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Relentless Strike: The Secret History of Joint Special Operations Command, by Sean Naylor. New York: St. Martin's, 2015. 560 pages. $29.99 (paperback $17.99, Kindle $14.99).
Once again, Sean Naylor has produced an authoritative and well-written book. Relentless Strike chronicles the history of the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), America's top-tier special operations military unit. To the benefit of history and the reader, and most likely to the consternation of the Pentagon, Naylor's knowledge of special operations and his extensive contacts reveal the temperaments and competencies of key individuals and the details of numerous clandestine missions and organizational capabilities. Many will condemn Naylor for revealing these secrets, but the fault is not with Naylor; it is with those who talked. The book also, perhaps unintentionally, exposes flaws in how the United States wages war, as well as the limitations of special operations.
The book begins by recounting the creation of JSOC after the failed Iranian hostage rescue operation in 1980. New threats to national security required a new military organization that had the resources and capabilities to respond quickly to crises and apply specialized military capabilities to rescue hostages, kill terrorists, and neutralize weapons of mass destruction. Naylor reminds us that senior military leaders opposed the new command, but the failure in Iran trumped parochial thinking. The second and more interesting part of the book addresses the expansion of JSOC as one result of the momentous impact of the 9/11 attacks.
From the beginning, JSOC had significant advantages over both conventional military organizations and nonaffiliated special operations units. The units placed under JSOC's direct control were the best-trained and best-resourced units in the military. Each of these units had its own sophisticated-and grueling-selection process. Remarkably, JSOC headquarters had nothing that mirrored such careful processes for selecting its staff. Also oddly, the Pentagon had no process for selecting a JSOC commander whose experience and temperament matched the requirements of a national force. To be sure, some of JSOC's early commanders were excellent-but that was the exception. This deficiency became clear in the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks.
The 1980s and '90s were a period of steady growth in terms of structure, budget, and formalized relationships throughout the interagency world. JSOC was required to be ready to...