The Shadow War: Inside the Modern-Day Undeclared Battles Waged Against America

Not too political and very succinct in its telling. Gives some good information I wasn\’t aware of before. He does a very good job with his first hand accounts and walks through some of the backgrounds that lead up to current events you might not have put together before. The best part it is not full of Nepostism of the US being helpless but instead provides hope that if we pay attention, we very well can be the country that continues to steer world policy. And thank God for that.

You can discount CNN all you want, but Id Say you are wildly missing out on a good resource. Jim does wonderful work outlining exactly why china and Russia are quickly becoming the Indians to our proverbial Redcoats. The over arching point being why declare open warfare when you can gain everything you want via the hybrid warfare he describes that both countries are currently cheerfully using against us at will I would hope the current administration would take note but….

Informative and interesting, but paints a dangerously incomplete picture of the world. Jim Sciutto\’s book is a very interesting look at the tactics employed by two of America\’s rivals – Russia & China – to challenge American global dominance. Sciutto\’s theory is that both nations are employing a form of assymetric warfare designed to challenge US interests, but to stay \”below the threshold\” that would elicit a powerful (presumably military) response. In order to support this idea, he cites several different incidents – from China\’s expansion in the South China sea, where he paints a picture of the transformation and militarization of the region by China over the last decade; to the Ukraine, where Russia very successfully employed proxies to manipulate the situation towards their interests. Throughout the narration, he builds a convincing case that these two countries are indeed violating what he defines as \”the rules based global order\”, led by the United States. There is a compelling amount of evidence to demonstrate both that this is happening, and that the US response to it has been inadequate. However, this is ultimately a superficial examination of world events, because the author seems to be under the delusion that these are exceptional actions, rather than simply tools of statecraft used by almost all global players – foremost among them the United States itself. Russia\’s use of proxies in the Ukraine follows exactly the template the US set in Libya and Syria, except that the Russians were more committed to the operation due to geographical closeness, and thereby more successful. China\’s militarization of the South China sea and aggressive ramp-up of military spending deserves scrutiny, but it must be viewed in context: Chinas military spending is still only 1/5th that of the United States – and both past and current US administrations have made plenty of noises that would make any competitor nervous and inclined to increase their military budget. The authors portrayal of these two nations as the primary obstacle to world peace is simply not believable for most people who live outside US borders: Global polls, even during the Obama era, consistently showed that Russia and China are seen as less of a threat to world peace than the US. Additionally, all the solutions proposed by the author fall right into the category described by Ronan Farrow as mil-think – an approach to solving conflicts that is primarily military, rather than diplomatic in nature. Sciuttos selection of who he interviews is consistent with this, as his selections generally involve the people whose job it is to be paranoid about security – again, it is reasonable to interview people in security and threat assessment, but interviewing only these people without gathering the thoughts of diplomats is a glaring error. Thus, almost all the proposed solutions involve escalations in military pressure by the United States, or more drastic sanctions; neither of which are likely to garner any degree of public support from an already war-weary general electorate. All in all, this is an informative book to read, but it paints a disturbingly inaccurate view of the world and involves almost no reflection on what our place in the world ought to be. Instead, much like former President George W Bush, it attempts to neatly divide the world into good and evil forces, and attempts to ask the question, How should we respond to these evil people attacking us?. It answers that question well, but the flawed premise of that line of questioning remains unexamined. The book is still worth reading, as it is an entertaining and informative look at the tools of statecraft employed by our rivals, but Id highly recommend reading two other books first: (1) Ben Rhodes The World as it is – an excellent memoir of the State Department during the Obama administration; and (2) Ronan Farrows War on Peace: The End of Diplomacy and the Decline of American Influence – about the decline of what used to be the worlds most powerful & effective diplomatic machine: the US State Department. Without that background reading, this book will likely just lead you into a state of mindless jingoism, the results of which were clearly seen during the Bush administration years. The world cannot be neatly divided into forces of good and evil, no matter how hard security experts try to convince you otherwise. The narration for the audiobook is excellent.

A very non partisan and factual narrative of what our country is in the midst of.

What else can I say. The author has a great voice but he repeats the information a lot, sometimes the same exact sentences in the same chapter and then again in future chapters.

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