Imperial Grunts: On the Ground with the American Military, from Mongolia to the Philippines to Iraq and Beyond

376 Pages·2006·2.17 MB·English

by  Robert D. Kaplan

CONTENTS
Cover Page
Title Page
Dedication
Epigraph
Map
PROLOGUE
INJUN COUNTRY

CHAPTER ONE
CENTCOM
YEMEN, WINTER 2002
WITH NOTES ON COLOMBIA
“Yemen was vast. And it was only one small country. . . . How to manage
such an imperium?”

CHAPTER TWO
SOUTHCOM
COLOMBIA, WINTER 2003
WITH NOTES ON EL SALVADOR
“The future of military conflict was better gauged in Colombia than in Iraq.
. . . In Colombia I was introduced to the tactics that the U.S. would employ
to manage an unruly world.”

CHAPTER THREE
PACOM
MONGOLIA, SPRING 2003
, ,
WITH NOTES ON MACEDONIA BOSNIA AND TAJIKISTAN
“Mongolia was a trip wire for judging future Chinese intentions. . . . Col.
Wilhelm was determined to make the descendants of Genghis Khan the
‘peacekeeping Gurkhas’ of the American Empire.”

CHAPTER FOUR
PACOM
THE PHILIPPINES, SUMMER 2003
, 1898–1913
WITH NOTES ON THE PHILIPPINES
“Terrorists used these poor, shantyish, unpoliceable islands as hideouts. . . .
Combating Islamic terrorism here carried a secondary benefit: it positioned
the U.S. for the containment of China.”

CHAPTER FIVE
CENTCOM AND SOCOM
AFGHANISTAN, AUTUMN 2003
’
WITH NOTES ON PAKISTAN S NORTHWEST FRONTIER
“Because al-Qaeda was a worldwide insurgency, America had to fight a
classic worldwide counterinsurgency . . . here, amid the field mice and the
mud-walled flatness of the Helmand desert, there was only constant trial-
and-error experimentation in light of the mission at hand.”

CHAPTER SIX
FROM THE ARMY TO THE MARINES—
FORT BRAGG AND CAMP LEJEUNE, NORTH CAROLINA
WINTER 2003–2004
“I had entered a world stripped to its bare essentials, the inhabitants of
which had taken a veritable monastic vow of poverty.”

CHAPTER SEVEN
CENTCOM
HORN OF AFRICA, WINTER 2004
WITH NOTES ON EAST AFRICA
“ ’Who needs meetings in Washington. . . . Guys in the field will figure out
what to do. I took ten guys through eastern Ethiopia. Everywhere people
wanted an American presence.’ A new paradigm was emerging for the
military, one that borrowed more from the French and Indian War and the
Lewis and Clark expedition than from the major conflicts of the twentieth
century.”

CHAPTER EIGHT
CENTCOM
IRAQ, SPRING 2004
WITH NOTES ON NICARAGUA AND VIETNAM
“I looked around in broad daylight to see the roofscape of Al-Fallujah
covered with thousands upon thousands of old mufflers and tailpipes,
guarded by U.S. Marines, standing atop the city with fixed bayonets. . . . Yet
the American Empire depended upon a tissue of intangibles that was
threatened, rather than invigorated, by the naked exercise of power.”
EPILOGUE
THE INTERIOR CONTINENT
Author’s Note and Acknowledgments
Endnotes
Notes
Glossary
About the Author
Other Books by Robert D. Kaplan
Copyright Page
To the memory of Marine 1st Lt. Joshua Palmer of Banning, California,
born November 28, 1978, killed in action April 8, 2004
And to all the other U.S. Marines killed or wounded during the fighting in
Fallujah, Iraq, in April 2004
Major Victor Joppolo, U.S.A., was a good man. . . . We have need of him.
He is our future in the world. Neither the eloquence of Churchill nor the
humaneness of Roosevelt, no Charter, no four freedoms or fourteen points,
no dreamer’s diagram so symmetrical and so faultless on paper, no plan, no
hope, no treaty—none of these things can guarantee anything. Only men
can guarantee, only the behavior of men under pressure, only our Joppolos.
—John Hersey, A Bell for Adano, 1944
Imperialism moved forward, not as a result of commercial or political
pressure from London, Paris, Berlin, St. Petersburg, or even Washington,
but mainly because men on the periphery, many of whom were soldiers,
pressed to enlarge the boundaries of empire, often without orders, even
against orders.
—Douglas Porch, professor at the Naval War College,
Newport, Rhode Island, 1996
In a campaign against Indians, the front is all around, and the rear is
nowhere.
—Erasmus D. Keyes, Fifty Years’ Observation
of Men and Events, 1884