By All Means Available: Memoirs of a Life in Intelligence, Special Operations, and Strategy

In this provocative and eye-opening debut memoir, Vickers, a former national security and intelligence official, shares lessons gleaned from the Cold War, the war on terror, and other global conflicts. He offers an encyclopedic account of the operations he helped plan, including the strategy of supplying Afghanistan’s mujahedin with weapons and tactics to force a Soviet withdrawal in the 1980s. Then came the shock of 9/11 and the onslaught of global terrorism. America’s immediate response, which Vickers helped to devise, involved counterterrorism operations to “disrupt, dismantle, and defeat” al-Qaeda and eliminate its sanctuary in the Afghanistan-Pakistan border region. Among other lessons, Vickers notes that invading is easier than pacifying, that good intelligence is crucial, and that drone strikes and special operations raids are an effective means of disrupting jihadist networks. As Russia and China increasingly seek to intimidate their neighbors, Vickers advocates for “invest[ing] heavily” in America’s “air, missile, undersea, space, and cyber force[s].” Though he downplays the risks of military intervention and doesn’t fully reckon with the damage inflicted by the U.S. on Iraq and Afghanistan, he makes a vigorous argument for the use of “all means available” to defeat America’s foes. Comprehensive and combative, it’s a case to be reckoned with. (June)