Book Review: The Great Game by Peter Hopkirk

Subtitled “The Struggle for Empire in Central Asia” this work covers in a fair amount of detail, the machinations between the UK and Russia over about a 100 year period from the early 1800s to the early 1900s as they worked for positioning and influence throughout the areas of Iran, northern India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and the rest of the ‘stans. These efforts which frequently edged closely to all out war between these two great powers never fell over into such a conflagration but did involve significant conflicts between both Russian and UK forces and the local populations throughout these areas.

Russian and UK armies advance and retreat, conquer and are conquered, take territory and lose it over and over. All the while what we would call “spies” from each side work to leverage their knowledge and political influence to control their “spheres of influence”.

Not focusing on any one effort in the Great Game, Hopkirk covers the breadth of it, relaying the most interesting and important events. His recount of the English retreat from Kabul in 1842 stands out as a key example of what you find in this work as Hopkirk details General Elphinstone’s completely incompetant abandoning of Kabul and attempted withdrawal to Jalalabad. In this effort all but a literal handful of 16,000 soldiers and civilians who started out were killed, died of exposure, or captured. One of the worst military disasters in English history is put in its proper place with the reasons for why Elphinstone was in Kabul in the first place, the seemingly small conflicts that led up to the disaster (Sir Alexander Burns’ murder) and its aftermath leading to a counter invasion by additional British forces, all provided their own weight and context.

The book is far too deep and detailed to try and cover in such a small review as this but its recounting of some of the most harrowing tales, violence, bravery, exploration, and sacrifice warrant reading for just the “adventure” of it all. The reader comes away with not just an appreciation for just how great powers seek to undermine one another and establish power within these remote regions but just how much what we see today with our modern efforts there are merely a repetition of what has gone before. The similarities between Elphinstone’s idiotic decision making do not appear much different than our own disaster at Kabul only a year ago. The US vs. Russia proxy conflict in Afghanistan merely mimics that of the UK vs. Russia events of 150 years ago. China’s entry into the area now to fill the power vacuum just continues traditions by world powers playing in the high Himalayas for centuries.

Fantastic work and there are certainly other works that cover certain aspects of The Great Game in more detail but I think you’d be hard pressed to find one that covers the entire scope of the chessboard movements over a century any better than what is done here.

Book Review: Masters of Chaos by Linda Robinson

Damn…I should have liked this book. Right up my middle-aged, white guy, desk-jockey, alley.

Unfortunately it is a 400 page “report” by a “reporter” vs. a story or a consumable work that provides any context or analysis. The most interesting part is the last 20 pages when the author begins to draw conclusions about the things she has seen, people interviewed, and the longer arc of history.

The rest of the work sounds simply like a restatement of an amateur reporter’s list of “who, what, where, and when”…without including even much of the “why”.

All of the special forces members covered in this deserve better. They are reduced to mere shells or cardboard standups. No reader can distinguish one from another or trace the events of a reappearing individual from one event to the next. Simply recounting “Bob was in Panama in 1990 where he led team X in the conflict” and then 100 pages later “Bob returned to the conflict zone in Somalia four years later where he roped into a village” and then 100 more pages later “he retired to write a book on unconventional warfare” does not make for an insightful or interesting read.

None of this is to say what Robinson is recounting her is fake, embellished, or unremarkable…it is. The Special Forces have done remarkable things with limited resources and in ways the American public doesn’t recognize—very different things than the more widely heralded SEAL Teams and other “Tier One” operators. These special forces deserve their skills and accomplishments recounted with the full background, analysis, commentary, color, description, and character that they possess. This isn’t that.

My last gripe here is with the hacks doing the back cover recommendations of the book. In no way did these individuals actually read the book before they were paid to provide a quote. Hell…John McCain and Robert Baer use nearly the same language in their first sentences in these promotions that tell you they were given a script and told “I’ll give you $5000 if you sign off on having said this so we can promote the book under your name”. There is a TON of work done on the actions special forces of all kinds (using the SF term here very generally) over the past 20 years. Choose a different one than this.