The Summer of ’99

In the process he seems to have had little concern for the victim of this unprovoked aggression. This should help us to better understand the continuing American mindset biased heavily in favour of Pakistan and its military, especially in the Pentagon. This is visible even elsewhere. Take, for example, his account of the massacre triggered by Pakistani troops in Mogadishu (Somalia) on June 5, 1993, where Zinni seems to have been more concerned by Pakistani casualties (24 dead) compared to an estimated 10,000 Somalis (two-thirds of them women and children).

But we also must admire his forthrightness. As a successful top military commander with extensive experience of wars, peace and peace-enforcement, he is firm in his view that “if you make a political mistake, the troops have to pay for it with their blood” and far too many commanders “fail in their obligations to speak the truth” and subordinates learn “following the party line is the course to high rank”.

Zinni, one of the most successful American generals with extensive experience in West Asia, resigned due to differences on the official policy over the Iraq war in 2003 because, “In the lead up to the war and its later conduct, I saw, at a minimum, true dereliction, negligence, and irresponsibility; at worst, lying, incompetence, and corruption. False rationales presented as a justification; a flawed strategy; lack of planning; the unnecessary alienation of our allies; the underestimation of the task; the unnecessary distraction from real threats; and unbearable strain dumped on our overstretched military.”

The most valuable part of his biography that our defence establishment, foreign policy practitioners and the security community need to look at closely is his assessment of the functioning of the US higher defence organisation and politico-military decision-making, especially the Joint Chiefs of Staff system that we admire so much. According to Zinni, the Joint Chiefs are simply the Service Chiefs “wearing another hat now and again during the week” and running their own services with tensions of a zero-sum game where the rising powers of the Commanders-in-Chief reduce the power of the Service Chiefs. He is concerned with the “bickering and rivalries” of services, military commanders not being able to control their own resources, the tremendous void in diplomatic connections, “an inevitable military-civilian rift” and so on.

On the positive side, he commends a system and leadership where H.R. McMaster, who as a young major, wrote the book Dereliction of Duty detailing the failures of the Joint Chiefs to speak out during the Vietnam War, is invited in 1998 to address all four-star generals of the US military by the Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Hugh Shelton, once again emphasising that “moral courage is often more difficult than physical courage.”