iraq and Afghanistan.Since the September 11, 2001, attacks, the U.S. military has been fighting incessantly in conflicts around the globe, but with inconclusive results. The legacy of this long involvement in war without end includes a military that is bitter and frustrated. The public is disinterested. The national security apparatus seeks to pivot away from these engagements and to move on to the next threats - notably those emanating from China and Russia. At best there are ad hoc, unstructured debates about Iraq or Afghanistan. Many young Americans question whether it even makes sense to invest in the military. Simply put, there has been no serious, organized stocktaking by the public, politicians, opinion leaders, or the military itself of this inheritance. Despite its lengthy warfighting experience and high-technology weapons, the military is woefully unprepared for future wars because of this conflicted legacy and uncertainty about the future security environment. But the United States cannot simply hit the reset button.If the U.S. military seeks to win in the future, it must acknowledge and reconcile with the inheritance of its long and failed wars. This book seeks to help them do so.

Table of Contents:
Contents: Acknowledgments Preface 1. Why Should We Care: Legacy, Myth, and Memory 2. The Military’s Sense of Itself: The Crisis of Confidence 3. The Military’s Relationship to Society: The Crisis of Caring 4. The Military’s Relationship with Its Overseers: The Crisis of Meaningful Civilian Control 5. How the Military Goes to War 6. How the Military Wages War 7. Who Serves in the Military 8. Who Leads the Military 9. The Military’s Preparedness for Future Conflicts 10. Now What? Brief Chronology of the Post-9/11 Wars Notes Index

About the Author :
Mara E. Karlin was director of Strategic Studies and associate professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. Karlin previously served in national security roles for five U.S. secretaries of defense. She is the author of Building Militaries in Fragile States: Challenges for the United States.

Review :
In between her stints of service in the Pentagon, first under U.S. President Barack Obama and now under President Joe Biden, Karlin explored what went wrong with the two big U.S. wars of this century, in Afghanistan and Iraq. She considered, in turn, how the military went to war, how it waged war, who served in the ranks, and who led, before addressing what the prosecution of these wars meant for future conflicts. To this end, she interviewed around 100 civilian and military figures. Quotes from these interviews enliven her book and help bring home the importance of personalities, leadership, the emotions that can be aroused by apparently dry debates about civil-military relations, and the dangers of too great a separation between the armed forces and the society they serve. Americans routinely express gratitude for soldiers without really understanding what their service entails or the toll of long tours in hostile environments. She urges continued reflection on mistakes as well as achievements, better dialogue between the civilian and military leadership, and holding them both to proper account.