Why this book: Selected by the SEAL book club I’m a member of. When we met to discuss it, Mike Vickers joined us for the discussion – it was a lively and very informative supplement to having read his book.

Summary in 1 (long) Sentence: This is Mike Vickers’ autobiography – presented in five parts – 1.”Preparation” – his early years and his time as a Green Beret; 2.”War with the Red Army” – his time in the CIA and playing a key role in US support to the Mujahideen fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan; 3. “War with Al-Qa’ida” his role in fighting Al-Qa’ida and the Taliban after 9/11, mostly in Afghanistan but also in Iraq and elsewhere; 4.”Fighting on Multiple Fronts” – as ASD SO/LIC and USD-I advising on and carrying out strategies to fight America’s enemies beyond Iraq and Afghanistan during and after the Global War on Terrorism; and finally, 5.”Reflections” his views on how the US should fight against current and future threats to national security, as well as an account of the honors he’s received upon leaving govt service.

Impressions: A fascinating look from an insider in America’s fight against terrorism and a number of small wars and conflicts over the 40+ years between the 70s and the mid 20 teens. Vickers served under six Presidents from Ford to Obama. As he got more senior, he shares how the strategic visions of the different Presidents changed and affected US strategy in dealing with conflicts overseas.

The book is part autobiography and part history – there were times when I fetl overwhelmed by facts that might be of value to a historian doing research but were more than I was interested in knowing. The lay reader like myself could have done without many of the facts and background material on weapon systems and other details that were apparently presented to fill in gaps in the history of the conflicts he writes about for those who might be doing research or using this book as a reference for either history or future operations. Stylistically, the writing was in straightforward narrative form and while Vickers did add personal notes, impressions and anecdotes to his story which added his personal views and occasionally even humor to his account, it was mostly his participation and role in “what happened.”

All that said, his life’s story and trajectory are impressive and fascinaing. He began as a very young man enlisting in the Army post Vietnam, was selected for and passed the Special Forces Basic training program and rose quickly through the NCO ranks to become an officer and eventually Captain. During his time in SF he participated in several high profile classified missions and attained a strong reputation as someone who could get things done. He then left the Army to pursue his dream of working for the CIA. His SF background made him a good choice to support the CIA program supporting the Mujahideen fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan during the 1980s, and he quickly became a key figure in that effort.

US efforts in support of the Mujahideen in Afghanistan, where Vickers became a major player, were dramatized in the movie Charlie Wilson’s War. The details and back-story of our support for the Mujahideen against the Soviets was indeed fascinating. He clearly admired CIA director William Casey and Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher in making the tough choices that were crucial to America’s help to the Mujahideen who eventually drove the Soviets out of Afghanistan. Those decisions included providing weapon systems that had the potential of escalating the war, but proved critical to escalating the costs to the Soviets of continuing the war. Premier among those were Thatcher’s agreement to allow the Mujahideen to use the British Blowpipe and Reagan’s decision to allow them to use Stinger missiles agains the Soviets.

He noted that in the case of supporting the Mujahideen, we were playing to win – whereas today supporting the Ukrainians against the Russians, we are simply playing to play. Also surprising to me was the key support that China also gave to the Mujahideen, and the cautious role that Pakistan also played. At that time, China was at loggerheads with the Soviets, and the Pakistanis were very concerned about having a Soviet proxy on their border. The US was playing an interesting coordinating role between all these players who were invested in preventing the Soviets from owning Afghanistan. Lots of people died in that effort – mostly Afghanis and Russians.

Soon after the fall of the Soviet bloc, Vickers left the CIA to pursue graduate studies and got his MBA from Wharton and his PhD from Johns Hopkins, and eventually became a senior vice president for strategic studies at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. It was in this role that Vickers cultivated relationships with senior governmental leaders and, at times, provided President George W. Bush and his cabinet with advice on the Iraq War. It was a position that undoubtedly set the conditions for his return to government service.

Under the George W Bush administration, he became Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations/Low Intensity Conflict (ASD SO/LIC) with an increased portfolio to include “Independent Capabilities” – which included Counter-proliferation. Vicker’s title was ASD SO/LIC IC – the first and last to have that expanded portfolio. When President Obama became President, he kept Vickers on in that positon and eventually approved him for the more senior position of Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence (USD-I)- responsible for the oversight of the entire Defense Intelligence portfolio.

In these two positons, as ASD SO/LIC IC and USD- I Vickers was at the top of policy during much of the war in Afthanstan and Iraq. In Part III of his book, “War with Al Qa’ida,” he provides fascinating insights into how decisions were made at the Political Strategic level in various aspects of our war with Al Qa’ida and he includes a couple of chapters on the search for, and finally the the decision to exeute the raid that killed Osama bin Laden. This successful raid fulfilled our objective of not only retribution for bin Laden’s many attacks on America, but also showed the world that you can strike America and run, but you can’t hide from the US forever.

The final sections of the book, under Part IV “Fighting on Multiple Fronts” and Part V “Reflections” : were of greatest interest to me. In these chapters he offers his perspectives on where we stand now in the world, and offers advice to America’s leaders for the future, based on his perspectives after a career of fighting Americas wars overseas at the tactical, operational, and strategic levels. He has sections on Counter-proliferation and what he calls “Counter narco-insurgency,” and how he views the return of Great Power competition and how he views what he calls “the New Cold War.”

Some of the key themes that he lays out that most caught my interest were:

• The role of Iran has had, and continues to have in fomenting violence and terrorism across the Middle East and the world.
• He often spoke of “escalation dominance” as key to winning a conflict. The principle of escalation dominance determines who can up the ante in a conflict until one side can’t accept the costs in keeping up and matching the level of violence, and therefore is forces to submit or back out. Vickers’ point: When we choose to fight, we should use “all means available” to achieve escalation dominance, and show that we play to win.
• He pointed out that every time we’ve backed off, and cautiously used half steps – what he called “playing to play” rather than “playing to win” we’ve been taken advantage of by our adversaries, and have had to pay a higher price later. This is also the theme behind the title of his book – to fight and win “by all means available”
• He points to the increasing use by us and our adversaries of “remote warfare” long range aircraft and missiles, unmanned systems, cyber, and space.
• He talks about our adversaries using “anti-access” and “area denial” tools against the US to impede our efforts to project power and influence across the globe.
• He points out that “covert and indirect war – activities below conventional war will likely by the dominant form of conflict between great powers, and …the line betrween peace and war will become increasingly blurred.” (p422)
  • A key lesson learned from Iraq and Afghanistan – invading a country is a lot easier than pacifying it afterward.
• “The technology for decptive information influence operations is advancing more rapidly than the technologies needed to counter it. (p433)
• He is very concerned about our vulnerability to catastrophic cyber attacks on our critical infrastructure for which he believes our defenses need to be significantly strengthened.
• Many of the key strategic errors we’ve made in the last 20+ years have been because we’ve not succeeded in “keping the main thing the main thing” – we’ve gotten distracted and have dissipated our efforts and resources, have been unwilling to achieve escalation dominance, and thereby have ceded the initiative to our adversaries.

He concludes the book with Part V entitled “Reflections” shich includes what I view as some great insights based on his 40+ years fighting our enemies. These insights would be very useful for America’s leaders to consider as we go into the future against adveraries intent on crippling US power and influence. His chapter on Intelligence, Special Operations and Strategy lays out where he sees we may be falling short, and he insists we need to do better if we will prevail, and avoid our many mistakes of the past. And finally, his last chapter, “The Long Goodbye” talks about how he left the government, the honors and accolades he received as he left government service, and he thanks his many mentors and supporters for an amazing career.