Does this whole article not miss the wider picture? Namely, that the minute the USA handed over security responsibility to the Government of Iraq, the whole house of cards created by McChrystal’s revamped COIN doctrine collapsed and we end up where we are today with ISIS. Valedictory articles about McChrystal’s genius are all very well, but history…

Wow — your review has struck a brilliant balance by being both informative in itself and whetting my appetite to get the book!

I’m intrigued by the possibility for young democracies to behave in this agile, responsive manner (a dot com start-up mentality), able to take deliberate risks instead of accepting the conventional…

That was the reaction of a couple of participants in the DEF discussion. I think that challenge actually misses the point. The book is narrowly about how to effectively create a team of teams. The mission and context is taken as a given — we don’t get to pick the wars and we don’t get to schedule the exit. Those topics are out of the book’s scope.