Duty - A Memoir Worth Reading

I hesitantly picked up this book (published 2014) looking at the number of pages (~640) and wasn’t sure if it had any good insights in it. But I pushed through it and by the time I was a few chapters in - I was enjoying the memoir actually and finished it in a week. It had some few good aha moments and some reconfirmations of what I thought happened.

By the end of the book the author who served as Secretary of Defense aka Defense Minister under POTUS 43 (last 2 years) and POTUS 44 (first two years) - acknowledges and underlines few things about War in general -

• There is always this assumption in the beginning that the war would be short. And it never is. 
• Once the first round of shots/bombs are fired - war is unpredictable and it takes its own course.

No country is fully prepared for the next war. I liked Donald Rumsfield quote -

You go to war with the army you have, not with what you wish you had.

Another thing which I thought was a big deal for someone of the author’s stature to mention was that in the intervention in Libya (2011) - out of 28 NATO allies, only half provided some contribution and only half of them sent in their aircrafts. And the U.S had to step in to provide not only recon capabilities but also midair refueling of those planes. After only 3 months, the U.S had to replenish NATO’s dwindling ammo as they started to run out of them.

It is remarkable in my view, because as per NATO’s charter every country has to spend ~2% of its GDP on defense but very few do for various reasons. This was called out by POTUS 45 but the message was lost due to other ongoing things. Adjacent to this was what he writes about Russia - those views are no longer acceptable today.

I have always wondered why the U.S defense budget is so huge and always keeps increasing. And reading the former Secretary of Defense’s autobiography gave me enough understanding for that. 

• First factor is Inflation. The budget obviously will keep going up at least at the same rate as inflation. And Military salaries need to go up accordingly.
  
  
• Fuel. This is such an overlooked factor. Lot of transport vehicles - trucks, tanks, planes, helicopters - all require fuel (diesel) and that cost keeps going up.
  
  
• The Military Industrial Complex is real!
  Lot of projects of manufacturing ammo, weapons are spread across the country providing a lot of jobs and driving local and regional economies. Even if the President and Secretary of Defense want to shut down some programs which aren’t needed - as per the author, often the Service chiefs would go to Congress and lobby for them.
  
  Similarly, in a rare case where neither the civilian government nor the Service chiefs want some program/weapons shelved as its outdated or less value add - the Congress would still allocate budget for it overriding them both. Congresspersons are scared and clueless how to replace those factories and jobs. As mentioned so many times in the book - parochial interests drive the budget mostly and not national security vision.

Reading the book the delicate Middle East situation became clearer.

How the U.S has been successfully managing the volatile region and trying to hold back Israel (mostly) is admirable and praiseworthy. However, understanding all the aspects makes it feel like it is a matter of When not If, when it all erupts.

There is also some good wisdom on revolutions. They always start with hope and idealism, but mostly end with bloodshed and authoritarianism. Because often the more organized and extremist groups capitalize on it and take power. We have seen it happen in Iran (1979), Cuba and even in Egypt (Arab revolution 2008).

Overall, this book gives a very good overview on how the U.S government functions.

• One would think meetings would be a problem only in the corporate world but no it was amusing to see that even at such a top level there are so many meetings all day and so much context switching.
  
  
• Transfer of power requires lots of work from a dedicated team. Since it is humans we are talking about here - you can expect all kinds of attitude you can think of from an outgoing team to incoming team regardless of political affiliations. 
  
  
• It is remarkable how the Secretary described his experience interacting with Congresspersons.
  In the privacy of a room devoid of cameras they can be intelligent, thoughtful and insightful in discussions but once the little red light went on the top of a camera, it has the full effect of a full moon on a werewolf. No wonder public hearings are all about hot-takes!
  
  
• In Iraq and Afghanistan there was often a lot of frustration at the slow progress in the newly formed governments of those countries. Ironically, the U.S Congress can be equally frustrating at arriving at consensus on big ticket items.
  
  
• Finally, in big positions in government you make decisions with either too little time or too much ambiguous info. That’s par for the course.
  
  
  

Overall, for the above reasons it's a good read. 
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